ith almost the
obviousness of a wink, as he surrendered himself to the charm of the
girl's ethereal excitement.

He understood perfectly that his not being able to feel more of a drop
from the pregnant mystery of her call and his high response to it, to
the homely incident of breakfast, was due to Miss Dassonville's
obliviousness of its being one. It was for her, in fact, no drop at all
but rather as if they had pulled out for a moment into this little shoal
of neighbourly interest and comfortable food, the better to look back at
the perfect wonder of it, as from the deck of the _Merrythought_ toward
the fair front of the ducal palace and the blue domes of St. Mark's
behind the rearing lion.

Although he had parted from her that morning with no hint of an
arrangement for a next meeting, it had become a part of the day's
performance for Peter to call for the two ladies in the afternoon, so
much so that his own sense of the unusualness of finally letting the
gondola go off without him, and his particular wish at this juncture not
to mark his intercourse with any unusualness, led him to send off with
it as many roses as Luigi could find at that season on the Piazza.
Afterward, as he recalled that he had never sent flowers to Miss
Dassonville before, and as he had that morning furnished her from the
market boats past her protesting limitation, it was perhaps a greater
emphasis to his desertion.

However, it seemed that the roses and nothing but the roses might serve
as a bridge, delicate and dizzying, to support them from the realization
of their situation, into which he had no intention of letting Miss
Dassonville fall. He stayed in his room most of that afternoon, knowing
that he was shut up with a very great matter, not able to feel it so
because of the dryness of his heart, nor to think what was to be done
about it because of the lightness of his brain.

It occurred to him at last that at St. Mark's there might be reflective
silences and perhaps resolution. He felt it warm from the stored-up
veneration of the world, and though he said to himself, as he climbed to
the galleries, that it was to give himself the more room to think, he
knew that it must have been in his mind all the time that the girl was
there, as it was natural she should have come to the place where they
had met. Even before he caught the outline of her dress against the
pillar he found himself crossing over to the organ loft the better to
observe h