y and far-away. So marked was the phenomenon,
that Uncle Dan was moved to exclaim: "A penny for your thoughts, Polly."

May started, for she was not often caught sentimentalising. Then, with
the directness which characterised her, she said: "I was wondering
whether one might not perhaps find a soul here in Venice."

"A soul? What kind of a soul?"

"Oh, any sort would do, I suppose. You know Signor Firenzo told me my
voice was _bellissima_, but that I hadn't any soul."

"Perhaps Signor Firenzo is a better judge of voices than of souls,"
Pauline suggested, with a confident little smile.

"A young girl like you hasn't any business with a soul," Uncle Dan
declared. "If you think you see one coming over the lagoon you had
better turn round and look at the Lion of St. Mark's. He hasn't the sign
of a soul, yet he's the best of good fellows, as anybody can see."

May promptly turned, and fixed her eyes upon the classic beast in
question.

"I didn't know that lions had such long, straight tails," she remarked.

"The wings strike me as being more out of the common," Uncle Dan
chuckled, much reassured by Polly's ready return to the judicial
attitude.

"I should almost think," said Pauline, musingly, "that a lion that had
wings and a taste for literature might perhaps have a soul after all!"

IV

A Reverie

When Vittorio was told to come for them in the evening, he had cast a
significant glance at a certain radiant white cloud, billowing in the
West, and said: "_Speriamo_"; which, in the vocabulary of the gondolier
means: "Let us hope for the best and prepare for the worst." Upon which
the cloud had gradually taken on more formidable proportions, until,
just at dusk, it burst in a torrent of rain, which swept the Grand Canal
clear of sight-seers, and sent the nightly serenaders, who usually act
as magnets to the wandering gondolas, into the hotels for refuge. A band
of them were established in the long, wide corridor of the _Venezia_,
where their strong, crude voices and their twanging strings reverberated
rather noisily.

Wondering how it must seem to have nerves young enough to sustain such
rough treatment, the Colonel abandoned his nieces to their
self-inflicted ordeal, and mounted the stairs to his own familiar
quarters. And there, as he closed the door behind him, he ceased to
speculate upon such ephemeral matters.

He had come up, ostensibly to write some letters, but instead of doing
so, he lighted