azzo
on the Grand Canal, lent to her--that is the graceful Italian way of
putting it--by some Venetian friends; and there, with Mademoiselle de
Cressy to keep off the importunate, she received such acquaintance as
floated from the ends of the earth through the enchanted city.

"I have started by seeing as few people as I can," she said. "That's
all on account of you, monsieur."

He pressed her hand. "I hope we don't see a single soul we know as long
as I'm here," he declared.

His hope was gratified, not completely, but enough to remove grounds
for lover's fretfulness. He passed idyllic days in halcyon weather.
Often she would send her gondola to fetch him from the Grand Hotel,
where he was staying. Now and then, most graciously audacious of
princesses, she would come herself. On such occasions he would sit
awaiting her with beating heart, juvenis fortunatus nimium, on the
narrow veranda of the hotel, regardless of the domed white pile of
Santa Maria della Salute opposite, or the ceaseless life on the water,
or the sunshine, or anything else in Venice, his gaze fixed on the bend
of the canal; and then at last would appear the tall curved prow, and
then the white-clad, red-sashed Giacomo bending to his oar, and then
the white tenda with the dear form beneath, vaguely visible, and then
Felipe, clad like Giacomo and bending, too, rhythmically with the
foremost figure. Slowly, all too slowly, the gondola would near the
steps, and beneath the tenda would smile the dearest face in the world,
and the cheeks would be delicately flushed and the eyes tender and
somewhat shy. And Paul would stand, smiling too, a conquering young
figure with green Marienbad hat tilted with ever so tiny a shade of
jauntiness, the object of frankly admiring and curious glances from a
lone woman or two on the veranda, until the gondola was brought up to
the wave-washed steps, and the hotel porter had fixed the bridge of
plank. Then, with Giacomo supporting his elbow, he would board the
black craft and would creep under the tenda and sink on the low seat by
her side with a sense of daring and delicious intimacy, and the gondola
would glide away into fairyland.

"Let us be real tourists and do Venice thoroughly," she had said. "I
have never seen it properly."

"But you've been here many times before."

"Yes. But--"

She hesitated.

"Eh bien?"

"Je ne peux pas le dire. Il faut deviner."

"Will you forgive me if I guess right? Our great Shak