When, therefore, Geof came upon the little drama being enacted among the alders at Torcello, with a grace and fervour which was for an instant, but only for an instant captivating, he experienced a feeling of vague dissatisfaction, which was much accentuated by the sight of the young girl's evident emotion, as she turned and faced him unexpectedly.

He did a good deal of pondering in the course of that day and the next, and, as he was quite unable to justify, or even to formulate his anxieties, he wished that he might at least find out whether the truth in regard to the gondolier were known to May. That might throw some light upon the subject.

He was aware, to be sure, of the Colonel's studied secrecy in the matter, but secrets are ticklish things at the best, and no stray hint was likely to have been lost upon a girl of May's intelligence. He had a notion that, if he could get a word with Nanni himself, it would be easy to sound him on the point; a delusion that was destined to be early dissipated.

On the second morning following the Torcello trip, Geof was swimming in the Adriatic, far out beyond the line of bathers, shouting and splashing; in the shallows. There, under a dazzling sky, with a strong wind blowing, and whitecaps careering about, he came face to face with the subject of his speculations. The incongruity of catechising a man of his countenance was instantly apparent.

"Buon giorno, Signore," said Nanni, and Daymond found himself returning the salutation with a courtesy that was little short of deferential. The two men had met upon a common footing,—if the watery deep may be said to furnish one,—and Geof had found himself at a disadvantage.

The incident did not altogether allay his friendly solicitude; on the contrary, he was abashed and confounded at this evidence of the power of the Italian's personality; and yet, he was more definitely conscious than he had hitherto been, of a certain racial nobility in the man which commanded confidence.

The wind, that had been a sportive, if somewhat riotous breeze in the morning, gained in force as the day went on. There were few gondolas out in the afternoon, and Geof went about on foot. He walked the length of the wind-swept Riva degli Schiavoni, and then he struck across the city, by narrow alleys and picturesque, out-of-the-way squares, and looked in at certain churches for which the guide-books recommend the afternoon light. Toward the end of the day he found his way back to the Piazza.

The great square was in holiday guise, in honour of some guest of the city. From the three famous flag-staffs in front of San Marco the colours of Italy were floating, rolling and unrolling upon the breeze, in gracefully undulating folds. Men were affixing additional gas-jets to the great candelabra, making ready for the evening illumination.

Just as Geof arrived upon the scene, a boy, with a paper of corn in each outstretched hand, came running down the length of the Piazza, followed by a fluttering swarm of pigeons, hundreds of them on the wing, in hot pursuit of the flying provender. The wings made a sound of multitudinous flapping that was singularly agreeable to the ear. Geof watched their laughing tormenter until he stopped for breath near the base of the campanile, and, in an instant, the pigeons were alighting on his arms and shoulders, and gathering in an eager, gurgling mass about his feet. The corn fell in a golden shower among them, and great was the jostling and gobbling and short was the duration of that golden shower.

Geof turned in at the open door of San Marco, and found his way to one of his favourite haunts, a certain dimly sumptuous side-chapel, where a hint of incense always hovers, and a whispered echo, as of long-past aves and salves, lingers on the air. Curious carvings are there, and bits of gleaming gold and silver, and, between the pillars, enchanting vistas open out into the transept, or down the mosaic-laid floor of the nave, polished smooth by the feet of generations of worshippers.

As he tarried there, the familiar sense of passive content which he had had of late stole upon him, and he was aware that a certain face and voice were again present with him. Why, he wondered, since it was of other things he had been thinking all day long,—why did that face and voice come to him? Was it merely a habit of mind, a trick of thought engendered by this idle, aimless Venetian life? Or was it a natural association of pure and lovely impressions?

And there, in the rich gloom of the great basilica, traced out and accentuated, as it were, by long bars of light that made a golden pathway down from the high western windows, a light entered into his mind, and he knew what his mother had divined long ago.

There was no shock of surprise in the discovery, only a deep, vitalising satisfaction. It seemed as natural, as inevitable, that he should love Pauline Beverly, as that he should love his life. He knew that he had loved her from the hour of their first meeting; it seemed to him that he had loved her all his life. He was glad that the realisation of it had come to him here in the beautiful church where he had first seen her face. Yet, as he stood looking down the marvellous perspectives of the great sanctuary, only dimly seen in the veiled and brooding light, he felt that the time was past for idle musings, that it behooved him to bestir himself, to get out into the daylight and begin to live.

He walked down the nave, and out into the gay Piazza, where he was not surprised to find that the aspect of things had changed. The flags were still rising and falling on the breeze, unfolding their radiant colours to the declining sun; the deep-throated bell of the campanile, which has sounded so many a summons to great deeds, was solemnly tolling the hour; a Franciscan brother stepped across the pavement, bent doubtless upon an errand of mercy. The young man read a new suggestion in each of these familiar sights and sounds. He turned and looked back at San Marco, at the outline of its clustering domes, at its carvings and mosaics, gleaming in full sunshine. In his exalted frame of mind, all these things seemed translated into large and significant meanings; patriotism, philanthropy, art,—his own art, architecture. He wondered what fine thing it would be vouchsafed him to do, to win the girl he loved.

Geoffry Daymond was by nature modest; the accident of worldly prosperity, of personal success, had not changed that; but he was equally by nature determined. Though he felt that something very tremendous would be required of him before he could enter into his kingdom, he never for an instant doubted that he should win. And so it happened, that, as he walked away across the Piazza, his step rang firmer and sharper than ever, and he held his head with the air of a man not easily daunted.

The wind did not go down with the sun, and, when evening came, Geof felt pretty sure that he should find Pauline in the Piazza. Accordingly, he went there in search of her; yet when he came upon her, sitting with May and the Colonel at a little round table in front of Florian's, he found very little to say for himself, in response to her friendly greeting. He joined them at their after-dinner coffee, but he said he had had his smoke, and when, presently, May expressed a laudable desire to go and see what the moon was about, he could do no less than offer to escort her.

"Won't you come, Miss Beverly?" he asked, but there was a constraint in his tone, which to Pauline's mind could have but one interpretation.

"Thank you, no," she said. "I will keep Uncle Dan company. We have not finished our coffee yet."

As they walked away, Uncle Dan looked after the two comely figures, with a newly acquired intelligence of observation. Presently he coughed discreetly, and asked, with a great effort at being merely conversational: "Did it ever strike you, Polly, that young Daymond was getting—er—attentive?"

Pauline, too, had followed them with a look of affectionate goodwill, which deepened to a very sweet and wistful smile, as she answered: "Yes, Uncle Dan; I think he likes May. How could he help it?"

"Now that's odd," the Colonel exclaimed. "Do you know, I had never thought of such a thing. It was the Signora that put it into my head."

"And you are glad, are you not, Uncle Dan? You would like to have it happen?"

"Yes, yes; of course,—for his mother's sake."

Pauline was still watching May and her companion. They had walked on, easily distinguishable in the crowd by reason of their height, and now they were standing a little apart, near the base of the campanile, in the full light of the illumination. May was talking, her skirts and ribbons fluttering in the breeze. Geof stood beside her listening, his head bent slightly, with a certain chivalry of bearing which was characteristic of him. The wind made no more impression upon his firm, close-reefed figure, than upon the mighty shaft of the great bell-tower.

"I wish it for his own sake, Uncle Dan," Pauline said. "I do not know any one I should be more willing to trust."

"You don't say so! Well, he's his mother's son, and that is half the battle."

"Yes," Pauline admitted; "that is the way I felt too, at first. But now I know him better it is for himself I like him. He is so strong, and steady, and—good evening, Mr. Kenwick!"

"Ah, good evening! I was sure that unless you had blown away in the course of the day, I should find you in these classic precincts. No, thanks; I've had my coffee, or something answering remotely to that description. What has become of your sister, Miss Beverly? She is getting as chary of herself as an Italian pronoun."

"She was here a moment ago," Pauline replied; "she has gone with Mr. Daymond to pay her respects to the moon."

"Really," said Kenwick, with a hint of annoyance in his manner, to conceal which he continued talking volubly. "Now, I should have thought you would have been the one to go moon-gazing. I should not have associated your sister with the pale and melancholy orb."

"You are very penetrating, Mr. Kenwick. But I don't think you would find the moon especially pale or melancholy this evening. It seemed in high good humour as we caught a glimpse of it on our way over here."

"Mr. Kenwick's penetration is too subtle for a plain man's comprehension," Uncle Dan observed. The persistency with which the Colonel be-mistered Kenwick was an unmistakable sign of disapproval.

"Colonel Steele, I am guiltless of subtlety," Kenwick declared in his most humorous manner; "I, too, am a plain man. But, if you will pardon the platitude, we all know that there is one beauty of the sun, and another beauty of the moon, and it would be pure affectation to ignore the fact."

"Apropos of the heavenly bodies,—when is the Urania to sail?" Pauline asked. She feared that Kenwick might go in pursuit of Geof and May, who had disappeared round the corner into the Piazzetta, and knowing that he liked to talk of his millionaire friends and their steam-yacht, she proceeded to draw him out upon the subject.

May and Geof, meanwhile, secure from interruption, thanks to Pauline's little strategy, were strolling in the Piazzetta, now facing the moon-lit, wind-swept lagoon, glittering beyond the pillars in a thousand broken reflections; now studying the figures of the four porphyry conspirators, engaged in their eternal task of mystification at the corner of San Marco. That all attempts should have failed to settle the character and social standing of those red-complexioned, rather dull-witted gentlemen, who clasped one another in such undecipherable opacity, was almost more than May could bear.

"Don't you think the archaeologists are rather stupid to have given up the riddle?" she asked, as she and her escort turned away and stepped out again into the Piazza.

