While Shelley waited, Gordon untied the girdle about his waist, stripped off the brown robe and, folding it, placed it out of the rain, in the niche where stood the leaden Virgin. From his pocket he took some bank-notes—all he had with him—laid them on top of the robe and weighted them carefully with fragments of rock.
Last he lifted the flat stone under which was Teresa’s prayer. The paper was wet and blistered from the spray. He put it carefully in his pocket. Then with one backward glance at the monastery, he leaped into the gondola beside Shelley and signed to the gondolier to cast off.
For an hour the padre sat alone in the library, musing, wondering what manner of message had called that conflict of emotion to the other’s face. As he rose at length, the wind rattled the casement and called his attention.
He paused before it. “Why did he have the iron bolt?” he said to himself. “The window was open, too.”
Standing, a thought came that made him start. He crossed himself and hastened out of the room.
A few moments later he was at the wharf. The gondola was gone, but by the shrine he found what Gordon had left.
He lifted the silver crucifix that hung at his girdle and his lips moved audibly:
“O Thou who quieted the tempest!” he prayed in his native tongue. “Thou didst send this racked heart to me in Thy good purpose. Have I failed in aught toward him? Did I, in my blindness, offer him less than Thy comfort? Grant in Thy will that I may once more minister to him and that when his storm shall calm, I may hold before his eyes this symbol of Thy passion and forgiveness!”