“They are plotting against the Republic,” whispered Arisa.  “I can hear all they say.”

“Are you sure?”

“I tell you I can hear every word.  I can almost see them.  Look here.  Come with me.”

She rose and he followed her to the corner of the room where the small silver lamp burned steadily before an image of Saint Mark, and above a heavy kneeling-stool.

“The foot moves,” she said, and she was already on her knees on the floor, pushing the step.

It slid back with the soft sound Contarini had heard before he came upstairs.  The upper part of the woodwork was built into the wall.

“They meet in the place below this,” Arisa said.  “When they are there, I can see a glimmer of light.  I cannot get my head in.  It is too narrow, but I hear as if I were with them.”

“How did you find this out?” asked Aristarchi on the floor beside her, and reaching down into the dark space to explore it with his hand.  “It is deep,” he continued, without waiting for an answer.  “There may be some passage by which one can get down.”

“Only a child could pass.  You see how narrow it is.  But one can hear every sound.  They said enough to-night to send them all to the scaffold.”

“Better they than we if we ever have to make the choice,” said the Greek ominously.

He had withdrawn his arm and was planted upon his hands and knees, his shaggy head hanging over the dark aperture.  He was like some rough wild beast that has tracked its quarry to earth and crouches before the hole, waiting for a victim.

“How did you find this out?” he asked again, looking up.

She was standing by the corner of the stool, now, all her marvellous beauty showing in the light of the little lamp and against the wall behind her.

“I was saying my prayers here, the first night they met,” she said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.  “I heard voices, as it seemed, under my feet.  I tried to push away the stool, and the foot moved.  That is all.”

Aristarchi’s jaw dropped a little as he looked up at her.

“Do you say prayers every night?” he asked in wonder.

“Of course I do.  Do you never say a prayer?”

“No.”  He was still staring at her.

“That is very wrong,” she said, in the earnest tone a mother might use to her little child.  “Some harm will befall us, if you do not say your prayers.”

A slow smile crossed the ruffian’s face as he realised that this evil woman who was ready to commit the most atrocious deeds out of love for him, was still half a child.

CHAPTER IV

Marietta awoke before sunrise, with a smile on her lips, and as she opened her eyes, the world seemed suddenly gladder than ever before, and her heart beat in time with it.  She threw back the shutters wide to let in the June morning as if it were a beautiful living thing; and it breathed upon her face and caressed her, and took her in its spirit arms, and filled her with itself.