"I dare say they are," Geof laughed, "but I'm sure that those flat-nosed fellows are much more entertaining than they would be if they had been labelled. Jove! What a sight that is!"

He had suddenly turned and looked up at the front of San Marco, gleaming in the brilliant illumination, like a shrine studded with precious stones. In the concentrated light of hundreds of gas-jets, each exquisite detail, each shining gold mosaic and lavish carving stood out with marvellous distinctness. The golden-winged angels that mount a mystic stairway above the great central arch, the bronze horses prancing so harmlessly over the main portal, even the quaint bas-relief of St. George, sitting, with such unimpeachable dignity, upon his camp-stool,—each and all were far more clearly enunciated than ever they are in the impartial splendour of daylight. Against the darkly luminous, unfathomable sky, the outline of the domes showed clear-cut and harmonious, and over yonder, above the great Palazzo, whose columns, for that evening at least, were surely carved in ivory and wrought with lace, a remote, half-grown moon looked wonderingly down.

"The moon is rather out of it, to-night," May observed, with the bright crispness that gave everything she said a flavour of originality. She had taken in the beauty of the scene with a completeness that would have astonished her companion; not a detail had been lost upon her. Yet it was clear that the total effect had not produced an overpowering impression. Geof, for his part, had been really stirred by it, but he had no intention of owning it.

"I don't think we need waste any sympathy on the moon," he replied. "It's usually cock of the walk here in Venice."

Having thus satisfactorily disposed of that subject, the young people turned their steps toward the clock-tower, Geof wondering resignedly why May made no motion to rejoin her family.

"I don't think I agree with you about mysteries," she said, presently; "I can't bear them. There's Nanni, now, the brother of our gondolier," she continued; and then, turning, and looking her companion full in the face: "Can you make him out?"

"What is it about him that puzzles you?" Geof asked, returning her glance with equal frankness.

"I don't know that I can explain it. He seems somehow—different. There is something wrong about him. I don't think he is happy."

"And what if he is not?" said Geof tentatively. "There need be no mystery about that. I don't suppose many men are really happy."

"You don't?" May exclaimed, in naive surprise.

Geof, to whom happiness had come to seem almost incredible, since he had got a glimpse of what it might be, was himself rather taken aback at his own utterance.

"I rather think," he said, laughing uneasily, "that I only meant that not many people are superlatively happy. As for commonplace, every-day happiness, I suppose that depends upon temperament. Perhaps the man is of a melancholy temperament."

"Perhaps that is it," May answered, thoughtfully; and with one accord they turned into the quiet paved space north of San Marco, where they stood, a few moments, looking out into the brilliant Piazza.

"I suppose it was very silly of me," May went on, laying her hand upon the haunches of a great stone lion that crouches there, polished smooth with the passage of centuries; "but I had a notion that he was unhappy because he had to live in exile, a mere servant, you know, in a dreadful hospital in Milan. And so I went and offered to give him a gondola, and he wouldn't accept it. He was thanking me the other day, at Torcello, when you came up. I suppose that was why he was so—melodramatic," and she laughed a little forced laugh, and looked Geoffry straight in the face again.

He saw her embarrassment, and understood that she had been setting him right, and that it had cost her an effort to refer to the matter. And so he said the kindest thing possible under the circumstances.

"If you mean his kissing your hand," he replied, with an air of discussing a matter of no consequence, "there's nothing melodramatic in that, at least when a gondolier does it. It is the custom of their class. Old Pietro kisses mine and makes me feel like an ancient doge."

He could see that she was relieved.

"I wonder where the others are," she said. "Let us go and look them up. I didn't feel like anything so fine as a doge," she added, lightly, as they came out into the square again. "I felt like a very interfering and foolish kind of person. I don't think I shall do anything so silly again."

"There is nothing silly about a generous action," Geof protested, looking with great kindness at the young girl, to whom the garment of humility was not unbecoming. "I rather think, though, that the man is better off than you imagine. At any rate, I'm very sure he is better off for the goodwill you have shown him."

Then, with a return of his previous solicitude, somewhat stimulated by a new realisation of the unusual beauty of this experimenter in mysteries, he added:

"These Italians are impressionable fellows. They sometimes feel things more than we cold-blooded Northerners appreciate."

"Do they?" said May, in her most matter-of-fact voice, giving Geof a glance of quick intelligence, and putting herself instantly on the defensive; "I should have said it was rather touch and go with their feelings. Ah! There's Mr. Kenwick, pretending he doesn't see us!"



XIV

A Summer's Day

May had been quite correct in her surmise that Kenwick was shamming, though this was merely based on general theories. Not only did he see her as she emerged with Geoffry Daymond from the comparative obscurity of the stone lion's neighbourhood, but he had been for some moments furtively watching them both, himself lost to view in the crowd about the band-stand. She would have been surprised indeed if she could have guessed the effect upon the sprightly cavalier of this new evidence of the confidential relations existing between herself and his friend; and indeed, when a moment later he met them, with a facetious sally, it is doubtful whether anything short of clairvoyance could have divined his true state of mind.

For Oliver Kenwick was experiencing something as closely resembling genuine feeling as was like to befall him in the course of his discreetly regulated career. He had played with fire once too often, and he had discovered, not without a slight accession of self-respect, that he was perceptibly scorched. He had supposed his interest in May Beverly to be purely impersonal; he had been mistaken. He had admired her in his character of connoisseur, as a man of the world he had found amusement and relaxation in her society. For May had the unique advantage of combining that degree of conventionality which is admissibly essential, with a refreshing lack of conventionality in non-essentials. She had repeatedly surprised and stimulated him, she had never yet offended his taste. And Kenwick was nothing if not fastidious. Her attraction had been undeniably heightened by his imagined discovery of Geoffry Daymond's interest in her; but quite independently of that artificial stimulus, she did exercise a strong fascination over him.

It was not in Oliver Kenwick's scheme of life to sacrifice his independence to any claim, even to that of his own unchastened fancies. He would not have known himself in any other role than that of free-lance, and life would indeed have lost its savour if he had been betrayed into the purchase of an indulgence of feeling at the cost of his self-approval. He possessed an ideal of himself which he prized and guarded; if the ideal was a questionable one, judged by ordinary standards, he was at least consistent in its cultivation. If, impelled by a spirit of rivalry, if, goaded to something approaching rashness by the contemplation of Geof's quiet, masterful way of taking possession of the things he coveted, he resolved to retaliate where retaliation was peculiarly palatable, this indicated no change whatever in his ultimate intentions.

For a day or two after the little episode of the stone lion Kenwick succeeded in cutting Geof out, as he termed it, very neatly, by the simple device of interesting May in a certain sketch which she undertook at his suggestion. The subject was a common enough one in Venice; a tranquil rio between ruinous walls,—here, a bit of quaint mediaeval sculpture,—there, a splash of verdure over the arch of a gateway,—a pointed church tower in remote perspective. The clever craftsman found no difficulty in inventing reasons why a similar combination of advantages was not to be found elsewhere. In his own mind he was perfectly well aware that he chose it because the proper point of view was only to be obtained by disembarking and planting the easels on a bit of quay that stopped abruptly in front of a deserted house. Here, in this isolated position, the two painted together for three successive afternoons, and Kenwick, by dint of a judicious combination of encouragement and criticism, which he, as a practised artist had always at command, succeeded in arousing in the young girl an enthusiasm for the work, and an appreciation of his own mastery of his craft, which could not but be gratifying and stimulating to him. In truth she had never liked him so well, and, having on her part nothing to conceal, she was as outspoken in her gratitude as in all things else.

At the end of the third afternoon May had completed the best sketch she had ever done. Just as she was putting the finishing stroke to it, a gondola went gliding by, an old and shabby one, and in the tall figure at the stern she recognised Nanni. An indefinable shadow crept over the bright elation of a moment previous, and she stopped painting.

"That old tub of your Nanni's is about ready for the crematory," Kenwick observed, as he too began putting up his traps.

"The crematory?" she repeated, absently.

"Yes; when they are fairly on their last legs the gondolas are burnt in the glass-factories."

May watched the water-logged craft as it vanished under a distant bridge.

"I like that idea about the gondolas," she remarked, a few minutes later, as Pauline and Uncle Dan, who had been taking a turn in the Giudecca, came to pick them up. "The poor old things must be glad to breathe their dying breath into those exquisite flasks and vases."

"What's that about dying breaths?" Uncle Dan demanded, as he handed his niece into the gondola. "Yes; it is a happy fate to die in a good cause," he admitted, when the matter was explained to him,—and he wondered whether it could possibly be Kenwick who had put the child in a sentimental mood.

"But a happier fate to serve a good cause and live," Kenwick maintained; adding, lightly: "Miss May tells me I have taught her something, and I desire to live long to remember it."

"You probably will," the Colonel rejoined, curtly.

"You were wishing the other day for a short life and a merry one," Pauline observed, as the Colonel turned to speak to Vittorio.

"Perhaps things have changed since then," Kenwick replied, in a low voice, with so much seriousness and significance that May gave him a quick, amused look, while Pauline experienced an unreasonable resentment. What business had a stranger like Kenwick to be talking to them in riddles?

And yet, the next day, when the whole party took the trip by steamer, the long length of the lagoon to Chioggia, Pauline was shocked to find herself almost resigned to the pretensions of the stranger as exhibited toward May.

The morning was a glorious one, cooler and clearer than the usual Venice June. Across the lagoon to the west, the Euganean hills stood out, sharp-cut in their pointed outlines as if carved in stone,—as indeed they doubtless are,—while to the northward, looking back across the domes and spires of the receding city, could be seen the distant snow-capped range of the Tyrolese Alps, so gracious in its undulating curves, as to make an impression almost of warmth and tenderness.



