So much Odo had gathered; and her voice, her gesture, the disorder of her spirit, supplied what her words omitted.  Not for a moment, either in listening to her or in the soberer period of revision, did he question the exact truth of her narrative.  It was the second time that they had met under strange circumstances; yet now as before the sense of her candour was his ruling thought.  He concluded that, whatever plight she found herself in, she would be its immediate justification; and felt sure he must have reached this conclusion though love had not had a stake in the verdict.  This perhaps but proved him the more deeply taken; for it is when passion tightens the net that reason flaps her wings most loudly.

Day was high when he returned to his lodgings, impatient for a word from Fulvia.  None had come; and as the hours passed he yielded to the most disheartening fancies.  His wretchedness was increased by the thought that he had once inflicted on her such suspense he was now enduring; and he went so far as to wonder if this were her revenge for Vercelli.  But if the past was intolerable to consider the future was all baffling fears.  His immediate study was how to see her; and this her continued silence seemed to refuse him.  The extremity of her plight was his best ally; yet here again anxiety suggested that his having been the witness of her humiliation must insensibly turn her against him.  Never perhaps does a man show less knowledge of human nature than in speculating on the conduct of his beloved; and every step in the labyrinth of his conjectures carried Odo farther from the truth.  This rose on him at nightfall, in the shape of a letter slipped in his hand by a lay-sister as he crossed the square before his lodgings.  He stepped to the light of the nearest shrine and read the few words in a tumult.  “This being Friday, no visitors are admitted to the convent; but I entreat you to come to me tomorrow an hour before benediction.”  A postcript added:  “It is the hour when visitors are most frequent.”

He saw her meaning in a flash:  his best chance of speaking with her was in a crowd, and his heart bounded at the significance of her admission.  Now indeed he felt himself lord of the future.  Nothing counted but that he was to see her.  His horizon was narrowed to the bars through which her hand would greet him; yet never had the world appeared so vast.

Long before the hour appointed he was at the gate of Santa Chiara.  He asked to speak with Sister Veronica and the portress led him to the parlour.  Several nuns were already behind the grate, chatting with a group of fashionable ladies and their gallants; but Fulvia was not among them.  In a few moments the portress returned and informed Odo that Sister Veronica was indisposed and unable to leave her cell.  His heart sank, and he asked if she had sent no message.  The portress answered in the negative, but added that the abbess begged him to come to her parlour; and at this his hopes took wing again.