efore the great Titian. She was the
only person in the room at the moment. Geof came across the stone floor
with a ringing step which caused her to turn, in startled certainty that
it was he. There was something in the manner of his approach that
affected her like a summons, and she rose to her feet.

He came up to her and, looking straight into her face, he said: "You
must come out. The sun will be out before we know it, and one always
wants to be out-of-doors when it clears."

"Are the others waiting?" she asked.

"No; Pietro has taken them off. But I think you are right; St. Simon is
not what we want this morning. Supposing we make a call upon the
Rezzonico Madonna."

"But I was going to walk home," Pauline demurred, quite sensible of her
own futility.

"You can't. It's really very wet. Do come and take a look at the
Madonna."

She turned, with neither protest nor assent, and walked with him down
the room. She felt that she had relaxed her hold upon herself. What was
it she was yielding to? Something imperative and masterful in him, or
something still more masterful and imperative in her own soul? She did
not know, she did not consider. She walked with him down the stairs, and
out into the outer world, and she knew that she would have walked with
him across the very waters of the Canal with the unquestioning faith of
the pious little princess whom legend carries over dry-shod to her
prayers.

Pauline spoke only once, and that was when her eyes fell upon the
gondola coming to meet them.

"The _felze_!'" she exclaimed, under her breath. If Geof heard her, he
was too wise to admit that he did.

"To the Madonna of the Palazzo Rezzonico," he commanded, quite as if
Vittorio had been his own gondolier. It crossed his mind that he ought
to apologise for his presumption, but he was not in the mood for
apologies.

The _felze_ was arranged for three, the little box-seats taken out, and
the chair in place of them; Geof took the chair. And Vittorio rowed them
swiftly with the tide, up the Canal, past the tiny striped church of San
Vio, to which the pious little princess crosses, in the pretty legend,
and on, to the stern and massive Palazzo Rezzonico. The gondola turned
down the narrow _rio_ that flows beneath the poet's memorial tablet, and
a few strokes of the oar brought them to the feet of the Madonna.

Geoffry and Pauline stepped out of the _felze_ and stood looking up at
the lovely figure in its flowing garme