“In … in prison?”

The Pope bowed.

“What for?”

“The assassination of the Minister.”

“Roma?… But what a fool I was not to think of it as a thing that might happen! I left her with the dead man. Who was to believe her when she denied that she had killed him?”

“She did not deny it. She avowed it.”

“Avowed it? She said that she had…”

The Pope bowed again.

“Then … then it was… Was it to shield me?”