used with a spirit not inherent in them.

"I think," she was saying, "that I should be perfectly happy if I could
know that the long misunderstanding that has caused us both so much
pain, had had a meaning as sweet and acceptable to you as it would be to
me."

The Colonel pulled out his pocket-handkerchief and wiped his forehead,
surreptitiously including his eyes in the process.

"I've been a brute," he muttered, in rather a husky voice, scowling
savagely into the crown of his hat, which he had lifted from his knees.
As if displeased with its appearance, he put it on his head, where he
planted it firmly.

She knew that she had all but won the day, and she ventured what she had
not ventured before. For it had never been her way to prate of an
impossible friendship; if she used the word she meant to honour it. And
to-day something told her that at last she held control of the
situation.

There was nothing in her voice to betray the intense exertion of will
that she was conscious of making; on the contrary, her words sounded
only wistful and entreating, as she said:

"What friends we should be!"

And because it was the first time she had made that appeal to him, and
because these weeks of pleasant, normal companionship had subtly and
surely changed their relation, the Colonel could meet her half-way, like
the gallant fellow he was.

"What friends we _shall_ be!" he cried, clasping the hand which she had
involuntarily lifted. "And we won't let it depend upon those youngsters
either!"

The gondola had entered one of the canals of the city, and presently
they passed under a bridge and came out in front of the square of San
Paolo and San Giovanni, where the superb statue of Coleoni on his
magnificent charger stands clear-cut against the sky.

"Glorious thing, that," the Colonel remarked, as he invariably did, as
often as his eye fell upon it.

"Yes," she replied; "it is the very apotheosis of success. And yet,--one
sometimes questions whether a perfectly successful man is as enviable as
he seems. What do you think about it, Colonel?"

"Signora," the Colonel answered, with a flash of feeling in his rugged
features that would have done credit to Vittorio's expressive face, "I
have had my promotion, and I envy no man!"

XIII

Illuminations

If Geoffry Daymond had known no more about Nanni than was known to May
herself, the little incident which had caused such perturbation in the
young girl's mind w