laying her hand upon
the haunches of a great stone lion that crouches there, polished smooth
with the passage of centuries; "but I had a notion that he was unhappy
because he had to live in exile, a mere servant, you know, in a dreadful
hospital in Milan. And so I went and offered to give him a gondola, and
he wouldn't accept it. He was thanking me the other day, at Torcello,
when you came up. I suppose that was why he was so--melodramatic," and
she laughed a little forced laugh, and looked Geoffry straight in the
face again.

He saw her embarrassment, and understood that she had been setting him
right, and that it had cost her an effort to refer to the matter. And
so he said the kindest thing possible under the circumstances.

"If you mean his kissing your hand," he replied, with an air of
discussing a matter of no consequence, "there's nothing melodramatic in
that, at least when a gondolier does it. It is the custom of their
class. Old Pietro kisses mine and makes me feel like an ancient doge."

He could see that she was relieved.

"I wonder where the others are," she said. "Let us go and look them up.
I didn't feel like anything so fine as a doge," she added, lightly, as
they came out into the square again. "I felt like a very interfering and
foolish kind of person. I don't think I shall do anything so silly
again."

"There is nothing silly about a generous action," Geof protested,
looking with great kindness at the young girl, to whom the garment of
humility was not unbecoming. "I rather think, though, that the man is
better off than you imagine. At any rate, I'm very sure he is better off
for the goodwill you have shown him."

Then, with a return of his previous solicitude, somewhat stimulated by
a new realisation of the unusual beauty of this experimenter in
mysteries, he added:

"These Italians are impressionable fellows. They sometimes feel things
more than we cold-blooded Northerners appreciate."

"Do they?" said May, in her most matter-of-fact voice, giving Geof a
glance of quick intelligence, and putting herself instantly on the
defensive; "I should have said it was rather touch and go with their
feelings. Ah! There's Mr. Kenwick, pretending he doesn't see us!"

XIV

A Summer's Day

May had been quite correct in her surmise that Kenwick was shamming,
though this was merely based on general theories. Not only did he see
her as she emerged with Geoffry Daymond from the comparative obscuri