From the start, Kenwick had succeeded in engaging May's attention, having resort to the same means which had already proved efficacious. At his suggestion they had each brought a sketchbook, and, during the trip of several hours, they jotted down desultory notes of the passing scene. Here, a boat laden with market produce, its gay, striped sail bulging to the breeze; there, the towers of Malamocco and Poveglia, with the pretty vista of the channel between. Again, a rude shrine erected on piles, or a group of boys diving off a tumble-down wharf in the distance. It was very delightful, this monopoly of the young girl's attention. The eager interest with which she listened to his suggestions, the quick intelligence with which she acted upon them.

And Pauline, sitting with Geof a little apart from the others, tried in vain to take herself to task for leaving Kenwick so entirely to his own devices. She supposed she understood her sister too well to have any anxiety on her account. The ready interest of May's manner was precisely of the same sort as that with which she had listened to Nanni's instructions in rowing, or to Vittorio's lessons in the Italian tongue. Pauline remembered how, only the other day, Vittorio had made mention of a piccola bestia with whose name they were not familiar, and she smiled, as she recalled May's triumph when, at last, after a laboured description of its leading characteristics, it had dawned upon her that the small beast with a smooth coat, a pointed nose, a long tail, and—yes, that told the story!—four legs, was a mouse!

Nevertheless, though her conscience was easy with regard to her sister, Pauline told herself, severely, that Geof was being very hardly used, and that she, by her supineness, was as much to blame as Kenwick for the artist's unwarrantable behaviour. To be sure, Geof betrayed no dissatisfaction with the existing arrangement; he was far too well-bred for that,—and really, how fine he was, in this as in everything! One would have thought that he was deeply interested in telling her about the great sea-wall in which nature and man have gone into partnership, and upon the preservation of which depends the very existence of Venice. There it stretched for miles, the long, narrow strip of sand and masonry, and as the steamer plied the waters of the lagoon, hour after hour, in the bright June morning, they could hear the tread of the breakers on the beach outside, and realise something of the mighty forces that must be resisted in time of winter storms.

"That thing almost made an engineer of me," Geof observed.

"I don't wonder," said Pauline, with ready comprehension; "it appeals to one immensely," and Geof knew that she was in sympathy with him, that not a word he had said, not a word he had left unsaid, had been lost upon her.

"When I am particularly out of conceit with myself," he continued,—and he liked to remember that there was no one else to whom he would have talked in this strain,—"I get to thinking that perhaps it was a mistake not to stick to that first notion. It's a fine thing to work for defence."

"Yes," said Pauline, after the little pause he knew so well, and which he had learned not to break in upon,—"but,—isn't it better still to build for shelter?"

The thoughtful words, fraught with so much delicate meaning, touched him with a sense as of home and of sweet human happiness; the friendly eyes, turned questioningly to his, thrilled him with a yet deeper feeling. A look came into his face which had surely never been seen there before, but he only said, in his deep, honest voice: "You have given a new grace to my bricks and mortar."

Then Pauline, usually so modest and so self-contained, was conscious of a reprehensible feeling of exultation, and, by a singular association of ideas, she found herself constrained to remember what Uncle Dan had said to her the other evening. She glanced at him, chatting, in pleasant good-fellowship, with the Signora, and she was glad to think that they too were to be made happy by this beautiful and wonderful thing which all agreed was in the air. And at this point in her meditations Pauline became possessed of such an irresistible, and certainly most illogical desire to give a little sob, that she rose abruptly to her feet, and went to look at her sister's sketches.

They were nearing the end of their voyage, and, a few minutes later, they had made the landing, and were strolling through the ancient town in search of luncheon. They found a little inn at the edge of the water, where they partook of omelette and native wine, served in a pretty loggia; after which they sauntered about the place, purchasing a piece of lace of one and another picturesque old hag, and picking up some quaint bits of pottery in a dingy shop under the arcades. Later, having done their duty by the sights, they chartered a big boat, propelled by two strapping oarsmen and a couple of very splendid sails, and voyaged peacefully down a sleepy canal, and out across a bit of quiet lagoon to the strip of beach known as Sotto Marina. There, on the shore, they came upon a solitary child in a red petticoat, with a small purple shawl crossed over her funny little person. She was apparently absorbed in watching the tiny wavelets at her feet, scarcely bestowing a glance upon the numberless brilliant sails, scattered like a field of Roman anemones upon the deep green of the sea.

As the strangers descended upon her, the little recluse payed them the tribute of a fascinated stare, and they, in return, did their best to instill into her mind the belief that they were creatures of another and a brighter sphere. Uncle Dan presented her with a peppermint lozenge, Mrs. Daymond held her broad, lace-trimmed parasol over the small black head, while May gave her a glimpse of the world through each end of her opera-glass. The child was a self-contained little person, and betrayed no special elation over these blandishments. When the time for parting came, Kenwick, with much ceremony, presented her with a bright piece of nickel, as a ricordo of the visit. She was something of a beauty, in her small childish way, and he petitioned for a kiss in return. This the little maid politely but firmly refused; her favours were evidently not for sale.

"If you won't give me one," he said, trying not to look abashed at the rebuff, "go and kiss the lady you love best."

They were all standing about in the bright sunshine, deriving no little entertainment from Kenwick's discomfiture. The child took the proposition very seriously; but, after a moment's deliberation, she walked straight up to Pauline and lifted a small, pursed-up mouth to her.

"If that's not just Pauline's luck!" May exclaimed, as her sister stooped to receive the proffered salutation. "And she is the only one of us all who hasn't paid the little wretch the slightest attention!"

"Oh, yes, she has," Geof protested, in perfect good faith. "She has been smiling at her!" Upon which everybody laughed, and no one more heartily than Geof, at the way his remark had turned out.

Kenwick's merriment, however, was not quite sincere. A vague mistrust had crept over him and was working within him, subtly and surely, as the afternoon wore on. Had he been mistaken about Geof? The thought was too distasteful to be seriously entertained, and he rejected it summarily. Yet it had not been without effect. His vanity had taken alarm, and the instinct of self-preservation was roused in his mind.

Yes, he thought to himself, half-an-hour later, as they sailed before a light wind under the gay Chioggia canvas, out toward the open sea,—yes, he had been venturing upon deep waters, and it was time to come about. It was, of course, sheer nonsense to suppose that Geof's taking May's defection so easily was an indication of any real indifference on his part. He was only too plaguey sure of himself to feel any anxiety. Geof had always had an irritating way of taking things for granted; but, when it came to the point, no one with eyes in his head could be really indifferent to that superb young creature. Kenwick glanced at the slender figure perched at the extreme prow of the boat, and straightway he experienced an awkward wrench somewhere in the neighbourhood of that organ to which is attributed so large a share in our emotional embarrassments. And it was at this juncture that Kenwick had recourse to a curious befooling of himself in which long practice had made him an adept.

A sail was just passing, a deep red one, bearing the design of globe and cross in crude outline of uncompromising black. As he regarded, absently, that primitive religious symbol, there awoke within him a certain phantom conscience, which was wont to play an effective part in his elaborate process of self-mystification. To-day this facile monitor hinted that if Geof did feel so sure of himself, it would hardly be the part of a friend to press his own advantage too far. Geof was a good fellow; he really had a great opinion of Oliver Kenwick's talent, and did not hesitate to say so on occasion. It would never do to play him any unhandsome tricks. The more unsuspicious he was, the more it behooved Kenwick to guard his interests. Yes; he would withdraw in Geof's favour, he would be hanged if he wouldn't!

And so it came about that by the time they were returning northward again in the Venice steamer, Kenwick had worked himself up to a really lofty pitch of self-sacrifice. He would go off in the Stickneys' yacht with them to-morrow, by Jove he would! Luckily for him, he had left the invitation open, not from any intention of accepting it, but simply because he had never in his life burnt a bridge. A good principle that; he would always stick to it.

As the lovely sunset light grew and deepened, Venice came up like a vision out of the sea. The cloudless sky was tinged with yellow, and the water rippled in molten gold up to the very side of the boat. He turned to May, who chanced to be standing beside him, looking, with level gaze, straight into the serene heart of the sky. She had certainly a softer, gentler look than she used to wear. Would it deepen as he spoke?

"This is a charming ending to my visit here," he said, quietly.

"Ending?" May exclaimed, turning upon him that bright, straightforward look with which she met every statement of fact. "Ending? Why, you are not going away?"

"Yes; I am off with the Stickneys early to-morrow morning."

"In the Urania? You are in luck! But why didn't you tell us before?"

"I couldn't bear to speak of it," he averred, and at the moment he almost believed he was speaking the truth. "It costs me too much to go away."

"Well, I don't wonder," May declared; "there's nothing like Venice. Still, you live abroad half the time, and can come here whenever you please."

"Ah, Miss May!" he exclaimed, and this time he was absolutely sincere. "Venice will never be the same to me again."

She could not altogether misunderstand his meaning, but it was impossible to take him very seriously, and, prompted by a not too lively curiosity, she asked: "Then why do you go?"

"Because it would be wrong for me to stay," he replied, with a subdued, almost convincing emphasis.

"Then of course you must go," she returned, with the youthful decision that rarely failed her; adding, consolingly, as her eyes wandered back to the sunset: "And I've no doubt you will enjoy the Urania quite as much as Venice."



