while his
eyes wandered back to the Piazzetta searchingly.

"It is strange," he muttered to himself, still watching from the end of
the balcony. "It was an echo of the Lady Beata's voice that startled me,
crossing the Piazzetta saying two words only--'In Padua.'"

Then rousing himself, he turned brightly to his wife. "Carina, I have
news for thee, for the time hath been momentous for us in Venice. Di
Gioiosa hath gone forward, these many days, with terms from Venice; and
soon, it is thought, there will be peace."

_Terms_ from Venice to Rome!--but the words did not move her from her
resolve to let no shadow of their difference mar the beauty of this
night.

She looked at him wearily. "It is ever the same," she said, "through
this long, dreary year--ever the same! Let us forget it all for this one
night. Let us talk together of our Marconino!"

And as if there had been no questions--no interdict--no pain--while the
night sounds died into silence and the moon withdrew her glamor and left
them alone to the solemn mystery of the starlight, they sat and talked
together of love and their little one and their hopes for him, and of
things that lie too deep for utterance--save by one to one--far into
that beautiful Venetian night, with the odor of flowers and incense
blown up to them on the breath of the sea.

XXIX

The yellow lamp flames were burning late in the cabinet of Girolamo
Magagnati, who took less note of the difference between evening hours
and those of early dawn since there was no longer in his household a
beloved one to guard from weariness. Nay, the night was rather the time
in which he might forget himself and plunge more whole-heartedly into
his schemes of work--financial or creative. For the world was surely on
the eve of discoveries important to his art, and it would be well if he
might secure them, before his working days should pass, for the
Stabilimento Magagnati.

Piero Salin stood in the doorway as he glanced up from the drawings that
littered his table--the dark oak table which had seemed a centre of
cheer to Girolamo, when, in this very chamber, his child had made a
radiance for him in which the lines of his life shone large and
satisfying.

Girolamo never seemed to remember that this son-in-law was a great man
among the people; to him he was only Piero Salin, barcariol; the single
token of the old man's favor was that in his thought he no longer added
the despicable word _toso_; and it