how narrow it is. But one can hear
every sound. They said enough to-night to send them all to the
scaffold."

"Better they than we if we ever have to make the choice," said the Greek
ominously.

He had withdrawn his arm and was planted upon his hands and knees, his
shaggy head hanging over the dark aperture. He was like some rough wild
beast that has tracked its quarry to earth and crouches before the hole,
waiting for a victim.

"How did you find this out?" he asked again, looking up.

She was standing by the corner of the stool, now, all her marvellous
beauty showing in the light of the little lamp and against the wall
behind her.

"I was saying my prayers here, the first night they met," she said, as
if it were the most natural thing in the world. "I heard voices, as it
seemed, under my feet. I tried to push away the stool, and the foot
moved. That is all."

Aristarchi's jaw dropped a little as he looked up at her.

"Do you say prayers every night?" he asked in wonder.

"Of course I do. Do you never say a prayer?"

"No." He was still staring at her.

"That is very wrong," she said, in the earnest tone a mother might use
to her little child. "Some harm will befall us, if you do not say your
prayers."

A slow smile crossed the ruffian's face as he realised that this evil
woman who was ready to commit the most atrocious deeds out of love for
him, was still half a child.

CHAPTER IV

Marietta awoke before sunrise, with a smile on her lips, and as she
opened her eyes, the world seemed suddenly gladder than ever before, and
her heart beat in time with it. She threw back the shutters wide to let
in the June morning as if it were a beautiful living thing; and it
breathed upon her face and caressed her, and took her in its spirit
arms, and filled her with itself.

Not a sound broke the stillness, as she looked out, and the glassy
waters of the canal reflected delicate tints from the sky, palest green
and faintest violet and amber with all the lovely changing colours of
the dawn. By the footway a black barge was moored, piled high with round
uncovered baskets of beads, white, blue, deep red and black, waiting to
be taken over to Venice where they would be threaded for the East, and
the colours stood out in strong contrast with the grey stones, the faint
reflections in the water and the tender sky above. There were flowers on
the window-sill, a young rose with opening buds, growing in a red
earthen