ble
dream.

"No, nor shed a tear. All she did was to keep repeating--'Francesco!
Francesco! Francesco!' I got there at daylight this morning and have
been there ever since. I told her I was coming for you. She was sitting
in a chair when I went in,--bolt up; she had not been in her bed. She
seems like one in a trance--looked at me and held out her hand. I tried
to talk to her and tell her it was all a lie, but she only
answered--'Ask Francesco,--it is all Francesco,--ask Francesco.' Hurry,
Signore,--we will miss her if we go to her house. We will go at once to
our canal and wait for her. They have heard nothing down there at San
Giuseppe, and you can talk to her without being interrupted, and then
I'll get hold of Vittorio. This way, Signore."

I had hardly reached the water landing of my canal ten minutes later
when I caught sight of her, coming directly toward me, head up, her
lips tight-set, her black shawl curving and floating with every
movement of her body--(nothing so wonderfully graceful and nothing so
expressive of the wearer's moods as these black shawls of the
Venetians). She wore her gala dress--the one in which she was
married--white muslin with ribbons of scarlet, her wonderful hair in a
heap above her forehead, her long gold earrings glinting in the
sunshine. All the lovelight had died out of her eyes. In its place were
two deep hollows rimmed about by dark lines, from out which flashed two
points of cold steel light.

I sprang from my gondola and held out my hand:

"Sit down, Loretta, and let me talk to you."

She stopped, looked at me in a dazed sort of way, as if she was trying
to focus my face so as to recall me to her memory, and said in a
determined way:

"No, let me pass. It's too late for all that, Signore. I am--"

"But wait until you hear me."

"I will hear nothing until I find Francesco."

"You must not go near him. Get into the gondola and let Luigi and me
take you home."

A dry laugh rose to her lips. "Home! There is no home any more. See! My
ring is gone! Francesco is the one I want--now---NOW! He knows I am
coming,--I sent him word. Don't hold me, Signore,--don't touch me!"

She was gone before I could stop her, her long, striding walk
increasing almost to a run, her black shawl swaying about her limbs as
she hurried toward her old home at the end of the quay. Luigi started
after her, but I called him back. Nothing could be done until her fury,
or her agony, had spent itself.