the news tardily reached Michael through his
friend, the doctor, that the duke was dead.

The news, so long expected, gave him a pang when it did at last arrive.
He had liked the duke. For a moment they had been very near to each
other.

But now, _now_, Fay would release him. It would still be painful to her
to do so, but in a much lesser degree than heretofore. She would have to
endure certain obvious, though groundless, inferences from which her
delicacy would shrink. But she was free to marry him now, and that made
all the difference as to the explanation she would have to give. A
little courage was all that was needed, just enough to make a small
sacrifice for him. She would certainly have that amount. The other had
been too much to expect. _But this_----

Michael leaned his forehead against the stone wall of his cell, and
sobbed for joy.

Oh! God was good. God was merciful. He knew how much he could bear. He
knew that he was but dust. He had not tried him beyond his strength.

Michael was suffused with momentary shame at the joy that the death of
his friend had brought him.

Nevertheless, like a mountain spring that will not be denied, joy ever
rose and rose afresh within him.

Fay and he could marry now. The thought of her, the hungered craving for
her was no longer a sin.

It was Sunday evening. The myriad bells of Venice were borne in a
floating gossamer tangle of sound across the water.

Joy, overwhelming, suffocating joy inundated him.

He stumbled to his feet, and clung convulsively to the bars of his
narrow window.

How often he had heard the bells, but never with this voice!

He looked out across the wide water with its floating islands, each with
its little campanile. His eyes followed the sails of the fishing boats
from Chioggia, floating like scarlet and orange butterflies in the
pearl haze of the lagoon.

How often he had watched them in pain. How often he had turned his eyes
from them lest that mad rage for freedom which entered at times into the
man in the next cell, when the boats passed, should enter also into him,
and break him upon its wheel.

He looked at the boats now with tears in his eyes. They gleamed at him
like a promise straight from God. How freely they moved. Free as air;
free as the sea-mew with its harsh cry wheeling close at hand under a
luminous sky.

He also should be free soon, should float away past the gleaming
islands, over a sea of pearl in a boat with an or