CHAPTER VI.
Gigia's Opinion The aged monk of St.Apollinare, after watching Paolina as she departed from the Basilica, and took the path towards the forest, returned into the church to his devotions at the altar of the saint, as has been said.
But he found himself unable to concentrate his attention as usual, not on the meaning of the words of the litanies he uttered,--that, it may be imagined, few such worshippers do, or even attempt to do,--but on such devotional thoughts as, on other occasions, constituted his mental attitude during the hours he spent before the altar.
He could not prevent his mind from straying to thoughts of the girl who had just left him; of certain long-sleeping recollections of his own past, which her name had recalled to him; of her very manifest emotion at the sight of the couple in the bagarino, and the too easy interpretation of the meaning of that emotion; and specially of her implied intention of taking the same route that they had taken.
He thought of these things, and a certain sense of uneasiness and misgiving came over him.

The young artist had spoken kindly and sweetly to him.

She had seemed to him wonderfully pretty,--and that is not without its influence even on eyes over which the cowl had been drawn for more than three-score years; she was a fellow-Venetian too,--and that with Italians, who find themselves in a stranger city, is a stronger tie of fellowship than the people of less divided nations can readily appreciate; and, above all, there were motives connected with those awakened remembrances of the old man which made her an object of interest to him.

And the result of all this was, that he was uneasy at seeing her depart on the errand on which he suspected that she had gone.
After awhile he arose from his knees, and, returning to the great open door of the church, stood awhile irresolutely gazing out towards the forest to the southward.

He could not see the farmhouse, which has been so frequently mentioned, from where he stood, because it is to the eastward of the church.