e, but somewhere beyond the entry
partition on my right. It was there, I reckoned, that one of those
dark anterooms, through which we had approached the _sala_, must be.
The flesh of my back was pricking, but I was almost safe. Once let me
reach Mr. Dingley and I knew that somehow he would get us out. With a
great effort I pulled open the heavy door into the _sala_.

"Oh, I--" I began; but then I stopped. The room was so large that it
took me some moments to make sure it was empty. Mr. Dingley was not
there.

I stood perfectly still in that stupendous place. Everything in me
seemed to have stopped moving, too--my blood and my heart. And, in the
listening pause, there came again unmistakably, soft, stealthy
footsteps, sounding beyond the heavy curtain of the door--sounding as
if creatures were gathering in those dark rooms that lay between me and
the outer hall.

I didn't scream. I didn't want to. I walked quite quietly across the
room to one of the heavily curtained windows at the back, and pulled
the hangings aside.

In front of me, not three feet from the window was the blank face of
the convent wall rising straight up, higher than I could see. I looked
downward. The stone pavement, which I could just make out in the
gloom, must have been ten feet below. Nevertheless I had a wild
thought that, if the worst came, I could at least fling myself down the
narrow cleft; and in that mind I took hold of the window-frame. I had
no hope that I could move it, even after I had stirred the heavy locks;
but, with the pressure of all my weight against it, slowly the two
sides of the casement opened out. As the dusty panes of glass swung
away from before me my eye caught a singular irregularity in the
surface of the wall. About on a level with the window-sill was a niche
in the masonry, perhaps three feet square, and looking to be the depth
of the wall itself. The back of it seemed to be made of a dark
substance--darker than the bricks--through which shone twinkling
glimpses of daylight.

I climbed upon the window-sill, and, taking hold of the upper edge of
one of the casements, swung myself by this. I felt myself hovering an
instant in mid-air. Then my feet had found the niche. I crouched,
and, groping forward with one hand, grasped a stout tangle of vines.
Releasing the casement I half-dragged, half-swung myself into the
opening in the wall. I clung there a moment trembling, catching my
breath, before I r