in the company of his friends, or
alone, he would set forth upon one of those charming excursions so
fruitful of picturesque experience, and return to his lodgings on the
Schiavoni, to work them up into magazine articles; these would later, of
course, get into book form; from the book would come increased
reputation, a larger source of revenue, and the contentment of success
which he so longed for, so often thought he had found, and so seldom
enjoyed for any length of time.

All this was to be arranged,--or rather the means to which all this was
the delightful end--was to be settled as soon as possible. Miss. Juno,
having finished her story, was to send word to Paul and he was to hie
him to the Rose Garden; thereafter at an ideal dinner, elaborated in
honor of the occasion, Eugene was to read the maiden effort, while the
author, sustained by the sympathetic presence of her admiring Mama and
her devoted Paul, awaited the verdict.

This was to be the test--a trying one for Miss Juno. As for Paul, he
felt quite patriarchal, and yet, so genuine and so deep was his interest
in the future of his protegee, that he was already showing symptoms of
anxiety.

The article having been sent to the editor of the first magazine in the
land, the family would be ready to fold its aesthetic tent and depart;
Paul, of course, accompanying them.

It was a happy thought; visions of Venice; the moonlit lagoon; the
reflected lamps plunging their tongues of flame into the sea; the humid
air, the almost breathless silence, broken at intervals by the baying of
deep-mouthed bells; the splash of oars; the soft tripping measure of
human voices and the refrain of the gondoliers; Jack by his side--Jack
now in her element, with the maroon fez of the distinguished howadji
tilted upon the back of her handsome head, her shapely finger-nails
stained with henna, her wrists weighed down with their scores of
tinkling bangles! Could anything be jollier?

Paul gave himself up to the full enjoyment of this dream. Already he
seemed to have overcome every obstacle, and to be reveling in the
subdued but sensuous joys of the Adriatic queen. Sometimes he had fled
in spirit to the sweet seclusion of the cloistral life at San Lazaro.
Byron did it before him;--the plump, the soft-voiced, mild-visaged
little Arminians will tell you all about that, and take immense pleasure
in the telling of it. Paul had also known a fellow-writer who had
emulated Byron, and had even