was not quite sure which.

'Therefore I say it is folly to send a man such a message. "Wait and
hope," indeed! How long? His lifetime? Yours? You are both young, and
you may wait and hope fifty years, till your hair and teeth fall out,
and you discover that there is nothing in hope after all! Better say
good-bye outright, though it kill you! Better try and forget than make a
martyrdom of remembering! Better anything than hope!'

The grey-eyed woman's voice shook with an emotion which Ortensia could
not have understood if she had noticed it, for she was dreadfully
miserable just then. Pina bent down over her, smoothed her hair and
patted her bare arm softly.

'Why hope for what you can take, if you have the courage?' she asked,
dropping her voice to a whisper, as she glanced behind her towards the
door.

Ortensia lifted her head and looked up, her lips parting in surprise.

'Why should you waste time in waiting?' Pina asked, still whispering.
'That is the message I would send if I were you,' she added. 'Shall I
take it?'

'But how?--I do not understand--he cannot come to me here.'

'We can go to him,' answered the nurse. 'Is it not easy? The next time
you confess at the Frari he will meet us. It is simple enough. Two long
brown cloaks with hoods, such as old women wear, a few hundred yards to
walk from the Frari to the Tolentini, his gondola there, and out by
Santa Chiara to the mainland and Padua--who shall catch us then? You are
young and strong, and I am tough; we shall not die of the fatigue; and
by the next morning we shall all three be out of Venetian territory.
What is easier?'

Ortensia listened to this bold plan in silence, too much surprised to
ask why Pina was so ready to propose it, and a little frightened too,
for she was a mere girl, and all the world beyond Venice was a
mysterious immensity of Cimmerian gloom in the midst of which little
pools of brilliant light marked the great and wonderful places she had
heard described, such as Rome, Florence, and Milan, and royal Paris, and
imperial Vienna.

'But my uncle would send men after us,' Ortensia objected. 'The Council
of Ten will do anything he asks! They will give him soldiers, ships,
anything! How can we possibly escape from him? We shall be caught and
brought back!'

Pina smiled at such fears.

'Beyond the Venetian border they can do nothing,' she said. 'Do we mean
to rob the Senator or murder him, that Venice should send an ambassador
to