poration of the workers on Rialto, and it was almost a
prehistoric record of greatness.

Marina had left the table and gone to the cabinet; her father followed
her. "This I would show thee," he said, calling her attention to a
whimsical shape, blown and twisted almost into foam. "This Lorenzo Stino
brought me only yesterday; he is full of genius; I think none hath a
quicker hand, nor a more inventive faculty. I have watched him in his
working." He scanned her eagerly as he spoke.

"Yes, it is fanciful--wonderful," she added to please him, but without
warmth, while her eyes wandered over the shelves. "Oh, father, here are
some of the very mosaics that were made for San Marco; thou hast
forgotten!"

She lifted eagerly a small opaque basin of turquoise blue and held it
toward him; it contained a few bits of gold and silver enamel, the
earliest that had been made in Venice, bearing their ancient date.

"Thou askest more of Venice than I," he said, well pleased with her
enthusiasm; "but have a care lest they say I have not taught thee well,
or that I do not know my art, or that I claim too much. At the time of
the burning of San Marco these Mosaics for the restoration were from the
stabilimenti of the Republic on Rialto--so early it came to us, this
glorious art. And it was one Piero, a founder of our house, though the
name was other than Magagnati, who was the master in that restoration.
But the first mosaics in that old San Marco--ay, and the workmen," he
added with a conscious effort, so much would he have liked to claim the
invention for Venice, "came hither from the East. Thou shouldst know the
history of our art; it is the story of thine ancestry and the nobility
of thy house. Thou hast no other."

"I have thee, my father!"

IV

The Veronese did not paint that beautiful face the next morning as he
had planned; for the first time he had encountered difficulties. Slowly,
as he wended his way through the many turnings of the narrow calle to
Campo San Maurizio, carrying a beautiful Moorish box filled with the
pearly shells which the Venetians call "flowers of the Lido," and a
bouquet of aromatic carnations for the bambino, he recalled the figure
and speech of his Madonna, and they were not those of the maidens whom
one might encounter at the traghetto or in the Piazza; there had been a
dignity and self-forgetfulness in such perfect harmony with the face
that, at the moment, this had seemed entirely natural. But