along the northern <i>lidi</i>
and <i>murazzi</i>, that Cliffe might show his companion, from near by, the
Porto del Lido, that exit from the lagoons where the salt lakes grow
into the sea.

A certain wildness and exaltation, drawn from the solitudes around them
and from their <i>tete-a-tete</i>, could be read in both the man and the
woman. Cliffe watched his companion incessantly. As he lay against the
side of the boat at her feet, he saw her framed in the curving sides of
the stern, and could read her changing expressions. Not a happy
face!--that he knew! A face haunted by shadows from an underworld of
thought--pursuing furies of remorse and fear. Not the less did he
triumph that he had it <i>there</i>, in his power; nor had the flashes of
terror and wavering will which he discerned in any way diminished its
beauty.

"How long have you known--that woman?" Kitty asked him, suddenly, after
a pause broken only by the playing of the wind with the sail.

Cliffe laughed.

"The Ricci? Why do you want to know, madame?"

She made a contemptuous lip.

"I knew her first," said Cliffe, "some years ago in Milan. She was then
at La Scala--walking on--paid for her good looks. Then somebody sent her
to Paris to the Conservatoire, which she only left this spring. This is
her first Italian engagement. Her people are shopkeepers here--in the
Merceria--which helped her. She is as vain as a peacock and as dangerous
as a pet panther."

"Dangerous!" Kitty's scorn had passed into her voice.

"Well, Italy is still the country of the knife," said Cliffe,
lightly--"and I could still hire a bravo or two--in Venice--if I wanted
them."

"Does the Ricci hire them?"

Cliffe shrugged his shoulders.

"She'd do it without winking, if it suited her." Then, after a
pause--"Do you still wonder why I should have chosen her society?"

"Oh no," said Kitty, hastily. "You told me."

"As much as a <i>friend</i> cares to know?"

She nodded, flushing, and dropped the subject.

Cliffe's mouth still smiled, but his eyes studied her with a veiled and
sinister intensity.

"I have not seen the lady for a week," he resumed. "She pesters me with
notes. I promised to go and see her in a new play to-morrow night,
but--"

"Oh, go!" said Kitty--"by all means go!"

"'Ruy Blas' in Italian? I think not. Ah! did you see that gleam on the
Campanile?--marvellous!... Miladi, I have a question to ask you."

"<i>Dites!</i>" said Kitty.

"Did you put me i