rong, lithe figure as he sprang forward on the sloping foot-rest of
his gondola with that perfect grace and ease which proved him master of
a craft whose every motion is a harmony. If he were proud of belonging
to the Nicolotti, that most powerful faction of the populace, he knew
that they were regarded by the government as the aristocrats of the
people.

Marina arranged the child's covering in silence, and stooped her face
wistfully to touch his cheek, but she did not turn her head to look at
the man behind her.

"L'amor ze fato per chi lo sa fare,"

he sang in the low, slow chant of the familiar folk-song, the rhythm
blending perfectly with the movement of the boat in which these two were
faring. His voice was pleasanter in singing, and song is almost a
needful expression of the content of motion in Venice--the necessary
complement of life to the gondolier, a song might mean nothing more. But
Piero sang more slowly than his wont, charging the words with meaning,
yet it did not soften her.

"Love is for him who knows how to win!"

He could not see how she flushed and paled with anger as he sang, for it
was growing dark over the water and her face was turned from him; but
she straightened herself uncompromisingly, and he was watching with
subtle comprehension.

He could not have told why he persisted in this strange wooing, for
there had been but one response during the two years of his widowhood,
while his child had been Marina's ceaseless care. Marina had loved the
baby the more passionately, perhaps, for the sake of her only sister
Toinetta, Piero's child-bride, who had died at the baby's birth, because
she was painfully conscious that Toinetta's little flippant life had
needed much forgiveness and had been crowned with little gladness.
Marina was now the only child of Messer Girolamo Magagnati, which was a
patent of nobility in Murano; and she was not the less worth winning
because she held herself aloof from the freer life of the Piazza, where
she was called the "donzel of Murano," though there were others with
blacker eyes and redder cheeks. Piero did not think her very beautiful;
he liked more color and sparkle and quickness of retort--a chance to
quarrel and forgive. He was not in sympathy with so many aves, such
continual pilgrimages to the cathedral, such brooding over the lives of
the saints--above all, he did not like being kept in order, and Marina
knew well how to do this, in spite of her quiet wa