cheap as a copper. And all the time, Polly, standing
there, singing her heart out! It was an ovation, I tell you,--an
ovation!"

And as Polly sang on and on, light opera airs, rhythmical barcarolles,
songs of the people, with their naive, swinging cadence, a new, exultant
sense of power seemed lifting her above her own level.

And presently an inspiration seized her, and, leaning forward, she said
to Canti: "Make them row out on the lagoon, toward the Lido; I can sing
better there."

Then the barge loosed itself from the clinging gondolas, and slowly
glided out and away. And all the gondolas followed, with the soft plash
of many oars, on and on, after the swinging lanterns and the syren
voice.

To the young girl, borne out of herself into a strange, unimagined
experience of beauty and harmony and power, into a newly awakened
sympathy, too, with each dreamer and lover and mourner whose lay she
sang, it was as if old things had passed away and all things were become
new. And presently, as they drifted on in the flooding moonlight,
leaving the lights of the city behind them, she could see the small,
low glimmer of a gondola-lamp gliding from out the mysterious spaces of
the lagoon.

At that moment Canti whispered a request that the Signorina would sing
"_Patria_," Tito Mattei's beautiful song of exile. She consented, with a
feeling of awe, as if acting in obedience to some higher compulsion. The
barge had paused, and the multitudinous plash of oars was hushed as she
began to sing:

"_Al mio ciel m'ha tolto il fato._"
["Fate has torn me from my own skies."]

The vagrant gondola had come nearer, and now it was drawn close up under
the bow of the barge, just on the edge of the throng of boats. The
Signorina scarcely needed to glance at the oarsman standing in the full
light of the lanterns, to know that it was no other than the exile whose
lament it had been given her to sing. Yet, as the song ceased for a
moment, while the strings played an interlude in full, strongly
vibrating chords, she looked involuntarily toward the figure whose
identity she was already so curiously aware of. The man made a movement
forward, resting on his oar, and, as their eyes met, she knew that he,
too, had recognised her. She turned away, as the song recommenced, but
the consciousness of what she had seen was vividly present with her. He
knew her, he knew that she was singing for him, that she was singing the
song of his exile.