tions as Dino
had done.

This was the tangled web that Romola had in her mind as she sat weary in
the darkness. No radiant angel came across the gloom with a clear
message for her. In those times, as now, there were human beings who
never saw angels or heard perfectly clear messages. Such truth as came
to them was brought confusedly in the voices and deeds of men not at all
like the seraphs of unfailing wing and piercing vision--men who believed
falsities as well as truths, and did the wrong as well as the right.
The helping hands stretched out to them were the hands of men who
stumbled and often saw dimly, so that these beings unvisited by angels
had no other choice than to grasp that stumbling guidance along the path
of reliance and action which is the path of life, or else to pause in
loneliness and disbelief, which is no path, but the arrest of inaction
and death.

And so Romola, seeing no ray across the darkness, and heavy with
conflict that changed nothing, sank at last to sleep.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN.

THE TABERNACLE UNLOCKED.

Romola was waked by a tap at the door. The cold light of early morning
was in the room, and Maso was come for the travelling-wallet. The old
man could not help starting when she opened the door, and showed him,
instead of the graceful outline he had been used to, crowned with the
brightness of her hair, the thick folds of the grey mantle and the pale
face shadowed by the dark cowl.

"It is well, Maso," said Romola, trying to speak in the calmest voice,
and make the old man easy. "Here is the wallet quite ready. You will
go on quietly, and I shall not be far behind you. When you get out of
the gates you may go more slowly, for I shall perhaps join you before
you get to Trespiano."

She closed the door behind him, and then put her hand on the key which
she had taken from the casket the last thing in the night. It was the
original key of the little painted tabernacle: Tito had forgotten to
drown it in the Arno, and it had lodged, as such small things will, in
the corner of the embroidered scarsella which he wore with the purple
tunic. One day, long after their marriage, Romola had found it there,
and had put it by, without using it, but with a sense of satisfaction
that the key was within reach. The cabinet on which the tabernacle
stood had been moved to the side of the room, close to one of the
windows, where the pale morning light fell upon it so as to make the
pain