XV

June Roses

As Kenwick stood, the next morning, on the deck of the beautiful pleasure-boat for whose splendours he had betrayed so lively an appreciation, he looked back across the widening distance with a sense of regret more poignant than he was at all prepared to deal with. Even when they were actually weighing anchor, he found himself considering the feasibility of a retreat, and now, as the screw turned, and the water, on whose tranquil bosom he had floated so peacefully, was churned into a seething froth, a sickening misgiving seized him. Had he paid too high a price to preserve the integrity of his scheme of life?—or rather,—he hastened to correct himself,—had he made too great a sacrifice to the claims of friendship? That was the more consoling view to take. He had done the handsome thing and he would not flinch,—especially since he could not now do so without making himself ridiculous.

Kenwick refrained from asking himself why he should consider Daymond's claim paramount to his own; he was not given to searching analysis of his own motives. The man who values his illusions soon learns the best way of preserving them, and the illusion in question was doubly valuable, since it bade fair, under judicious tending, to invest the mythical Oliver Kenwick, already so dear to his imagination, with a nimbus of romantic devotion most agreeable to contemplate.

His fellow-passengers were a talkative and somewhat egotistical company, and he was left more completely to himself, for the first few moments than, on ordinary occasions, he would have found quite to his mind. No one was likely to note the persistency with which his glance returned to one of the high, stone balconies of the Hotel Venezia.

There was one chance in ten that a certain tall, girlish figure might appear there, as it had so often done in the carelessly fleeting days that were already past and gone; there was one chance in twenty that it might appear for his sake, that a fluttering white handkerchief might assure him of certain pleasant things. He strained his eyes to the last possible moment, in the hope of such a sight; but he was too mindful of appearances even in the stress and strain of painful emotion, to take out his opera-glass and turn it upon that point. He did, however, so far forget himself, as to sigh profoundly, and without that guarded look to right and left, which should always precede such an indulgence. That, in itself, was a very marked concession to feeling.

There remained to Kenwick one consolation besides that of having behaved handsomely to Daymond: he had left a fragrant, if not a lasting, memory behind him. Would she not be pleased, would she not be touched, when, presently, his roses were brought to her? She was to find them when she came up from breakfast; his directions to the porter on that head had been very explicit. And would not the roses, beautiful in themselves, gain a telling significance, by reason of the message they bore? On the reverse side of his card he had written, in his small, clear hand, the words:

"All June I bound the rose in sheaves."

The line seemed to him extremely well chosen; it could hardly fail to stimulate the imagination. He, himself, felt its haunting quality, and he had repeated it, under his breath, as he followed the gardener about, urging him to cull his choicest roses.

As he mused upon these things, the yacht, rounding Santa Elena, steamed away to the Porto del Lido, and he suddenly became aware that Miss Hortense Stickney's inquisitive eyes were fixed upon him. He was instantly on his guard.

"Well, that's the last of Venice," he exclaimed, "and I'm glad of it. One gets tired of dawdling about on a magnified frog-pond. One begins to long for the open sea." Miss Stickney looked gratified, and Kenwick felt himself once more in his element.

May Beverly, meanwhile, had been frankly delighted with the roses. So enchanting did she find them, indeed, that she had merely glanced at the card, and had tossed it into the waste-paper basket without looking at the reverse side.

"Just think of it, Pauline!" she had cried; "he must have been way over to the Giudecca this very morning to get them. I wonder if the Urania has sailed yet."

"Nine o'clock was the hour, was it not?" Pauline asked, taking up one of the roses and holding it to her face. "It must be after that."

"Yes, it's too late," said May, as she stepped out upon the balcony; "she's half-way to the Public Gardens. But I'm going to wave, all the same."

And so it chanced, by the perversity of fate, that if Kenwick had but risked using his opera-glass, he would not have looked in vain.

May watched the yacht until it disappeared from sight,—for she had not before seen the graceful craft in motion,—and then she returned to the contemplation of her roses. As she lifted them, one by one, and arranged them deftly in a broad-mouthed Chioggia jug, she was moved to exclaim: "I do think that was really kind of him! Do you know, Pauline, I'm afraid we didn't like him half enough."

It was but a passing compunction, however, and the roses themselves were not destined to receive the attention which their beauty fairly entitled them to. It did not seem quite feasible to take them to San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, and even had they gone, they would soon have been forgotten in the delights which that modest little sanctuary offers. The sunshine of four hundred years ago that glows in mellow warmth upon Carpaccio's canvases, the vigour and the piety and the fun of that "wayward patchwork," are more vital and more absorbing than any mortal roses.

And if, in the morning, Kenwick's interests had been subordinated to Art, Nature proved no less exacting in the afternoon. For then it was that the red banner and the blue pursued together yet unexplored paths of the northern lagoon, returning whence, the city was seen in a new perspective, the great campanile in particular, taking up a position so contrary to all precedent, that May was half inclined to believe that it actually did "promenade," as Vittorio so picturesquely expressed it.

The evening again was a glorious one, and again the roses were left behind. When the Colonel and his Pollys appeared at the steps of the Venezia, Vittorio greeted them with a radiant "bellissimo!" The moon was all but full and not a breath of air stirred the wide reaches of the lagoon, visible beyond San Giorgio. One of the musicians' barges was drawn up in front of the hotel; the first song was in progress, and gondolas from the upper canal were approaching, with soft dip of oar, and gleaming tiny lights.

The singer was a woman. She was standing in the middle of the boat, one hand clinging, as if for support, to the shoulder of a violinist. The voice was high and strained; painfully strained, it seemed, to Pauline's quick perception.

"How tired that woman's voice is!" she exclaimed. "Do let us give them something!"

Vittorio brought the gondola close alongside the barge, but before Pauline could make her offering, the strained voice broke, the figure swayed heavily to one side, and the woman sank to the floor, supported in the arms of one of the men. The big boat instantly moved away, and in another moment, the swinging paper lanterns, illumining but faintly the anxious group of musicians, had disappeared down a side canal.

The other gondolas had not yet come up, and Vittorio, without waiting for orders, rowed after the retreating barge, which he overtook with a few vigorous strokes of the oar. The men had stopped rowing, and someone was calling for a gondola. The Colonel's boat was promptly placed at their service.

The woman had already recovered consciousness, and was murmuring pitifully: "A casa, a casa!" Her husband helped her aboard the gondola, where Pauline took compassionate possession of her, ministering to her in gentle, discerning wise. May, usually so fertile in resource, found nothing to offer but her vinaigrette, which the patient did not take kindly to; while Uncle Dan, with misguided zeal, administered a severe rebuke to the unhappy husband, for allowing his wife to sing, when she was so manifestly unequal to the effort.

"Ah, Signore," the man replied, in a tone of dull discouragement, "you do not know poverty!" Whereupon the Colonel admitted that it was vero, and, becoming very penitent indeed, began grubbing about his person in search of paper money, and calling himself names for having left his wallet in the pocket of his other coat.

Meanwhile, Vittorio was rowing them swiftly down narrow canals with many windings, where the water flowed black in the shadow, and gleamed weirdly in the light of a chance gas-lamp. The moon was not yet high enough to look down between those close-ranged walls, but, above them, the sky stretched, a luminous, deep blue ribbon, upon which only the brighter stars could hold their own.

News of the mishap had outstripped the gondola. Two turns of an alley-way, a couple of bridges, a dash across a square, and another alley-way, had brought a messenger to the house, while the gondola was still gliding on its tortuous way. A group of women awaited their arrival.

"I wish we might have gone in, to see how they live," May said, regretfully, as they pushed off, leaving the woman in the hands of her friends.

"It's probably a very poor way of living," Uncle Dan surmised. "The kind that makes a man feel like a scoundrel the next time he smokes a good cigar."

"Why, you're a regular socialist, Uncle Dan," cried May. "I didn't know that!"

"Neither did I, Polly," the Colonel replied, pulling viciously at his moustache. "I don't so much mind being better off than other folks," he added, thoughtfully; "but somehow, you do hate to have other folks worse off than you!"

They were retracing their way down one of the narrowest and darkest canals, when the warning cry,—"premi-o!"—echoing round an unsuspected corner told them of an approaching gondola.

"Ecco, mio fratello!" Vittorio exclaimed, answering, then, with his own sonorous call; and an instant later, the prow of his brother's gondola came stealing out of the shadow.

As the boats passed one another, Vittorio said a few words in dialect, which were quite unintelligible to the foreigners. Yet May felt sure that Nanni was being sent to the house they had just left.

"Do you and Nanni know the singer?" she asked, as they came out into the full moonlight, above the Rialto bridge.

"Si, Signorina," the gondolier replied, with prompt exactitude; "her sister's brother-in-law was the nephew of our grandmother's niece by marriage."

"Oh!" May gasped, rendered, for once, inarticulate, by this surprising exhibition of genealogic lore.

They were late in coming in that evening, and, as the girls opened their chamber door, the perfume of the roses wafted to them conveyed a delicate hint of unmerited neglect.

"Poor things!" said Pauline; "it was a shame to leave them to themselves all day long, doing nobody any good!"

"I know it," May admitted; "it was a shame; but I didn't want to wear them, in all this heat, and I couldn't very well sit and tend them, all day! I know what we will do," she added, with quick decision; "we will take them round to the poor singer in the morning. Perhaps they may give her pleasure."

"I wonder how Mr. Kenwick would like that," queried Pauline, who, in spite of an inborn loyalty to the absent, was not ill-pleased with the suggestion.

"I don't believe he would mind," said May, as she plunged the beautiful things up to their necks in the water-pitcher; "he has probably forgotten, by this time, that he ever sent them."

And Kenwick, stretched upon the deck of the Urania in the moonlight, after the others had gone below, was, at that very moment, murmuring softly to himself:

"All June I bound the rose in sheaves."



