the twisting river, rose-gold
in the twilight, the dots of parks and villas, the eye is lost in the
distant city and the haze beyond--the whole a-twinkle with myriads of
electric lights.

There, one night, from my seat against the opposite wall (I was dining
alone), I was amusing myself watching a table being set with more than
usual care; some rich American, perhaps, with the world in a sling, or
some young Russian running the gauntlet of the dressing-rooms. Staid
old painters like myself take an interest in these things. They serve
to fill his note-book, and sometimes help to keep him young.

When I looked again the waiter was drawing out a chair for a woman with
her back to me. In the half-light, her figure, in silhouette against
the cluster of candles lighting the table, I could see that she was
young and, from the way she took her seat, wonderfully graceful.
Opposite her, drawing out his own chair, stood a young man in evening
dress, his head outlined against the low, twilight sky. It was Mahmoud!

I sprang from my seat and walked straight toward them. There came a low
cry of joy, and then four outstretched arms--two of them tight-locked
about my neck.

"Tell me," I asked, when we had seated ourselves, Yuleima's hands still
clinging to mine. "After I left you that last night in the garden, was
the boat where we hid it?"

"Yes."

"Who rowed you to the steamer?"

"My old caique-ji."

"And who got the tickets and passports?"

"Hornstog."

LORETTA OF THE SHIPYARDS

I

For centuries the painters of Venice have seized and made their own the
objects they loved most in this wondrous City by the Sea. Canaletto,
ignoring every other beautiful thing, laid hold of quays backed by
lines of palaces bordering the Grand Canal, dotted with queer gondolas
rowed by gondoliers, in queerer hoods of red or black, depending on the
guild to which they belonged. Turner stamped his ownership on sunset
skies, silver dawns, illuminations, fetes, and once in a while on a
sweep down the canal past the Salute, its dome a huge incandescent
pearl. Ziem tied up to the long wall and water steps of the Public
Garden, aflame with sails of red and gold: he is still there--was the
last I heard of him, octogenarian as he is. Rico tacks his card to
garden walls splashed with the cool shadows of rose-pink oleanders
dropping their blossoms into white and green ripples, melting into
blue. As for me--I have laid hands on a canal--the