"They are the same," he answered in a low voice.
She rose. "I must see this friar," she announced, and never in all my life
had I beheld in her such a display of emotion.
"In the morning, then," said Fra Gervasio. "It is after sunset," he
explained. "They have retired, and their rule..." He left the sentence
unfinished, but he had said enough to be understood by her.
She sank back to her chair, folded her hands in her lap and fell into
meditation. The faintest of flushes crept into her wax-like cheeks.
"If it should be a sign!" she murmured raptly, and then she turned again to
Fra Gervasio. "You heard Agostino say that he could not bear this friar's
gaze. You remember, brother, how a pilgrim appeared near San Rufino to the
nurse of Saint Francis, and took from her arms the child that he might
bless it ere once more he vanished? If this should be a sign such as
that!"
She clasped her hands together fervently. "I must see this friar ere he
departs again," she said to the staring, dumbfounded Fra Gervasio.
At last, then, I understood her emotion. All her life she had prayed for a
sign of grace for herself or for me, and she believed that here at last was
something that might well be discovered upon inquiry to be an answer to her
prayer. This capuchin who had stared at me from the courtyard became at
once to her mind--so ill-balanced upon such matters--a supernatural
visitant, harbinger, as it were, of my future saintly glory.
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