XVI

A Surrender

May Beverly was not given to the study of her own countenance. She knew, of course, that it was a creditable production of Nature, that she had good features and pretty colouring and that her fellow-creatures, as a rule, seemed to like her looks. Beauty had not stolen upon her unawares as the case is with so many young girls. She had always been pretty, with the unquestioned, outspoken prettiness of a graceful animal or a bright-hued flower. She took it for granted, as she did those other gifts, of health and youth, and, on the whole, she gave it very little thought.

It was therefore the more remarkable that she should have just been spending a good half-hour before the looking-glass. She had the room to herself this afternoon, for Pauline had gone again to Torcello, this time with a party of old friends who had recently made their appearance in Venice, and whose claims upon her sister May was somewhat inclined to question. To-day, however, their exactions fell in most opportunely with a certain plan of her own, which had come to her in the shape of a great inspiration. The Torcello party had started directly after luncheon and were to return by moonlight, and, Pauline being thus satisfactorily disposed of, there remained but one lion in the path, in the person, namely, of Uncle Dan.

As May stood before the dressing-table, upon which were billows of bright silk handkerchiefs, each of which had in turn suffered rejection at her hands, she was arranging a large fichu of Spanish lace upon her head in such fashion as completely to cover her pretty hair. She tilted her head first at one angle and then at another, scowling fiercely in her effort to decide how great a change had been wrought in her appearance. Whether owing to the presence of the scowl, or to the absence of the yellow top-knot, the countenance certainly had a very unfamiliar look, and, well pleased with the effect, she turned away and stepped out upon the balcony.

The day was very warm, not a breath of air found its way under the broad, striped awning that cast its grateful shadow upon the balcony; the very water gleamed hot and desert, and the cooing of the Salute doves had the gurgling, simmering sound of a great tea-kettle. May leaned her arms upon the cushions of the stone balustrade and looked down and off toward San Giorgio. How beautiful it was, even at high noon, and how glorious it would be to-night, when the full moon came sailing up into the twilight sky, and the cool, sweet breath of evening was wafted over the waters! What an evening it would be! One to remember all her life, all that long, every-day kind of life that stretched so unendingly on into the future.

They had gone that morning, she and Pauline, to carry the roses to the Signora Canti. They had found the poor singer weak and ill and disheartened. The doctor had told her she must not sing for some days yet,—surely not this evening,—and to-night was full moon, when the tourists throng the Grand Canal, and before another full moon should come the heat would have driven the pleasure-seekers away. "They fear the heat, the forestieri!"

There was no one to take her place, the woman said. Just the chorus singing would attract but few listeners; the other serenaders would get all the people. This was the harvest time and it must be wasted. Ah! The roses were molto belle, bellissime, Signorina,—but it was clear that they offered little consolation for real troubles.

And, sitting there in the tiny room where the shutters were close drawn against the morning sun,—which nevertheless pierced through a crack and lit up, with one straight beam, the pitiful, drawn face of the poor cantatrice, her great inspiration came to May. She had a voice and she could sing. Why should she not sing for this poor woman, sing in the moonlight and gather the gondolas about her? Oh, there would be no lack of a soul in her singing, out there in the moonlight. Signor Firenzo would not have lectured and entreated her in vain. She knew now what he meant. She had been longing to sing, many an evening on the starlit lagoons, and she had not dared.

A group of little children had come into their mother's room, and were huddling shyly in a corner, gazing wide-eyed and silent, at the strange ladies and the gorgeous roses, the like of which had never before found their way there. May hardly noticed the children, so preoccupied was she with her own thoughts, but the sight of them gave her sister courage. As they rose to go, Pauline drew money from her pocket, and, bending over the woman, she said, very gently: "Signora, we have never half thanked you for your singing. May we do so now?"

The woman's eyes shone, and a pretty colour went up the pale, gaunt cheek.

"Ah!" she said. "You have listened to my singing, and with pleasure? And it is truly for my singing that you give me this, and not because you are sorry for me?"

And Pauline, remembering how often the tired voice, strained to a high, uncertain pitch, sounding across the water like a cry for succour, had filled her with compassion, could say with truth; "Signora, your singing has touched our hearts."

As May stood upon the balcony, gazing far out over the lagoon, her young eyes undazzled by the intense mid-day light, she thought how sweet it would be to see again that look of grateful pleasure upon the worn face. Ah, she would sing! How she would sing! She would sing the heart into those people in the gondolas; she would sing the money out of their purses! The gondolas should gather about her till the water was black with them. She would sing till the night rang with the sound of her voice! A sense of power had come into her, which she had never felt before. She should take command of those musicians, she should take command of that mysterious, floating audience. No one would know her; she should not know herself. For one splendid hour she should be set free of herself.

It was the first time in her life that May Beverly had found herself mastered by an enthusiasm. The consciousness of it suddenly seized her and tilled her with a curious misgiving. She knelt down upon the floor of the balcony, and, leaning her forehead against the cushion of the balustrade, she tried to collect her thoughts, to regain her balance.

She wondered if she were very foolish, if it were a mere outbreak of shallow vanity that ought to be suppressed. She hoped not. Of course this thing that she wanted to do was shockingly unconventional. Anywhere else, under any other circumstances, it would be out of character; but here in Venice everything was different. She tried to shut out the magic city from her thoughts,—to return to a perfectly normal state of mind.

The hour was very still, even the doves had fallen silent. For a few seconds, as she knelt with covered eyes in her high balcony, only one sound reached her ears; but that was the dip of an oar, the very heart-beat of Venice. It had the intimate, penetrating power of a whispered incantation; it touched and quickened the imagination more than peal of bells or chant of marching priests. And as she knelt and listened the young girl felt a scorn of the past and its limitations and its trivial satisfactions—its petty reference of everything to a small, personal standard. The great outer world was knocking at the door of her heart, the world of suffering, and the world of joy, the world of romance, and the world of real human experience.

She would sing to-night; she would let her own personality go, and be just a human creature doing a daring, inspiring thing for the sake of another human creature who was in need. With a sense of exultant self-surrender she lifted her face and looked up at the Salute. Its domes and pinnacles had been hidden by the low-hanging awning, but now, with her eyes on a level with the balustrade, she could see the lovely temple in all its gracious outlines.

"And I remember I used to wonder whether I liked it," she thought to herself, with a singular feeling, as if she had been recalling a past state of existence.

She rose to her feet and stepped inside. A pile of sheet music lay upon the table, and she stood a few minutes beside it, turning over the leaves and humming softly to herself. There was a rap at the door, and Uncle Dan appeared.

At once her mood had changed. She was Polly, and here was Uncle Dan, to be cajoled and entreated and vanquished.

"Oh, Uncle Dan!" she cried, "I thought you never were coming! I want to talk to you."

"Why, Polly!" he exclaimed, "what are you up to? You look like a fright in that thing!"

"Which means, you never would have known me," Polly declared mischievously. "That's just what I wanted. Now come in like a dear and let me talk to you. No, sit in this chair,—it's much more comfortable. Have you had your cigar?"

"Of course I have. It's nearly an hour since luncheon."

"Don't you want another?"

"Polly! What are you driving at?"

"I only wanted to make you perfectly comfortable, so that you would enjoy having a little chat with me."

She had seated herself in a low chair opposite him, where she could look straight into his eyes. She pulled off the black lace and proceeded to fold it with great care and precision. There was a look in her face, calculated to make the old soldier call out all his reserves.

"Well, out with it, Polly!" he cried.

"It's about that poor singer, Uncle Dan; the woman we took home last night. You remember?"

"Remember? I'm not losing my faculties, Polly!"

"Yes; of course you remember! What was I thinking of? Well, you know we went to see her this morning, and took her those roses of Mr. Kenwick's. Uncle Dan,—they didn't seem to meet the case!" and May looked at her victim with the gravity of a secretary of the metropolitan board of charities.

"That was rather hard on those particular roses," Uncle Dan observed, with a certain grim satisfaction.

"Yes, I think it was. But,—Uncle Dan, I've thought of something much better than roses. I'm going to sing for her!"

"Will that meet the case?" asked the Colonel, doubtfully. He too had been wondering what could be done for the niece by marriage of Vittorio's grandmother's—what did he say she was?

"Yes; for you see I shall be a novelty, and I sing better than she does, and we shall take a lot of money."

"A lot of money, for singing to that woman? Polly, what are you talking about?"

And then it was that Polly took the field, and marshalled all her arguments, and did such valiant battle to the Colonel's dearest prejudices and most cherished theories, that he was fairly bewildered and demoralised.

She knew she could do it, she knew she could sing, and singing always sounded lovely on the water. She was in splendid voice,—she had been practising pianissimo, and it went like a charm. Not a soul would know her. She was going to wear a plain black skirt and a sulphur shawl,—she had always meant to buy a sulphur shawl,—and a lot of beads round her neck. She was going to twist some black stuff about her hair, and then pin the Spanish lace on in the most artistic and Italian manner.

"And you know, Uncle Dan, my hair is the most noticeable thing about me. When that's covered up I am quite another person. And then the light will be very dim, and so many queer colours from the swinging lanterns that I shan't have the vestige of a complexion left!"

"But the promiscuous audience, the rough company on the barge!" the Colonel urged, struggling but feebly against a premonition of defeat. Already the old soldier quailed miserably before the enemy.

"They are not a rough company," Polly declared. "I asked Vittorio all about it. He knows nearly all the men, and he says they are galant' uomini. Signor Canti will be there, and he will take beautiful care of me. Signora Canti is to have all the proceeds beyond a certain sum that the others will agree upon."

"The thing seems pretty well settled between you and your gallant hominies," growled Uncle Dan, trying to be severe.

"No; it's all settled in my own mind, but I haven't breathed a word of it to anybody but you. And of course you have got to say yes, before I shall take any steps!"

