A fine rain was falling as we sallied out, and there was a sting in the December wind which made us draw our cowls the tighter about our face.  Abandoning the main street, I led her down some narrow alleys, deserted like all the rest of the city, and not so much as a stray cat abroad in that foul weather.  It was very dark, and a hundred times we stumbled, whilst in some places I almost carried her bodily to avoid the filth of the quarter we were traversing.  At length we gained the space in front of the gates that open on to the northern road, known as Porta Venezia, and I would have blundered on and roused the guard to let us out, using the Borgia ring once more—­that talisman whose power had grown during these years, so that it would now open me almost any door in Italy.  But Paola stayed me.  Wisely she counselled that we should do nothing that might draw too much attention upon ourselves, and she urged me to wait until the dawn, when the guard would be astir and the gates opened.

So we fled to the shelter of a porch, and there we waited, huddling ourselves out of the reach of the icy rain.  We talked little during the time we spent there.  For my own part I had overmuch food for thought, and a very natural anxiety racked me.  Soon the monks would be descending to the church, and they would discover the havoc there, and spread the alarm.

Who could say but that they might even discover the abstraction of the two habits from the sacristy, and the hue and cry for two men in the sackcloth of Dominicans would be afoot—­for they would infer that two men so disguised had made off with the body of Madonna Paola.  The thought stirred me like a goad.  I stood up.  The night was growing thinner, and, suddenly, even as I rose, a light gleamed from one of the Windows of the guard-house.

“God be thanked for that fellow’s early rising,” I cried out.  “Come, Madonna, let us be moving.”

And I added my newly-conceived reasons for quitting the place without further delay.

Cursing us for being so early abroad—­a curse to which I responded with a sonorous “Pax Domini sit tecum” the still somnolent sentinel opened the post and let us pass.  I was glad in the end that we had waited and thus avoided the necessity of showing my ring, for should inquiries be made concerning two monks, that ring of mine might have betrayed the identity of one of them.  I gave thanks to Heaven that I knew the country well.  A quarter of a league or so from Pesaro we quitted the high-road and took to the by-paths with which I was well acquainted.

Day came, grey and forbidding at first, but presently the rain ceased and the sun flashed out a thousand diamonds from the drenched hedge-rows.

We plodded on; and at length, towards noon, when we had gained the neighbourhood of the village of Cattolica, we halted at the hut of a peasant on a small campagna.  I had divested myself of my monk’s habit, and cut away the cowl from Madonna’s.  She had thereafter fashioned it by means that were mysterious to my dull man’s mind into a more feminine-looking garb.