Marco Polo, "there is nothing in the
world like San Marco's, and it ablaze in the setting sun, and the great
pillars before it rising in tongues of flame. And was there ever in
all time anything like the Grand Canal at the dusk of day, and the
torches beginning to show like fireflies, and the lap of the water, and
stringed music, and the great barges going by like swans, now a
battle-hacked captain of war, now a great gracious lady? And the moon
does be rising...

"You've sailed all the way from China and seen strange and beautiful
things, but I remember one summer's day, when I took out my little
sailing-boat and went out on the water to compose a poem for a lady,
and the water was blue--oh, as blue as the sky's self, and the sands of
the Lido were silver, and the water shuffled gently over them, as
gently as a child's little feet. And there was a clump of olive-trees
there so green as to be black, and there alighted before it a great
scarlet Egyptian bird. And the beauty of that brought the tears to my
eyes, so that I thought of nuns in their cells and barefoot friars in
the hollow lands, and they striving for paradise. What did I care
about paradise? A Venetian I. So why should I want to go to China?"

"You have made a great case for the grandeur and beauty of Venice,"
says the sea-captain. "It is lovely, surely," says he, filling his
pipe; "but finer poets nor you, my lad," says he, lighting it, "have
tried to describe the grace and beauty of Tao-Tuen, and," says he
taking a draw, "have failed."

"Tao-Tuen is a beautiful name. It is like two notes plucked on a harp.
And it must be a wonderful place, surely, if great poets cannot
describe it."

"It is not a place," said the captain, "it's a girl."

"As for women, Venice--"

"Venice be damned!" said the sea-captain. "Not in Venice, not in all
the world, is there the like for grace or beauty of Tao-Tuen. They call
her Golden Bells," he says.

"Is she a dancing-girl?" Marco asked.

"She is not a dancing-girl," says the sea-captain, "she is the daughter
of Kubla, the great Khan."

"A cold and beautiful princess," says Marco Polo.

"She is not a cold and beautiful princess," says the sea-captain. "She
is warm as the sun in early June, and she may be beautiful and a
princess, but we all think of her as Golden Bells, the little girl in
the Chinese garden."

"Did you ever see her?" says Marco, eagerly. "Tell me."

"I saw her before I left," says t