the old palaces that stood
knee-deep in the lagoons, and threw heavy shadows over the narrow
water-roads on which the little dark boats glided silently forward.
In most of the gondolas coming from the station excited voices and
exclamations of delight broke the calm of the moonlit evening as the
tourists rejoiced in the beauty that is Venice.

But in the gondola in which Muller and Mrs. Bernauer sat there was deep
silence, silence broken only by a sobbing sigh that now and then burst
from the heart of the haggard woman. There were few travellers entering
Venice on one of its world-famous moonlit nights who were so sad at
heart as were these two.

And there were few travellers in Venice as heavy hearted as was the man
who next morning took one of the earliest boats out to the Lido.

Muller and Mrs. Bernauer were on the same boat watching him from a
hidden corner. The woman's sad eyes gazed yearningly at the haggard
face of the tall man who stood looking over the railing of the little
steamer. Her own tears came as she saw the gloom in the once shining
grey eyes she loved so well.

Muller stood beside Mrs. Bernauer. His eyes too, keen and quick,
followed Herbert Thorne as he stood by the rail or paced restlessly up
and down; his face too showed pity and concern. He also saw that Thorne
held in his hand a bundle of newspapers which were still enclosed in
their mailing wrappers. The papers were pressed in a convulsive grip of
the artist's long slender fingers.

Muller knew then that Thorne had not yet learned of the arrest of Johann
Knoll. At the very earliest, Thursday's papers, which brought the news,
could not reach him before Friday morning. But these newspapers (Muller
saw that they were German papers) were still in their wrappings. They
were probably Viennese papers for which he had telegraphed and which
had just arrived. His anxiety had not allowed him to read them in the
presence of his wife. He had sought the solitude of early morning on the
Lido, that he might learn, unobserved, what terrors fate had in store
for him.

It was doubtless Mrs. Bernauer's telegram which caused his present
anxiety, a telegram which had reached him only the night before when he
returned with his wife from an excursion to Torcello. It had caused him
a sleepless night, for it had brought the realisation that his faithful
nurse suspected the truth about the murder in the quiet lane. The
telegram had read as follows: "Have drawn mone