r simple, fresh, wholesome loveliness might have pierced even the
indifference of a man to whom there was but one pretty woman in the
world, and who had lived since their marriage as if his wife had
absorbed her whole sex into herself: this deep, unconscious constancy
was a noble trait in him, but it is not so rare in men as women would
have us believe. For Elmore, Miss Mayhew merely pervaded the place in
her finer way, as the flowers on the table did, as the sweet butter, the
new eggs, and the morning's French bread did; he looked at her with a
perfectly serene ignorance of her piquant face, her beautiful eyes and
abundant hair, and her trim, straight figure. But his wife exulted in
every particular of her charm, and was as generously glad of it as if it
were her own; as women are when they are sure that the charm of others
has no designs. The ladies twittered and laughed together, and as he
was a man without small talk, he soon dropped out of the conversation
into a reverie, from which he found himself presently extracted by a
question from his wife.

"We had better go in a gondola, hadn't we, Owen?" She seemed to be, as
she put this, trying to look something into him. He, on his part, tried
his best to make out her meaning, but failed.

He simply asked, "Where? Are you going out?"

"Yes. Lily has some shopping she _must_ do. I think we can get it at
Pazienti's in San Polo."

Again she tried to pierce him with her meaning. It seemed to him a
sudden advance from the position she had taken the night before in
regard to Miss Mayhew's not going out; but he could not understand his
wife's look, and he feared to misinterpret if he opposed her going. He
decided that she wished him for some reason to oppose the gondola, so he
said, "I think you'd better walk, if Lily isn't too tired."

"Oh, _I'm_ not tired at all!" she cried.

"I can go with you, in that direction, on my way to the library," he
added.

"Well, that will be very nice," said Mrs. Elmore, discontinuing her
look, and leaving her husband with an uneasy sense of wantonly assumed
responsibility.

"She can step into the Frari a moment, and see those tombs," he said. "I
think it will amuse her."

Lily broke into a laugh. "Is that the way you amuse yourselves in
Venice?" she asked; and Mrs. Elmore hastened to reassure her.

"That's the way Mr. Elmore amuses himself. You know his history makes
every bit of the past fascinating to him."

"Oh, yes, that histo