Lines of sternness sharpened the friar’s features. He strode forward, caught up the stone and lifted the folded paper.
The sternness smoothed out as he read the simple penned sentences, and a singular look crept to his face. It was more than contrition; it was the self-accusatory sorrow of a mind to whom uncharity is a heinous sin before high Heaven.
He turned, flushing painfully. Gordon’s back was still toward him.
Then the padre laid the paper gently back in its place, reset the stone over it, and silently, with bowed head entered the gate.
That night there were two who did not close eye in the monastery of San Lazzarro. One was Padre Somalian, who prayed in penance. The other was a stranger who walked the stone floor of his chamber, the prey to an overmastering emotion.
That scene on the path, like a lightning flash in a dark night, had shown Gordon his own heart. He knew now that a force stronger even than his despair had been at work in him without his knowledge. A woman’s face cried to him beyond all gainsaying. Teresa’s voice sounded in every lurch of wind against the sea-wall—in every wave that beat like a passing bell upon the margin-stones.
Far, far deeper than the burn of the white welt on his forehead throbbed and thrilled a bitter-sweet misery. In spite of his desire, he had brought shame and agony upon her—and whether for good or ill, he loved her!
CHAPTER XXXII
THE RESTRAINING HAND
An east wind blew from the Adriatic. It churned the shadow lagoon to an ashen yeast of fury, hurled churlish waves against the sand-reef of the Lido and drove fleering rain-gusts over the lonely canals and deserted squares of Venice to drench the baffled and bedraggled pigeons huddled under the columns of the Doges’ Palace. It beat down the early blossoms in the garden of the Palazzo Albrizzi till they lay broken and sodden about the arbor and the wet stone benches. It charged against the closed shutters of the Palazzo Mocenigo, where Fletcher, obedient though foreboding, awaited the return of his master. The sky was piled with dreary portents, clouds titanic, unmixed, like avalanches of gray falling cliffs, and beneath it Venice lay as ghostly and as gray, all its miracle hues gone lackluster, its glories palled, its whole face pallid and corpse-like.
In the old monastery of San Lazzarro, in the bare white-washed room used as a library, with wide windows fronting the sea, Gordon sat bending over a table. He had been trying to write, but could not for the thoughts that flocked between him and the paper.