under the
broad, striped awning that cast its grateful shadow upon the balcony;
the very water gleamed hot and desert, and the cooing of the Salute
doves had the gurgling, simmering sound of a great tea-kettle. May
leaned her arms upon the cushions of the stone balustrade and looked
down and off toward San Giorgio. How beautiful it was, even at high
noon, and how glorious it would be to-night, when the full moon came
sailing up into the twilight sky, and the cool, sweet breath of evening
was wafted over the waters! What an evening it would be! One to remember
all her life, all that long, every-day kind of life that stretched so
unendingly on into the future.

They had gone that morning, she and Pauline, to carry the roses to the
Signora Canti. They had found the poor singer weak and ill and
disheartened. The doctor had told her she must not sing for some days
yet,--surely not this evening,--and to-night was full moon, when the
tourists throng the Grand Canal, and before another full moon should
come the heat would have driven the pleasure-seekers away. "They fear
the heat, the _forestieri!_"

There was no one to take her place, the woman said. Just the chorus
singing would attract but few listeners; the other serenaders would get
all the people. This was the harvest time and it must be wasted. Ah! The
roses were _molto belle, bellissime_, Signorina,--but it was clear that
they offered little consolation for real troubles.

And, sitting there in the tiny room where the shutters were close drawn
against the morning sun,--which nevertheless pierced through a crack and
lit up, with one straight beam, the pitiful, drawn face of the poor
_cantatrice_, her great inspiration came to May. She had a voice and she
could sing. Why should she not sing for this poor woman, sing in the
moonlight and gather the gondolas about her? Oh, there would be no lack
of a soul in her singing, out there in the moonlight. Signor Firenzo
would not have lectured and entreated her in vain. She knew now what he
meant. She had been longing to sing, many an evening on the starlit
lagoons, and she had not dared.

A group of little children had come into their mother's room, and were
huddling shyly in a corner, gazing wide-eyed and silent, at the strange
ladies and the gorgeous roses, the like of which had never before found
their way there. May hardly noticed the children, so preoccupied was she
with her own thoughts, but the sight of them gave her s