d engravings, and
then, having earned their reward, the two girls strolled back to the
great saloons, where nothing less splendid than Tintoretto and Veronese
makes its appeal to the conscience of the sight-seer.

Pauline descended the steps to the main entrance hall, from which one
has the best view of Titian's _Assumption_. She seated herself on the
broad divan, and looked up through the arched doorway to the glorious
soaring figure, that seems, not up-borne by the floating cloud of cherubs
and angels, but rather drawing all that buoyant throng upward in its
marvellous flight. Geoffry Daymond, pausing at the top of the short flight
of steps a few minutes later, face to face with Pauline, fancied that he
discovered a subtle kinship between her countenance and the pictured one;
and then, as he turned to compare them, he unhesitatingly gave his
preference to the girl of the nineteenth century, with the rare, sylvan
face and the uplifted look. As she became aware of his approach a lovely
colour stole into her face, and there was a welcome in her eyes which she
was too sincere to deny.

"We wondered whether we should find you here this rainy morning," she
said, as he came toward her down the steps; and she spoke with such
quiet composure that a sudden leaping emotion that had stirred him was
checked midway.

"I was looking for you," he replied. "We came across the Colonel and he
told us you were here."

"We always come here when it rains, because the light is so good,"
Pauline observed, wondering that she could think of nothing better to
say.

"Yes; I know it. I passed your sister just now, standing with her back
to the world at large, studying a Tintoretto portrait."

"May really understands a good deal about pictures," Pauline remarked,
still wondering that nothing but platitudes would come to her lips. She
had left her seat, and they were moving toward the steps.

"It seems an age since I have seen you," said Geof, neglecting to reply
to her last observation, which, truth to tell, he had scarcely heard.

"It does seem a good while," she admitted. "Not since Quattro Fontane;"
and then she laughed. "That was only yesterday morning, but one doesn't
reckon time by clocks and calendars in Venice."

"If the clocks and calendars would only pay the old gentleman as little
attention as we do," Geof rejoined, "how lucky we should be!"

"I wonder whether we should really want time to stand still,--even in
Venice," said