usk was
falling, and the bats came out, and the quiet of Christ was over
everything, and the swallows flew low on the great canals, she would be
beside him, and never a word would he say to her, so near to him would
she be.

And she wrought strangeness between him and the women he knew, the
great grave lady with the large, pale mouth, her that was of his mind,
and the little black cloak-maker with the eager, red mouth, her that
was closer than mind or heart to him. So that the first found fault
with his poetry.

"I don't know what's come over you, Marco Polo,"--and there was a touch
of temper in her voice,--"but these poems of yours show me you haven't
your mind on your subject. Would you mind telling me when I had bound
black hair?" she says. "And you say my bosom is like two little russet
apples. Now, a regular poet once compared it to two great silver cups,
and that was a good comparison, though in truth," she says, "he knew as
little about it as you. And my hands are not like soft Eastern
flowers. They're like lilies. I don't know where you do be getting
these Eastern comparisons," she says. "But I don't like them. Tell me,
pretty boy,"--she looks suspicious,--"you haven't been taking any of
the strange Egyptian drugs the dark people do be selling in the dim
shops on the quiet canals? Look out, pretty boy! Look out!"

And the little cloak-maker grumbled when he was gone. "I don't know
what's wrong with him," says she. "Or maybe it's something that's
wrong with myself, but this delicate love isn't all it's cracked up to
be. It's all right in books," she says, "and it's a grand sight, and
the players doing it; but I like a hug," she says, "would put the
breath out of you, and a kiss," she says, "you could feel in the soles
of your feet." And she lay awake and grumbled. "Let him be taking his
la-di-da courting to those as favor it," says she. "It's not my kind,"
and she grumbled through the lonely night. "I wonder where my husband
is now," she said. "And wasn't I the foolish girl to be sending him
off! Sure, he drank like a fish and beat me something cruel, but he
was a rare lover, and the mood on him. Sure, a woman never knows when
she's well off," says she.

And Marco Polo didn't miss them any more nor you'd miss an old overcoat
and the winter past. All his mind was on was the Golden Bells of
China. And he thought long until his uncle and father came, so that he
could be off with them to the