the gunwale
in the performance of their labour, progressed slowly and stolidly,
never yielding an inch in their course to the importunities of shouting
gondolier or shrieking steam-whistle. Here the light shell of a yellow
_sandolo_ shot by, there a black-hooded gondola crept in and out among
the more impetuous water-folk. Over yonder the stars-and-stripes floated
from a slim black prow, a frank, outspoken note of colour that had its
own part to play among the quieter yet richer hues of the scene. It was
like an instantaneous transition from twilight to broad day, from the
remote past to the busy present, whose children, even in Venice, must be
fed and clothed and transported from place to place.

[Illustration: "Between frowning walls and low-arched
bridges"]

"Yes, that is the Rialto," said Uncle Dan, rousing to the contemplation
of a good substantial fact. "It's everywhere in Venice. You're always
coming out upon it, especially when you have been rowing straight away
from it."

"What a pity it should be all built over on top!" said May, knitting her
smooth young brow, as if, forsooth, wrinkles did not come fast enough
without the aid of any gratuitous concern for the taste of a by-gone
century.

"But just look at the glorious arch of it underneath!" cried Pauline.
"Who cares what is on top? And besides," she declared, after a moment's
reflection, "I like it all!"

"Has Venice changed much, Uncle Dan?" asked May.

"Venice?" Uncle Dan replied. "Venice doesn't change. It's the rest of us
that do that!"--and just at that moment the gondola turned out of the
Grand Canal into another narrow, shadowy water-way. Here and there,
above the dark current, a bit of colour caught the eye; a pot of
geranium on a window-ledge; a pair of wooden shutters painted pink; a
blue apron hung out to dry. On a stone bridge, leaning against the iron
railing, stood a woman in a sulphur shawl, gazing idly at the
approaching gondola. Scarlet, pink, blue, sulphur--how these unrelated
bits of colour were blended and absorbed in the pure poetry of the
picture!

[Illustration: "Time-worn palaces, and the darkly
doubtful water at their base"]

"How wonderful it is, when things come true!" Pauline exclaimed. "Things
you have dreamed of all your life, till they have come to seem less real
than the things you never dreamed of at all! I think I must have known
that that woman in the sulphur shawl would be standing on that bridge,
gazing upon