wax in her hands. Forgotten were all
considerations of rank and station. We were just a man and a woman whose
fates were linked irrevocably by love. I stooped suddenly, under the
sway of an impulse, I could not resist, and kissed her upturned face,
turning almost dizzy in the act. Then I broke from her clasp, and
bracing myself for the task to which we stood committed by that kiss--

"Paola," said I, "we must devise the means to get away. I will bear you
to my mother's home near Biancomonte, that you may dwell there at least
until we are wed. But the thing that exercises my mind is how to make
our unobserved escape from Pesaro."

"I have thought of it already," she informed me quietly.

"You have thought of it?" I cried. "And of what have you thought?"

For answer she stepped back a pace, and drew the cowl of the monk's
habit over her head until her features were lost in the shadows of it.
She stood before me now, a diminutive Dominican brother. Her meaning
was clear to me at once. With a cry of gladness I turned to the drawer
whence I had taken the habit in which she was arrayed, and selecting
another one I hastily donned it above the garments that I wore.

No sooner was it done than I caught her by the arm.

"Come, Madonna," I bade her in an urgent voice. At the first step she
stumbled. The habit was so long that it cumbered her feet. But that was
a difficulty soon conquered. With my dagger I cut a piece from the skirt
of it, enough to leave her freedom of movement; and, that accomplished,
we set out.

We crossed the church swiftly and silently, and a moment I left her
in the porch whilst I surveyed the street. All was quiet. Pesaro still
slept, and it must have wanted some two hours or more to the dawn.

A fine rain was falling as we sallied out, and there was a sting in the
December wind which made us draw our cowls the tighter about our face.
Abandoning the main street, I led her down some narrow alleys, deserted
like all the rest of the city, and not so much as a stray cat abroad in
that foul weather. It was very dark, and a hundred times we stumbled,
whilst in some places I almost carried her bodily to avoid the filth of
the quarter we were traversing. At length we gained the space in front
of the gates that open on to the northern road, known as Porta Venezia,
and I would have blundered on and roused the guard to let us out, using
the Borgia ring once more--that talisman whose power had grown during
the