the drowned wretch, whose soddenly
friendly leer struck John Arniston cold, as though he also had been in
the Thames water that night.

So all through the darkness he paced in front of the house of the
Beloved. His letter to her, written on leaves of his notebook, in place
of that which he had destroyed, went in with the morning's milk. In half
an hour after he was with her. And when he came out again he had seen a
wonderful thing--a beautiful woman to whom emotion was life, and the
expression of it second nature, running through the gamut of twenty
moods in a quarter of an hour. At the end, John departed in search of a
licence and a church. And Miriam Gale put her considering finger to her
lip, and said, "Let me see--which dresses shall I take?"

The highway robbery was never heard of. The excellent plaster which John
Arniston left in the hand of the official had salved effectively the
rude constriction of his throat, where John's right hand had closed upon
it.

* * * * *

It was even better to sit with Miriam Arniston in reality in the great
sun-lit square of St. Mark's than it had been in fantasy with Miriam
Gale.

The only disappointment was, that the pigeons of the Square were
certainly fatter and greedier than the pictured cloud of doves, which in
his day-dream he had seen flash the under-side of their wings at his
love as they checked themselves to alight at her feet.

But on Lido side there was no such rift in the lute's perfection. The
sands, the wheeling sea-birds, the tall girl in white whose hand he
held--all these were even as he had imagined them. Thither they came
every day, passing along the straight dusty avenue, and then wandering
for hours picking shells. They talked only when the mood took them, and
in the pauses they listened idly to the slumbrous pulsations of Adria.
John Arniston had lied at large in the letter he had written to his
love. He had assaulted a man who righteously withstood him in the
discharge of his duty, in order to steal that letter back again. Yet his
conscience was wholly void of offence in the matter. The heavens smiled
upon his bride and himself. There was now no stern voice to break
through upon his blissful self-approval.

Why there should be this favouritism among the commandments, was not
clear to John. Indeed, the thing did not trouble him. He was no casuist.
He only knew that the way was clear to Miriam Gale, and he went to her
th