Superficially regarded, this seemed like a concession; but the Colonel knew better. "You have got to say yes!" To his ears it sounded like the fiat of inexorable fate, and he only gazed, with a look of comical deprecation at the youthful orator who was gesticulating with the lace fichu, to the destruction of its carefully laid folds.

"Polly, your father would not listen to such a thing for a moment," he jerked out, getting very red in the face.

"But he won't have to; he never need know a word about it!" Alas, that was a line of reasoning that struck a responsive chord.

"But Polly would never consent."

"That's the beauty of it! She's safely out of the way."

"And Mrs. Daymond,—she would be shocked, I am sure," and his fine colour faded with consternation.

"Not if she never knows it!"

"But I shall know it," he protested, faintly. Then, gathering himself together for a last effort:

"No, Polly, I can never consent. Never! You understand! It's useless to talk about it!" and the Colonel got upon his feet and stepped out upon the balcony, breathing fire and slaughter to all revolutionary schemes. And then Polly knew that she had won the day. When Uncle Dan grew emphatic and peremptory it was a sure sign that he was weakening.

She followed him out upon the balcony, and slipped her hand within his arm.

"O, Uncle Dan," she said, in her most insinuating tone. "You haven't the least idea how I shall sing! You never heard anything so fine as it will be. I shall sing, so that all the gondolas will come gliding up to listen. And there will be the moon sailing up the sky, and the world will be so big and so dark that I can let my voice out without a thought of myself, and—O Uncle Dan! say yes!"

Then a slow, intense flush mounted in the sun-burnt cheek, while a light kindled in the eyes, set deep within the bushy eye-brows. And Uncle Dan looked into the ardent face beside him, and, before he could stop himself, he had exclaimed, half under his breath:

"Gad, Polly! But I should like to hear you!"



XVII

The Serenata

From the moment when the Colonel made his fatal admission, his cause was lost and he knew it. He was too good a soldier to fight for the sake of fighting, but he was not a little shocked at the alacrity with which he went over to the enemy.

Yet the step was not an unprecedented one. It was not for nothing that he had been for years the willing slave of his Pollys, that his whole training as uncle had tended to cultivate in him the grace of obedience. "As the twig is bent the tree inclines," and he had been the merest twig of an uncle, if not in years, at least in experience, when he had yielded to the sunny persuasiveness of that first faint glimmering of a smile in the baby face of the original Polly. His subjugation, moreover, having hitherto proved beneficial in its results, he was the more excusable, to-day, for letting himself be swept along by the impetus of his tyrant's will.

There was little time for reflection; indeed, as it was, a young person of less executive ability than May could hardly have accomplished what she brought to pass in the few hours at her disposal. She flew from the Venezia to the Signora Canti for the first unfolding of her plan, from the almost speechless Signora to the Merceria in search of the sulphur shawl, and thence to the Signora Canti again, attended all the while by Uncle Dan, whose cane struck sharply on the pavement of the narrow, reverberating alley-ways. The business was all transacted on foot, that even Vittorio might be kept in ignorance of the great secret. Through the good offices of the Signor Canti the barge musicians were interviewed, and the details of the undertaking arranged. Even a small rehearsal was brought about in the somewhat restricted quarters of the Canti apartment, and great was May's rejoicing, to find how many of her favourite songs were well known to the quartette of accompanists.

As the Colonel looked back upon the afternoon, he had a bewildered sense of having taken part in a general engagement, very brilliant in character, but with the conduct of which he, as private, had had no concern whatever. And now it was evening, and he was floating in the gondola out on the broad basin of St. Mark's, awaiting, with no little trepidation, the progress of events.

No, his nieces would not be with him, he had told Vittorio. One was gone to Torcello, and the other had an engagement for the evening,—which Vittorio thought peccato. The padrone proposed to float about in the moonlight for a while, and listen to the music, and this, at least, was benissimo and commanded the gondolier's warmest approval.

Scarcely had Vittorio been thus pacified than the barge with its dangling lanterns, beneath which the Colonel had seen his Polly safely ensconced but a few minutes since, came floating out from a narrow canal, and glided slowly along the Riva, past the Royal Gardens and the Piazzetta, to the outermost of the great hotels. Sitting among the "gallant hominies" was a figure in a sulphur shawl, with a cloud of Spanish lace about the head, so ingeniously disposed that the features were somewhat hidden, yet apparently with no intention of covering the face.

"That looks like the Canti barge, Vittorio," the Colonel remarked. "Let us go nearer and find out who is to do the singing. Do you know the woman?"

"No, Signore. It is a stranger," Vittorio declared. "It is not a Venetian."

"What makes you think so?"

"I do not know her face."

The sunset glow had quite faded from the sky and the great disk of the moon hung like a luminous shield over beyond San Giorgio. Its wonderful light, liquid and silvery as the water of the lagoons, flooded their wide reaches, and touched with a soft splendour each sculptured facade and arching bridge of the Riva, and the masts and hulls and loose-reefed sails of a group of fishing boats lying close alongside the quay. Far up the canal, a tenor voice could be heard, strong and melodious, and stray gondolas were tending toward it.

Suddenly, more than one oar was stayed, and more than one face was turned toward the Canti barge. The music had begun, with a familiar Neapolitan melody, in which all the voices and instruments took part. But high above them all rose a clear soprano, only the sweeter and the richer for the dull rhythm of the lesser voices. One by one the receding gondolas turned and came nearer, one bright eye gleaming at each prow, as they stole like conspirators upon the gaily lanterned barge. And from farther away still, from the Grand Canal and from the waters of the Giudecca, black barks came floating, and silently joined the growing throng. The chorus had sung twice, thrice, four times,—always the popular airs, so familiar, yet to-night so new, by reason of the lift and brilliancy of the leading voice.



One of the men stepped across the Colonel's gondola and on from one to another, hat in hand. "Per la musica!" he entreated, and a goodly shower of nickels and coppers and fluttering lire were gathered in. But still not a gondola moved away, and later comers had to tie on the outskirts, spreading now, fan-shaped, with twinkling eyes, far over toward San Giorgio.

Uncle Dan fell to counting the twinkling eyes, and his heart swelled within him. There must be close upon a hundred people here, drawn hither, held fast, by his little Polly. There she stood, in her sulphur shawl, unrecognisable, to be sure, but natural and self-possessed as if she had been singing in her own parlour.

Somebody called for Gordigiani's O Santissima Vergine,—a favourite song of "la Canti." The singer rose again to her feet. The low, pulsing accompaniment sounded on the strings, and presently the voice began, with a softly vibrating tone, different from the resonant quality which had first attracted the listeners.

"O Santissima Vergine Maria!"

"I told you it was a trained voice," Uncle Dan heard someone say in a neighbouring gondola. "I believe she's a stage singer. Just listen to that!"

"Hush, don't talk!" the answer came. "It's the sweetest thing I ever heard."

And in truth a delicate, penetrating pathos had come into the fresh young voice, pleading so melodiously for the life of "mio ben."

"O Maria, O Maria," was the artless supplication; "I vow to give to thee the ring my mother bought for me four years ago, and the coral necklace, tanto bello!" And then, with simple fervour, the Madonna was assured that, would she but save il poverino, a candle should be burned to her every Saturday,—"ogni Sabbato, Maria, Maria!"

As the last note ceased, sweet and sad, on the night air, a burst of applause went up, and, "encore, encore," the forestieri shouted, "encore!" And other gondolas came gliding up, and the spreading fan stretched in ever widening compass, divided now, like the pinions of a great sable bird studded with dots of light. Then, while the flowing moonlight brightened, and a perfumed breeze came wafted over the water from the rose gardens of the Giudecca, the sweet voice again took up the simple and touching strain.

After that it was an ovation,—"an ovation, I tell you," Uncle Dan would declare, when bragging about it to the other Polly. "Why, the people were perfectly carried off their feet! When the hat went round they didn't know what it was they pulled out of their pockets. A ten-franc piece seemed cheap as a copper. And all the time, Polly, standing there, singing her heart out! It was an ovation, I tell you,—an ovation!"

And as Polly sang on and on, light opera airs, rhythmical barcarolles, songs of the people, with their naive, swinging cadence, a new, exultant sense of power seemed lifting her above her own level.

And presently an inspiration seized her, and, leaning forward, she said to Canti: "Make them row out on the lagoon, toward the Lido; I can sing better there."

Then the barge loosed itself from the clinging gondolas, and slowly glided out and away. And all the gondolas followed, with the soft plash of many oars, on and on, after the swinging lanterns and the syren voice.

To the young girl, borne out of herself into a strange, unimagined experience of beauty and harmony and power, into a newly awakened sympathy, too, with each dreamer and lover and mourner whose lay she sang, it was as if old things had passed away and all things were become new. And presently, as they drifted on in the flooding moonlight, leaving the lights of the city behind them, she could see the small, low glimmer of a gondola-lamp gliding from out the mysterious spaces of the lagoon.

At that moment Canti whispered a request that the Signorina would sing "Patria," Tito Mattei's beautiful song of exile. She consented, with a feeling of awe, as if acting in obedience to some higher compulsion. The barge had paused, and the multitudinous plash of oars was hushed as she began to sing:

"Al mio ciel m'ha tolto il fato." ["Fate has torn me from my own skies."]

The vagrant gondola had come nearer, and now it was drawn close up under the bow of the barge, just on the edge of the throng of boats. The Signorina scarcely needed to glance at the oarsman standing in the full light of the lanterns, to know that it was no other than the exile whose lament it had been given her to sing. Yet, as the song ceased for a moment, while the strings played an interlude in full, strongly vibrating chords, she looked involuntarily toward the figure whose identity she was already so curiously aware of. The man made a movement forward, resting on his oar, and, as their eyes met, she knew that he, too, had recognised her. She turned away, as the song recommenced, but the consciousness of what she had seen was vividly present with her. He knew her, he knew that she was singing for him, that she was singing the song of his exile.

