ly Kitty's sadness gave way; her starved senses clamored; she woke
to poetry and pleasure. All round her, stretching almost across the
canal, the noiseless flock of gondolas--dark, leaning figures impelling
them from behind, and in front the high prows and glow-worm lights; in
the boats, a multitude of dim, shrouded figures, with not a face
visible; and in their midst the <i>barca</i>, temple of light and music,
built up of flowers, and fluttering scarves, and many-colored lanterns,
a sparkling fantasy of color, rose and gold and green, shining on the
bosom of the night. To either side, the long, dark lines of
thrice-historic palaces; scarcely a poor light here and there at their
water-gates; and now and then the lamps of the Traghetti.... Otherwise,
darkness, soundless motion, and, overhead, dim stars.

"Margaret! Look!"

Kitty caught her companion's arm in a mad delight.

Some one for the amusement of the guests of Venice was experimenting on
the top of the campanile of St. Mark's with those electric lights which
were then the toys of science, and are now the eyes and tools of war. A
search-light was playing on the basin of St. Mark's and on the mouth of
the canal. Suddenly it caught the Church of the Salute--and the whole
vast building, from the Queen of Heaven on its topmost dome down to the
water's brim, the figures of saints and prophets and apostles which
crowd its steps and ledges, the white whorls, like huge sea-shells, that
make its buttresses, the curves and volutes of its cornices and
doorways, rushed upon the eye in a white and blinding splendor, making
the very darkness out of which the vision sprang alive and rich. Not a
Christian church, surely, but a palace of Poseidon! The bewildered gazer
saw naiads and bearded sea-gods in place of angels and saints, and must
needs imagine the champing of Poseidon's horses at the marble steps,
straining towards the sea.

The vision wavered, faded, reappeared, and finally died upon the night.
Then the wild beams began to play on the canal, following the serenata,
lighting up now the palaces on either hand, now some single gondola,
revealing every figure and gesture of the laughing English or Americans
who filled it, in a hard white flash.

"Oh! listen, Kitty!" said Margaret. "Some one is going to sing 'Che
faro.'"

Miss French was very musical, and she turned in a trance of pleasure
towards the <i>barca</i> whence came the first bars of the accompaniment.

She