a cigar, and seated himself at the window, watching the
swoop of the rain along the hurrying waters of the Canal. The tide was
coming in and the wind was with it. One gondola at the ferry was
struggling across the current, with difficulty held to its course by the
efforts of its straining oarsman. The passengers had taken refuge under
the _felze_, or gondola hood. Impatient of the slow progress of the
boat, the Colonel looked down into the hotel-garden directly beneath his
windows, which was drowned in a moist blur, that only seemed intensified
where it focused about the electric lights. Over there again, across the
Canal, stood the great Salute, showing ghostly and unreal in its massive
whiteness, half obliterated by the driving rain. It would have seemed
that the most perfunctory letter-writing might have been an improvement
upon such a prospect as that. Yet the Colonel sat on, puffing in a
desultory manner at his excellent cigar, and reflecting that another
five years had gone by.

A curious thing, he was thinking to himself, how inevitably he found
himself in Venice once in five years. It was not in his plan to do so.
He would have been just as ready to return after an interval of two
years, or of three; but, for one reason or another, he never seemed able
to arrange his affairs to that end until the fifth year had come round.
Somebody was sure to die and leave him executor of his will; or this or
that charity of which he was treasurer made a point of getting into a
tight place. To-morrow was the twenty-ninth of the month;--to-morrow
always was the twenty-ninth on his first arrival in Venice. Yet that,
too, was the merest accident, as he assured himself with some heat. None
of these things was premeditated.

He should call upon her to-morrow,--certainly. It would be a downright
discourtesy to wait until they had met by chance. He wondered if she
were expecting him. Probably not; she had other things to think of,
especially now that her son was with her.

It would be a pleasure to see her,--her beautiful, friendly eyes, that
enchanting smile, that wonderful turn of the head. As though she could
ever have cared for a battered old wreck like him! And yet he knew, with
an indubitable knowledge, that he should ask her again. And the answer
would be the same as it had been twenty-five years ago, when she was but
a three-years' widow.

He had been hasty, he had not sufficiently respected her past. He should
have waited