A singular, almost fantastical exaltation took possession of the young girl, an exaltation such as might have possessed itself of a priestess of old, pouring a libation to the gods in behalf of some devout suppliant. He had known her, this mysterious, homeless being that had come floating across the waters to hear the song of his exile. A deep, thrilling emotion lifted her on its crest, as the long, slow, elemental rhythm of the ocean had lifted the frail shell of the gondola, far out at the Porto del Lido, such a life-time ago. But now she did not shrink from it, she was not disconcerted by it. She only sang on, with growing passion and power. Everything small and personal seemed swept away. She felt herself a human creature, singing the needs and aspirations of another human creature. She was alive, she had come into her birthright. This man, whose personality had so haunted and harassed her, was no longer an enigma; she no longer commiserated him. What mattered poverty, suffering, exile? To be alive was enough; to have la patria, or any other great and high thought in the soul was infinitely more than any mere presence or possession.

All this was coursing through her mind, and the spirit of it was entering into her song, with an urgency and power that gave it a really extraordinary dramatic force. The last words

"Dolce patria e il cor con te, Dolce patria e il cor con te!"

rang out with an impassioned brilliancy of tone that took the listeners by storm.

As the singer sank upon her seat, not spent by the effort, but rather absorbed with the new thoughts and emotions that were crowding upon her, the clapping of many hands sounded to her remote and meaningless, and she did not even notice that the solitary gondola had slipped away.

Canti feared that she was really exhausted. "It is enough, Signorina," he said; "we will go home."

As the barge turned, the gondolas made way for it, and then they pressed about it again, to offer more money and more. There was no longer any need of passing the hat.

And May felt that she had finished, that it was enough. She sat very still, the folds of the black lace almost covering her face, as they rowed homeward to chorus after chorus of gay songs: "La bella, Napoli," "Funicoli funicola," "Margherita." She experienced no painful reaction; she was filled with an uplifting sense of successful achievement. And her thoughts had turned almost immediately to the poor Signora in whose behalf all this had been done.

They must have taken a great deal of money, May thought,—a hundred francs,—perhaps more. Enough to purchase a long respite for the over-worked singer. Perhaps by the time the poor thing was obliged to sing again, she would have grown so strong and well, that her voice, too, would be fresh and pure, and she would have the unspeakable joy of singing because she could not help it.

May remembered the expression of the great Italian eyes, set in the haggard face, as the woman had said to her: "The Madonna will bless you, Signorina!" Yes, she had a soul, the poor Signora, hard-pressed and starved, but a soul, all the same. May smiled softly to herself, almost as Pauline might have done.

"Funicoli funicola!" the chorus was singing—the coloured lanterns were bobbing with the stroke of the oars, and all the while the young girl was passing in review the people she knew, and wondering to discover how many of them were possessed of souls! There was Uncle Dan and Pauline and Mrs. Daymond, and, surely Vittorio, with his fine, manly spirit, and his childlike faith. They all had souls, each after his kind; they all had a comprehension of something not visible and material. What a wonderful thing life was! She could not grasp it yet, but somehow, in some mysterious wise, the world was changed;—not the moon-lit world of romance alone, but the great day-lighted world, where people suffered and rejoiced and grew strong.

And just as the barge came opposite the glittering lights of the Piazzetta, beyond and above which the luminous shaft of the campanile rose straight and white, tipped with its golden angel, the men began to sing "Santa Lucia." And once more a voice rose above the others, fresh and clear as ever:

"Sul mare luccica L'astro d'argento; Placida e l'onda Prospero il vento."

And, as the bobbing lanterns disappeared down a black side-canal, the ringing voice echoed still from out the darkness:

"Santa Lucia, Santa Lucia!"



XVIII

Search-Lights

"I should not so much mind if there should be no moon to-night," said May, dipping her hand over the side of the boat, to feel the cool, soft wash of the wave.

"Nothing could be lovelier than this," Pauline assented.

It was evening again and the girls had the gondola to themselves. They were skirting the low shore of the Lido, fragrant with the breath of new-mown hay, vocal with the chirp of crickets and the dull, rhythmic thud of the waves upon the beach. The sky was overcast and the water was dark, save just ahead, where the gondola light cast a pale reflection, wavering softly from side to side, with the motion of the courtesying prow. The twin towers of San Servolo, its massive buildings and sparse lights, had been left behind, and now the gondola was approaching San Lazzaro, wrapped in silence and shadow, like the good monks who pace its quiet paths.

Neither of the girls had felt inclined to talk, yet their sense of mutual companionship was peculiarly near and intimate. Both had been absorbed in the memory of the same stirring scene, and though Pauline had only viewed it from the outskirts she had divined something of the nature of her sister's experience. She felt intuitively that it had been more to the young girl than a gratification of vanity, or even a revelation of her own power. And yet in their overt consideration of the great event, they had dwelt, hitherto, more particularly upon its practical aspects,—the reticence and courtesy of the band of musicians, the really considerable sum of money taken, the hundred-franc piece which had appeared in the receipts, and Uncle Dan's studied innocence in connection therewith. The fact that May had escaped recognition had also been regarded as cause for rejoicing.

May had been glad to find that, unknown to her, her sister had been among the audience. Her presence seemed, in retrospective wise, to sanction and sustain her action. If Pauline was there all was well.

As they glided tranquilly along the line of the fragrant shore, the regular dip of the oar marking the passage of the seconds, like the soft, lisping tick of certain pleasant old clocks, the nine-o'clock gun roared its admonition from the deck of the "guardian of the port," and the bells of San Lazzaro jangled sweetly on the night air. And then it was that May roused to the need of speech.

"And you knew me at once?" she asked,—not for the first time indeed, for that was a very vital question.

"Yes, I knew your voice, and when we came a little nearer I knew the way you held your head."

"And you didn't mind?"

"No; I think, myself, it's rather strange that I did not. But it seemed perfectly natural and right. I believe I took it all in from the first moment—just how you had undertaken it for the sake of the poor Signora, and how then you had forgotten the Signora and forgotten yourself."

They were silent again, while the gondola rounded San Lazzaro and turned toward home.

"Do you know what I thought of while I was listening to you?" Pauline asked, as the lights of the Riva appeared in their line of vision, glimmering remotely on the shore and in the water. "Especially when you were singing that glorious Patria? I thought of what Signor Firenzo said about your voice, and of what you said yourself, that first day in Venice,—about finding a soul here."

"You did?" May exclaimed; then, in a lower voice: "So did I!"

They had passed San Lazzaro, and San Servolo too was receding astern of them before May spoke again.

"Pauline," she queried, presently, "did you see Nanni's gondola come up from out the lagoon in front of us?"

"Yes, I saw it. How ghostly it was, with his solitary figure, and then that tragic face of his in the light of the lanterns!"

Suddenly, as she spoke, a broad beam of white light swept the long line of the Riva, and leapt to the point of the campanile, striking the golden angel into instantaneous brilliancy.

"What's that?" cried Pauline, startled at the suddenness of the apparition.

"It's a search-light," May answered. "See! It comes from the man-of-war over by Sant' Elisabetta. There! Look there!"

The light had dropped from the campanile, and now it shone full upon the masts and rigging of an East Indiaman lying off San Giorgio Maggiore. Each rope and spar stood out in the intense white light, distinct as if cased in ice.

"La luce elettrica," Vittorio observed, unable to suppress his pride in this new sensation furnished for the delectation of his Signorinas.

"Pauline," said May, with grave emphasis; "Nanni knew me."

"You are sure?"

"Perfectly. I saw it in his face,—and, besides, that is all he could have meant by his message. You didn't hear that, did you?"

"No; and he left you a message?"

"Yes; when we landed at Quattro Fontane this morning, and found Mr. Daymond there—did you notice that he seemed to have something to say to me?"

"Yes;—I noticed."

"He wanted to tell me that he had been walking on the beach with Nanni, and that Nanni had gone back to Milan and had left a message for me."

"And the message?"

"The message was,—'addio e grazie!' Don't you see? He was thanking me for the singing. I think he knew that I was singing for him."

The light had sprung to the tower of San Giorgio, whose straight shaft stood out in new intensity of martial red, its golden angel gleaming like a belated echo of the angel of the campanile.

"Singing for him?" Pauline repeated, yet as if she already half understood.

"Yes, the song of exile. It was just then that he came up. I'm sure he knew that I was thinking of him as I sang, for there was a look in his face that I shall never forget."

"Tell me why, dear."

"Yes; I will tell you why, though it's rather a long story," May answered, yielding to an imperative need of confession. "I can't quite account for it all, but, up to last night, I had always felt perplexed and disturbed about the man. He made me feel a great many things I had never felt before. It seemed to me as if I had never before known a single thing about—anything real,—about any human creature but myself. And yet I suppose the very reason why this haunted me so was because I did not understand. I felt always that there was a mystery, something I couldn't get hold of,—and you know how I do hate a mystery."

As May forced her thoughts to take shape, she felt that it was her own mind rather than Pauline's that was being enlightened. It was as if Pauline must understand,—as if it were Pauline who was making things clear to her. Yet Pauline did not say a word. She only listened, her head inclined a bit, her eyes intent and comprehending.

"I think," May went on, "I think it must have been something really high and fine in him that made the sordidness of it all seem so intolerable. I suppose it is as Uncle Dan says;—these things are a matter of race. I think Nanni must have more than his share of the family inheritance. Did you never feel it, Pauline?"

