as preserved the traditions of her race by remaining
indoors." He had not, however, accustomed his eyes to the dusk of the
little room when he heard at the landing the scrape of the gondola and
the voices of the women disembarking.

"If we'd known you wanted to come," explained Mrs. Merrithew heartily,
"we could have brought you in the boat." That was the way she oftenest
spoke of it, and other times it was the gon_do_la.

Peter explained his old acquaintance with the charging saint and his
curiosity about the lady, but when the custodian had brought a silver
paper screen to gather the little light there was upon the mellow old
Carpaccio, he looked upon her with a vague dissatisfaction.

"It's the same dragon and the same young man," he admitted. "I know him
by the hair and by the determined expression. But I'm not sure about the
young lady."

"You are looking for a fairy-tale Princess," Miss Dassonville declared,
"but you have to remember that the knight didn't marry this one; he only
made a Christian of her."

They came back to it again when they had looked at all the others and
speculated as to whether Carpaccio knew how funny he was when he painted
Saint Jerome among the brethren, and whether in the last picture he was
really in heaven as Ruskin reported.

"So you think," said Peter, "she'd have been more satisfactory if the
painter had thought Saint George meant to marry her?"

"More personal and convincing," the girl maintained.

"There's one in the Belle Arti that's a lot better looking to my
notion," contributed Mrs. Merrithew.

"Oh, but that Princess is running away," the girl protested.

"It's what any well brought up young female would be expected to do
under the circumstances," declared the elder lady; "just look at them
fragments. It's enough to turn the strongest."

"It does look a sort of 'After the Battle,'" Peter admitted. "But I
should like to see the other one," and he fell in very readily with Mrs.
Merrithew's suggestion that he should come in the gondola with them and
drop into the Academy on the way home. They found the Saint George with
very little trouble and sat down on one of the red velvet divans,
looking a long time at the fleeing lady.

"And you think," said Peter, "she would not have run away?"

"I think she shouldn't; when it's done for her."

"But isn't that--the running away I mean--the evidence of her being
worth doing it for, of her fineness, of her superior delicacy?"