So much for the main design; that was clear. But there were indispensable details, and over these Tarsis puzzled until he opened his other hand--the one not resting on the table--and looked at the scrap of paper it had been clutching. It was Hera’s note crushed into a ball. A moment he weighed the thing on his open palm and regarded it in bitter reflection. Here lay the epitome of his fondest ambition, his capital disappointment. It was the first and only time she had written to him; and with the rising of this fact in his mind flashed an idea that grew and supplied the details. He dramatised the future on a stage set with the ruins of a cloister and an old church for the background; it was a scene redeemed from total darkness by the glimmer of a moon that hung far on the slope of the heavens and there was no sound save the breathing of him who watched and waited in the shadow, with a keen blade ready for work. The conception touched some artistic chord of his nature, and he smiled and told himself it was good. In the old monastery Mario Forza had contracted the debt; in the old monastery he should pay. He picked open the crumpled paper and spread it flat on the marble. He smoothed out the creases as best he could, then got blank paper, a pen, and a well of ink. It may have been for an hour that he sat there copying again and again the few lines his wife had written. In the first essays his eye travelled often from the copy to the pen as he fashioned each letter after Hera’s hand observing minutely and matching the slightest peculiarity. Patiently he went over and over the precise curl of a y’s tail, the loop of an l, or the dot of an i. At length he was able to write off the missive, Hera’s signature included, to his satisfaction without once looking at the model. His next step was to leave the library, locking the door to make sure that no one should enter and see the table littered with the evidence of his work; the next to go to the chamber that was Hera’s. There he took from a desk some of the dainty paper and envelopes that bore her monogram. A few minutes and he was back in the library making a copy of her note on that paper. He held the finished product at arm’s length, then at closer view, and pronounced it perfect. He was about to carry this part of his plan to its fruition by writing a note of his own wording in the hand of his wife when a knock stayed his purpose. Instead of calling to the visitor to enter he rose and opened the door a few inches, mindful of the scraps on the table. Beppe was there with a card on his tray.