you are here, alone, with a face
like that! Don't be afraid of me! Could I lift a finger to harm a
mother that has lost her child? Give me your hands." He gathered both
hers into the warm shelter of his own. "Look at me--trust me! My heart
has grown, Kitty, since you knew me last. It has taken into itself so
many griefs--so many deaths. Tell me your griefs, poor child!--tell me!"

He stooped and kissed her hands--most tenderly, most gravely.

Tears rushed into her eyes. The wild emotions that were her being were
roused beyond control. Bending towards him she began to pour out, first
brokenly, then in a torrent, the wretched, incoherent story, of which
the mere telling, in such an ear, meant new treachery to William and new
ruin for herself.

XXII

On a certain cloudy afternoon, some ten days later, a fishing-boat, with
a patched orange sail, might have been seen scudding under a light
northwesterly breeze through the channels which connect the island of
San Francesco with the more easterly stretches of the Venetian lagoon.
The boat presently neared the shore of one of the cultivated
<i>lidi</i>--islands formed out of the silt of many rivers by the travail of
centuries, some of them still mere sand or mud banks, others covered by
vineyards and fruit orchards--which, with the <i>murazzi</i> or sea-walls of
Venice, stand sentinel between the city and the sea. On the <i>lido</i> along
which the boat was coasting, the vintage was long since over and the
fruit gathered; the last yellow and purple leaves in the orchards, "a
pestilent-stricken multitude," were to-day falling fast to earth, under
the sighing, importunate wind. The air was warm; November was at its
mildest. But all color and light were drowned in floating mists, and
darkness lay over the distant city. It was one of those drear and
ghostly days which may well have breathed into the soul of Shelley that
superb vision of the dead generations of Venice, rising, a phantom host
from the bosom of the sunset, and sweeping in "a rapid mask of death"
over the shadowed waters that saw the birth and may yet furnish the tomb
of so vast a fame.

Two persons were in the boat--Kitty, wrapped in sables, her straying
hair held close by a cap of the same fur--and Geoffrey Cliffe. They had
been wandering in the lagoons all day, in order to escape from Venice
and observers--first at Torcello, then at San Francesco, and now they
were ostensibly coming home in a wide sweep