thy whole heart, my
daughter?" since she had not answered. "Thou dost not fear thyself?"

"Dearest father," she had said, hiding her face in his tender embrace,
"all of my heart which is not thine is wholly his--only my happiness is
too great."

"Nay, daughter, since it is of God's own sending; take all the joy and
grieve not."

"Only at leaving thee."

"I would not keep thee here, to leave thee mourning and alone when my
days are closed."

"Father!"

"Not to sadden thee, my child, but to show thee that life is linked to
life--God wills it so. Thou and I are bound to that which has been and
to that which is to be. We do not stand alone to choose. The sweetness
of our life together should make it easier for me to yield thee to the
fuller life which calleth thee. We must each bear our part in the beauty
of the whole. For perfect love, there must be sacrifice."

She was thinking of these things as she stood in the gray dawn waiting
for the beauty of the on-coming day, quite alone with her thoughts and
with her God, the giver of this beauty; and often as she had stood there
with her morning offering of trust and adoration, never before had the
day-dawn seemed so full of mystery and promise, nor the new life which
the morning held within its keeping so full of hope and beauty. The very
tide, flowing round her island home, brought thoughts of her home that
was to be, as it swept through the channels of the City of the Sea, past
the palace where her lover was waiting, bringing murmurs and messages of
liquid harmony. The marsh grasses swayed and yielded to its flow,
lending new depths of color to the water-bed, as they bowed beneath the
masterful current--so the difficulties which had seemed to beset their
hopes had been vanquished by the resistless tide of his love and
constancy.

The stars were lost in the deep gray-blue of the sky; a solemn
stillness, like the presage of some divine event, seemed for a moment to
hold the pulses of the universe; then a soft rose crept into the shimmer
of the water and crested the snows on the distant Euganean Hills, the
transient, many-tinted glory of the east reflected itself in opal lights
upon the silver sea, then suddenly swept the landscape in one dazzling
glow of gold--and the joy-bells rang out. For to-day a festa had been
granted in Murano.

Then, wrapping herself closely in the soft folds of her gray mantle,
falling Madonna-wise from her head and shrouding her figure, she