meditation. The faintest of flushes crept into her wax-like cheeks.

"If it should be a sign!" she murmured raptly, and then she turned again to
Fra Gervasio. "You heard Agostino say that he could not bear this friar's
gaze. You remember, brother, how a pilgrim appeared near San Rufino to the
nurse of Saint Francis, and took from her arms the child that he might
bless it ere once more he vanished? If this should be a sign such as
that!"

She clasped her hands together fervently. "I must see this friar ere he
departs again," she said to the staring, dumbfounded Fra Gervasio.

At last, then, I understood her emotion. All her life she had prayed for a
sign of grace for herself or for me, and she believed that here at last was
something that might well be discovered upon inquiry to be an answer to her
prayer. This capuchin who had stared at me from the courtyard became at
once to her mind--so ill-balanced upon such matters--a supernatural
visitant, harbinger, as it were, of my future saintly glory.

But though she rose betimes upon the morrow, to see the holy man ere he
fared forth again, she was not early enough. In the courtyard whither she
descended to make her way to the outhouse where the two were lodged, she
met Fra Gervasio, who was astir before her.

"The friar?" she cried anxiously, filled already with forebodings. "The
holy man?"

Gervasio stood before her, pale and trembling. "You are too late, Madonna.
Already he is gone."