as nothing of the repellent reserve in Pauline's character which
makes itself evident to the chance acquaintance. If she was innately
reticent, it was in a deep, still wise, to the exclusion sometimes of
her own consciousness,--and it was this inner reticence that had been
violated.

In the succeeding hours of the night, her mind recurred many times to
that sudden vision of the Salute dome, flashing, white and luminous,
upon a shadowy background. It had been the apparition of an instant, and
yet it was so clearly imaged on her brain, even now, that every
slightest detail stood out in her memory, distinct as in the light of
day. And simultaneously with that, a search-light had flashed upon the
hidden places of her own soul, and she had had a vision which she knew
that no veil of reserve, impenetrable though it might be, could annul.
The night had fallen upon the Salute and wrapped it from sight, but was
it the less real for that?

In the first dawning light, she got up, and, throwing on a loose gown of
soft, pink cashmere, she stepped out upon the balcony to get a breath of
air. She did not look toward the Salute; something withheld her from
doing so, as if it had involved a self-betrayal which she shrank from.
She turned, instead, to the east, where, rising pale, but distinct,
against the faint rosy flush of the sky, was the tower and dome of San
Pietro di Castello. A single star still pricked through the deepening
colour, but, as she looked, it vanished. The dip of an oar, that sound
that never ceases, night nor day, on the great thoroughfare of Venice,
reached her ear, and a bird chirped in the garden. Each suggestion came
to her, isolated and delicately individualised: the star, the oar-dip,
the bird-note. She felt herself played upon, like a passive instrument,
as if a light hand had just touched one vibrating string and another,
careless of definite melody.

The colour in the east deepened to a wonderful rose, against which the
tower and dome of San Pietro stood out in purest dove-colour, and more
birds chirped, and one burst into a little gush of song. Pauline,
standing on her high balcony, wrapped in the soft cashmere whose rosy
colour seemed a reflection of the dawn, felt herself in some peculiar
sense a partaker in that exquisite awakening; and, in truth, the
surface of the water was not more sensitive to the growing wonder than
the delicately expressive face, turned still to the east. Not until the
sun had