hat. She knew he would wait.

Her hands let go and she was suddenly sitting on the edge of the bed,
feeling for her slippers with her bare feet; with bare arms raised, she
instinctively put up both hands to her hair at the same time, to be sure
that it would not come down, for Pina always did it up at night in a
thick coil on the top of her head.

She heard the rain even more distinctly now; it was coming down in
torrents. She looked up at the little lamp burning quietly before
Robbia's blue and white bas-relief of the infant Christ, and she thought
of her prayers again; but it was positively wicked to let any one stand
outside in the rain for hours, to catch his death of cold.

She slipped a silk skirt over her thin night-dress and put on her
fur-edged dressing-gown over that, for those were the days of wonderful
dressing-gowns, quilted with down, bordered with sable or ermine, and
trimmed with lace. She drew the cords tightly round her slim waist, and
she was ready.

For a moment she hesitated; there was no night-light where Pina slept,
nor in the day-room beyond; the stormy night must be so dark that she
would not be able to find her way to the windows. That thought decided
her, and she stopped to light a small hand-lamp. Then she cautiously
opened the door, shaded the flame from Pina's face with one hand, and
passed quickly through the dressing-room. The nurse lay in her
trestle-bed, well covered up, and did not move, and Ortensia shut the
next door noiselessly.

She hastened to the window, and when she got there she started; his
dripping face was flattened against the pane, so white and ghostly that
it was like a vision of him dead, but his eyes were alive and were
watching her, and when she was quite near the window he smiled. She set
down her lamp on the floor at a little distance and began to undo the
fastenings with the greatest caution, fearing to make any noise; but as
soon as the bolt was drawn the wind forced the frame open so violently
that it almost knocked her down. Stradella sprang in with the driving
wet and only succeeded in shutting the window after several efforts,
during which the lamp was almost blown out.

He stood before her then bare-headed, and the water ran down upon the
marble floor from his drenched clothes. He had neither hat nor cloak,
and his dark hair was matted with the rain; but his face was radiant.

'You are frozen! you are soaked through and through!' she cried
anxiously. '