The door opened on the kitchen-garden, and brushing the lavender-hedges with her flying skirts she sped on ahead of Odo to the postern which the nuns were accustomed to use for their nocturnal escapades.  Only the thickness of an oaken gate stood between Fulvia and the outer world.  To her the opening of the gate meant the first step toward freedom, but to Odo the passing from their enchanted weeks of fellowship to the inner loneliness of his former life.  He hung back silent while she drew the bolt.

A moment later they had crossed the threshold and his gondola was slipping toward them out of the shadow of the wall.  Fulvia sprang on board and he followed her under the felze.  The warm darkness enclosing them stirred impulses which their daily intercourse had subdued, and in the sense of her nearness he lost sight of the conditions which had brought them together.  The feeling seemed to communicate itself; for as the gondola rounded the angle of the convent-wall and swung out on the open, she drooped toward him with the turn of the boat and their lips met under the loosened masks.

At the same instant the light of the Virgin’s shrine in the corner of the convent-wall fell through the window of the felze on the face lifted to Odo’s; and he found himself suddenly confronted by the tender eyes and malicious smile of Sister Mary of the Crucifix.

“By Diana,” she cried as he started back, “I did but claim my pay in advance; nor do I think that, when she knows all, Sister Veronica will grudge me my reward!”

He continued to stare at her in speechless bewilderment, and she went on with a kind of tender impatience:  “You simpleton, can you not guess that you were watched, and that but for me your Veronica would at this moment be lying under lock and key in her cell?  Instead of which,” she continued, speaking more slowly, and leaning back as though to enjoy the full savour of his suspense, “instead of which she now awaits you in a safe nook of my choosing, where, within half an hour’s time, you may atone to her with interest for the infidelity into which I have betrayed you.”

“She knows, then?” Odo faltered, not daring to say more in his ignorance of Sister Mary’s share in the secret.

Sister Mary shook her head with a tantalising laugh.  “That you are coming?  Alas, no, poor angel!  She fancies that she has been sent from the convent to avoid you—­as indeed she was, and by the Reverend Mother’s own order, who, it seems, had wind of the intrigue this morning.  But, the saints be praised, the excellent sister who was ordered to attend her is in my pay and instead of conducting her to her relatives of San Barnado, who were to keep her locked up over night, has, if I mistake not, taken her to a good woman of my acquaintance—­an old servant, in fact—­who will guard her as jealously as the family plate till you and I come to her release.”

As she spoke she put out her head and gave a whispered order to the gondolier; and at the word the boat swung round and headed for the city.