"Yes, there was certainly something impressive about him," Pauline admitted.

"I'm glad you thought so, too. Well, do you know, Pauline, it came to me last night like a revelation, that I had been all wrong and morbid about it. I remembered how he had said to me, one day when I was talking to him about coming back to Venice: 'You mistake me and my life, Signorina.' It did not impress me so much at the time—something drove it out of my head;—but, suddenly, as I saw his face last night, I seemed to understand what he meant."

They were passing near two fishing-boats moored to a cluster of piles, a single deck-light shining clear and steady, reflected in the water like a long yellow finger. The men had deserted the boats and were swimming somewhere out of sight in the darkness, their voices sounding curiously near and distinct across the water.

"I suppose it was the song that touched him," May was saying. "It is such a beautiful song, and the moment I began singing, I felt as if it had been written expressly for him. Pauline, he had a look such as a man might have who was facing a great renunciation, with the spirit of a hero. And it came to me like a flash, that a man who could look like that need not mind where he lived, or what his service was. And when I heard to-day that he had gone back to his work, I was not at all surprised, and I was not even sorry for him, as I should have been yesterday. I felt as if I understood."

May had been speaking fast, with an eager, half questioning manner, as if everything depended upon Pauline's agreeing with her. Now she paused, and looked into her sister's face, close beside her in the dim light. And Pauline returned her look with one that set her heart at rest.

"I think you have discovered something very deep and true," she said, gently. "And it is one of those things that nobody can tell us, that we must discover for ourselves. But, May," she added, after a moment's reflection, "I don't believe we need think of the man's work as mean or sordid. I should think it might be a very valuable sort of service that he renders at the hospital. Do you remember that day, the first week we were here, when we were waiting for the sacristan at the Madonna del Orto, and a little girl on the quay fell down and hurt her arm?"

"Yes; I remember,—and how quickly Nanni sprang ashore and picked her up."

"Well;—do you know, May, there was something in the way he bent over the little thing and examined her arm to see if it were really hurt, that impressed me very much. His touch was so gentle, and there was so much intelligence in the way he did it, that I have thought, ever since, what a blessing it must be to have such a man about in a hospital."

"Yes," said May, thoughtfully,—"perhaps that is why he chooses that life. That would explain a great deal. I am glad you reminded me of it, Pauline,"—and again she reached her arm over the side of the boat, and let the cool water slip through her fingers, watching the little ripple they made upon the surface. "Perhaps that was what Mr. Daymond meant when he said he had had a talk with Nanni, and he did not think that I need have any more anxiety about him,—that he was doing the work he could do best, and that he was happy in doing it."

"And you had told Mr. Daymond, before that, that you were disturbed about it?" Pauline asked, with a swift, uncontrollable contraction of the heart.

"Yes; we had a talk about Nanni the evening of the illumination. Pauline," May exclaimed, with a sudden change of tone, "what a waste it is that that nice fellow hasn't any sisters!"

"Who? Mr. Daymond?"

"Yes; he would make such a perfect brother. He is so dear, and good, and—unromantic!"

As the words fell, crisp and incisive on the still night air, their point and meaning piercing like finely tempered steel to Pauline's innermost consciousness, the search-light flashed out again, striking full upon the Salute. For a fleeting instant the glorious dome curved white and luminous against a lowering sky, vanishing again as the light was withdrawn. Pauline caught her breath, and the blood raced through her veins. She was startled, she assured herself, by the suddenness of the flash.

When she spoke, her voice was tranquil as ever, yet curiously shot through with feeling.

"If Geoffry Daymond told you that," she said, "I think you may feel satisfied."

"I do," May answered, noting with surprise that her sister had given Geoffry Daymond his full name;—it was not Pauline's way. "Yes, I do," she repeated, "it is a great relief."

It was only for a moment that Pauline's interest in her sister's story had wavered. She had listened, and with unerring comprehension, thanks to which she had not been misled as another might have been.

"There comes the moon out of the clouds," she exclaimed. "Take us where we can see the moon, Vittorio."

"Si, Signorina."

They had come opposite the Salute, and now the prow of the gondola turned in at the narrow rio that runs between the great church and the lovely old Abbazia of San Gregorio. There were deserted gondolas and other craft moored at one side of the little canal, and as they pushed their way past them, the oar lapped the water with the peculiar sound it makes in passing through a restricted passage. They glided under a low bridge, beyond which the moon appeared, just issuing from a bank of cloud, and, a moment later, they had floated out into the Giudecca, among the tall black hulls of the shipping lying there at anchor.

"How good and genuine the moon looks after those search-lights!" May exclaimed, with a sigh of satisfaction.

"Yes, but they were a wonderful sight," Pauline maintained.

"Perhaps so; but they were artificial, and one does like things to be natural."

They had rowed the length of the Giudecca, watching the moon's vicissitudes among the clouds, and now they had once more turned toward home, making their way through one of the prettiest rios of the Tolentini quarter.

"I suppose," Pauline remarked, as they came out upon the Grand Canal, "that, in a deep sense, artificial things,—of the good kind,—are just as natural as things we have no control over. I suppose we get our search-lights from Nature, only in a more round-about way."

"Perhaps we do," May replied; adding, with apparent irrelevance, "and I'm not sure that I should be willing to have missed it."

* * * * *

That same evening, in the fever ward of a Milan hospital, two figures were standing beside a narrow cot in earnest consultation. The patient was a child of ten. The little face had the look of many another little fever-stricken face, but the hair that lay tossed upon the pillow was of exceptional beauty.

"Can we save her, Signor Dottore?" It was the nun who spoke.

"We must," the doctor answered, with quiet emphasis.

He stooped and lifted in his hand one of the disordered tresses. It was neither blonde nor auburn, but pure gold, the lovely gold that sometimes shines in the heart of the sunset. Even the nun felt the beauty of it.

"Did you ever see such hair as that?" she asked.

He laid the tress back upon the pillow, very gently, and, looking into the quiet eyes of the Sister, he answered:

"Never but once."



XIX

"Decus et Praesidium"

The search-lights of that evening's talk had betrayed more to Pauline Beverly than the transitory trouble of her sister's mind. In vain did she try to dwell only upon what May had told her, upon the awakening of imagination and feeling that had been revealed in the clear depths of that singularly limpid nature. Unlike as the sisters were, they were yet of closely kindred fibre, and no one but Pauline could have so clearly apprehended or so justly gauged the true significance of the experience which the young girl herself had found so perplexing. Yet because Pauline so well understood it, the thought of it did not wholly possess her mind, and she could not escape an unwilling cognizance of something deeper and far more disquieting, that she had caught a glimpse of in her own soul.

There was nothing of the repellent reserve in Pauline's character which makes itself evident to the chance acquaintance. If she was innately reticent, it was in a deep, still wise, to the exclusion sometimes of her own consciousness,—and it was this inner reticence that had been violated.

In the succeeding hours of the night, her mind recurred many times to that sudden vision of the Salute dome, flashing, white and luminous, upon a shadowy background. It had been the apparition of an instant, and yet it was so clearly imaged on her brain, even now, that every slightest detail stood out in her memory, distinct as in the light of day. And simultaneously with that, a search-light had flashed upon the hidden places of her own soul, and she had had a vision which she knew that no veil of reserve, impenetrable though it might be, could annul. The night had fallen upon the Salute and wrapped it from sight, but was it the less real for that?

In the first dawning light, she got up, and, throwing on a loose gown of soft, pink cashmere, she stepped out upon the balcony to get a breath of air. She did not look toward the Salute; something withheld her from doing so, as if it had involved a self-betrayal which she shrank from. She turned, instead, to the east, where, rising pale, but distinct, against the faint rosy flush of the sky, was the tower and dome of San Pietro di Castello. A single star still pricked through the deepening colour, but, as she looked, it vanished. The dip of an oar, that sound that never ceases, night nor day, on the great thoroughfare of Venice, reached her ear, and a bird chirped in the garden. Each suggestion came to her, isolated and delicately individualised: the star, the oar-dip, the bird-note. She felt herself played upon, like a passive instrument, as if a light hand had just touched one vibrating string and another, careless of definite melody.

The colour in the east deepened to a wonderful rose, against which the tower and dome of San Pietro stood out in purest dove-colour, and more birds chirped, and one burst into a little gush of song. Pauline, standing on her high balcony, wrapped in the soft cashmere whose rosy colour seemed a reflection of the dawn, felt herself in some peculiar sense a partaker in that exquisite awakening; and, in truth, the surface of the water was not more sensitive to the growing wonder than the delicately expressive face, turned still to the east. Not until the sun had fairly risen, and swept the colour from the face of the sky, did she look toward the Salute. There it stood, beautiful and strong and invulnerable, but behind it were dark rain-clouds, heaped high and threatening.

Then Pauline moved away, with a feeling of assured strength and peace. She could not account for it, she could not have defined it; she only felt as if she had come face to face with a great experience, whether of joy or sorrow she could not tell,—but whatever its countenance she felt serenely ready to meet it.

She slept a deep, peaceful sleep after that, nor did her mind misgive her when she awoke again, to find that those threatening clouds had taken possession of the sky, and were drenching the world with rain.

They went to the Belle Arti that morning, Pauline and May and Uncle Dan, their faithful squire. Vittorio took them there in the hooded gondola, himself radiant in a new "impermeable" hat and coat, which gave him the appearance of a gigantic wet seal, swaying genially on its supple tail.

As they looked out from the shelter of the felze, more impermeable than many rubber coats, May observed that it was a terrible waste of opportunities to go about in a felze with a mere uncle and sister.