nt later their prow touched the postern and the boatman gave a low
call which proved him no novice at the business. Fulvia signed to Odo
not to speak or move; and they sat listening intently for the opening of
the gate. As soon as it was unbarred she sprang ashore and vanished in
the darkness of the garden; and with a cold sense of failure Odo heard
the bolt slipping back and the stealthy fall of the oars as the gondola
slid away under the shadow of the convent-wall. Whither was he being
carried and would that bolt ever be drawn for him again? In the sultry
dawn the convent loomed forbiddingly as a prison, and he could hardly
believe that a few hours earlier the very doors now closed against him
had stood open to all the world. They would open again; but whether to
him, who could conjecture? He was resolved to see Fulvia again, but he
shrank from the thought of forcing himself upon her. She had promised to
receive him; but what revulsion of feeling might not the morrow bring?

Unable to sleep, he bade the boatmen carry him to the Lido. The sun was
just rising above the Friulian Alps and the lagoon lay dull and smooth
as a breathed-on mirror. As he paced the lonely sands he tried to
reconstruct Fulvia's broken story, supplementing it with such details as
his experience of Venetian life suggested. It appeared that after her
father's death she had found herself possessed of a small sum of money
which he had painfully accumulated for her during the two years they had
spent in Pavia. Her only thought was to employ this inheritance in
publishing the great work on the origin of civilisation which Vivaldi
had completed a few days before his last seizure. Through one of the
professors of the University, who had been her father's friend, she
negotiated with a printer of Amsterdam for the production of the book,
and the terms being agreed on, despatched the money and the manuscript
thither by a sure hand. Both were duly delivered and the publisher had
advanced so far in his work as to send Fulvia the proof-sheets of the
first chapters, when he took alarm at the renewed activity of the Holy
Office in France and Italy, declared there would be no market for the
book in the present state of affairs, and refused either to continue
printing it, or to restore the money, which he said had barely covered
the setting-up of the type. Fulvia then attempted to recover the
manuscript; but the publisher refusing to surrender it, she found
herself