“In the morning, then,” said Fra Gervasio. “It is after sunset,” he explained. “They have retired, and their rule...” He left the sentence unfinished, but he had said enough to be understood by her. She sank back to her chair, folded her hands in her lap and fell into meditation. The faintest of flushes crept into her wax-like cheeks. “If it should be a sign!” she murmured raptly, and then she turned again to Fra Gervasio. “You heard Agostino say that he could not bear this friar's gaze. You remember, brother, how a pilgrim appeared near San Rufino to the nurse of Saint Francis, and took from her arms the child that he might bless it ere once more he vanished? If this should be a sign such as that!” She clasped her hands together fervently. “I must see this friar ere he departs again,” she said to the staring, dumbfounded Fra Gervasio. At last, then, I understood her emotion. All her life she had prayed for a sign of grace for herself or for me, and she believed that here at last was something that might well be discovered upon inquiry to be an answer to her prayer. This capuchin who had stared at me from the courtyard became at once to her mind--so ill-balanced upon such matters--a supernatural visitant, harbinger, as it were, of my future saintly glory. But though she rose betimes upon the morrow, to see the holy man ere he fared forth again, she was not early enough. In the courtyard whither she descended to make her way to the outhouse where the two were lodged, she met Fra Gervasio, who was astir before her. “The friar?” she cried anxiously, filled already with forebodings. “The holy man?” Gervasio stood before her, pale and trembling. “You are too late, Madonna. Already he is gone.” She observed his agitation now, and beheld in it a reflection of her own, springing from the selfsame causes. “Oh, it was a sign indeed!” she exclaimed. “And you have come to realize it, too, I see.” Next, in a burst of gratitude that was almost pitiful upon such slight foundation, “Oh, blessed Agostino!” she cried out. Then the momentary exaltation fell from that woman of sorrows. “This but makes my burden heavier, my responsibility greater,” she wailed. “God help me bear it!” Thus passed that incident so trifling in itself and so misunderstood by her. But it was never forgotten, and from time to time she would allude to it as the sign which had been vouchsafed me and for which great should be my thankfulness and my joy. Save for that, in the four years that followed, time flowed an uneventful course within the four walls of the big citadel--for beyond those four walls I was never once permitted to set foot; and although from time to time I heard rumours of doings in the town itself, of the affairs of the State whereof I was by right of birth the tyrant, and of the greater business of the big world beyond, yet so trained and schooled was I that I had no great desire for a nearer acquaintance with that world.