Readily enough he allowed himself to be conducted within the single circular chamber of the marble pavilion, where Madonna Dionara, her lady, awaited. The place was faintly lighted by a lantern placed on a marble table. It contained besides this some chairs that were swathed in coarse sheets, and a long wooden coffer, carved and painted, in shape and size like a sarcophagus, from which another such sheet had just been swept. The three open spaces, between twin pillars facing towards the palace, were now closed by leather curtains. The circular marble floor was laid out as a dial, with the hours in Roman figures of carved brass sunk into the polished surface, a matter this which puzzled him. He was not to guess that this marble pavilion was a copy in miniature of a Roman temple of Apollo, and that in the centre of the domed roof there was a circular opening for the sun, through which its rays so entered that as the day progressed a time-telling shadow moved across the hours figured in their circle on the floor. Overhead there was a confusion of poles and scaffolding and trailing dust-sheets, and in a corner an array of pails and buckets, and all the litter of suspended painters' work. Dimly, on one of the walls, he could make out a fresco that was half painted, the other half in charcoal outline. On the table, which was swathed like all the other furnishings, the lantern revealed a bundle of red garments lately loosed from a confining cloak of black. Into these he was bidden to change at once. Red, he was told, had been deliberately chosen because all that the captain seemed to know of him was that he had been dressed in green. So that not merely would his protectress render him dry and warm again; she would disguise him. The ladies meanwhile would keep watch in the garden immediately below. They had brought a lute. If one of them should sing to it, this would mean that she sounded the alarm, and he must hide in the coffer, taking with him everything that might betray his presence, including the lantern which he must extinguish. Flint and steel and tinder had not been forgotten, so that light might be rekindled when the danger was overpast. Her highness raised the lid of the coffer to reveal to him the mechanism of the snap lock. This was released, of course, by the key, which should then be withdrawn. Provided he did this, once he allowed the lid to close upon him, none would be able to open it from the outside; whilst from the inside it was an easy matter, even in the dark, to release the catch. Meanwhile the keyhole would provide him with sufficient air and at the same time permit him to judge by sounds of what was happening. The wet garments he removed were to be made into a bundle and dropped into the coffer, whence they would afterwards be taken and destroyed. Finally he was given ten minutes in which to make the change.