--do me the pleasure to tell me if it's yours!"

She stopped short, looking at me with wonder; and then, "Nothing here is
mine," she answered in English, coldly and sadly.

"Oh, you are English; how delightful!" I remarked, ingenuously. "But
surely the garden belongs to the house?"

"Yes, but the house doesn't belong to me." She was a long, lean, pale
person, habited apparently in a dull-colored dressing gown, and she
spoke with a kind of mild literalness. She did not ask me to sit down,
any more than years before (if she were the niece) she had asked Mrs.
Prest, and we stood face to face in the empty pompous hall.

"Well then, would you kindly tell me to whom I must address myself? I'm
afraid you'll think me odiously intrusive, but you know I MUST have a
garden--upon my honor I must!"

Her face was not young, but it was simple; it was not fresh, but it was
mild. She had large eyes which were not bright, and a great deal of hair
which was not "dressed," and long fine hands which were--possibly--not
clean. She clasped these members almost convulsively as, with a
confused, alarmed look, she broke out, "Oh, don't take it away from us;
we like it ourselves!"

"You have the use of it then?"

"Oh, yes. If it wasn't for that!" And she gave a shy, melancholy smile.

"Isn't it a luxury, precisely? That's why, intending to be in Venice
some weeks, possibly all summer, and having some literary work, some
reading and writing to do, so that I must be quiet, and yet if possible
a great deal in the open air--that's why I have felt that a garden
is really indispensable. I appeal to your own experience," I went on,
smiling. "Now can't I look at yours?"

"I don't know, I don't understand," the poor woman murmured, planted
there and letting her embarrassed eyes wander all over my strangeness.

"I mean only from one of those windows--such grand ones as you have
here--if you will let me open the shutters." And I walked toward the
back of the house. When I had advanced halfway I stopped and waited, as
if I took it for granted she would accompany me. I had been of necessity
very abrupt, but I strove at the same time to give her the impression of
extreme courtesy. "I have been looking at furnished rooms all over
the place, and it seems impossible to find any with a garden attached.
Naturally in a place like Venice gardens are rare. It's absurd if you
like, for a man, but I can't live without flowers."

"There are none to speak of d