er lips wrapped you in a poisoned robe
which burnt up the last vestiges of your earthly nature. Her eyes were
twin stars that turned you into shadowless light. You knelt together
on the palm-branches of heaven, waiting for the gates of Paradise to be
opened; but they turned heavily on their hinges, and in your impatience
you struck at them, but could not reach them. Your hand touched nothing
but clouds more nimble than your desires. Your radiant companion,
crowned with white roses like a bride of Heaven, wept at your anguish.
Perhaps she was murmuring melodious litanies to the Virgin, while the
demoniacal cravings of the flesh were haunting you with their shameless
clamor, and you disdained the divine fruits of that ecstasy in which I
live, though shortening my life."

"Your exaltation, my dear Vendramin," replied Emilio, calmly, "is still
beneath reality. Who can describe that purely physical exhaustion in
which we are left by the abuse of a dream of pleasure, leaving the
soul still eternally craving, and the spirit in clear possession of its
faculties?

"But I am weary of this torment, which is that of Tantalus. This is my
last night on earth. After one final effort, our Mother shall have her
child again--the Adriatic will silence my last sigh--"

"Are you idiotic?" cried Vendramin. "No; you are mad; for madness, the
crisis we despise, is the memory of an antecedent condition acting on
our present state of being. The genius of my dreams has taught me that,
and much else! You want to make one of the Duchess and la Tinti; nay,
dear Emilio, take them separately; it will be far wiser. Raphael alone
ever united form and idea. You want to be the Raphael of love; but
chance cannot be commanded. Raphael was a 'fluke' of God's creation,
for He foreordained that form and idea should be antagonistic; otherwise
nothing could live. When the first cause is more potent than the
outcome, nothing comes of it. We must live either on earth or in the
skies. Remain in the skies; it is always too soon to come down to
earth."

"I will take the Duchess home," said the Prince, "and make a last
attempt--afterwards?"

"Afterwards," cried Vendramin, anxiously, "promise to call for me at
Florian's."

"I will."

This dialogue, in modern Greek, with which Vendramin and Emilio were
familiar, as many Venetians are, was unintelligible to the Duchess and
to the Frenchman. Although he was quite outside the little circle
that held the Duchess,