“I thought, if worst came to worst, I might find a ladder outside,” he said, fearful of betraying his illicit happiness.

“Billy can find a ladder, if there is one,” Angela persisted.  “There’s the most weird, rustling sound, which comes every once in a while, and I can’t possibly stand it with only Billy.”

Nick could hardly speak for joy, but he managed to reply, “All right; Billy shall be the man to go.”

The going was easier to propose than to carry out:  for in bygone days, when the Padres of Old Spain were building New Spain, Mission churches had to protect their flocks against the devil incarnate as well as excarnate.  Windows were made few and high; and now, when the brave builders sleep, it is nobody’s business to worry about the free passage of air.  Such windows as San Miguel possesses were hermetically closed that night when Angela di Sereno and Nick Hilliard were imprisoned; and Billy, standing on Nick’s shoulders, had to work a few tedious moments before he could induce one of these windows to open.  By the time the wiry, slim figure was ready to straddle the window-sill, slip out, dangling, and drop on the grass, night had closed in, fragrant and purple in the open, heavy and black in the church.

Angela came and stood close to Nick.  She had never been a timid girl; but since the night when she had lain watching a thief who slowly, slowly raised her window, twelve storeys above the ground, foolish and hitherto unknown terrors crept through her veins if she happened to wake in the dark.  And now there certainly was a rustling which stirred the silence, then died, as if it had never been.

“Don’t go away from me,” she said.  “It’s so dark that if we’re separated we may be ages finding each other.”

This sounded like an allegory!

“No, we mustn’t be separated,” Nick answered, struck by her words, as if by a prophecy.  Then he, too, heard the rustling—­faint, winged, and mysterious.

They stood still and close together, listening.  There was no sound from outside—­not a call for the Padre, not a reassuring shout that Billy had succeeded in finding him.

Angela groped with her hand, and, by accident, touched Nick’s.  To save his soul he could not have resisted pressing the small cold fingers!  Wonderful!  She did not snatch them away!  Often they had shaken hands, or Nick had taken hers to help her in or out of the motor-car; but there had been nothing like this.  He felt the thrill of the touch go through him as though electric wires flashed a message to his heart.  He was afraid of himself—­afraid he should kiss her hand, or stammer out “I love you!” And that would be fatal, for she would never trust herself to him again.  Besides, it would not be fair.  She was like a child asking his protection, here in the dark, and he must treat her as a man treats a child who has come to him because it is afraid.  But he could not think of her as a child.  He thought of the night in New York when she had knocked on his door, and called to him, a stranger, for help.  He thought how he had seen her, drowned in the waves of her hair, like the angel of his dreams.