in the light of my superior experience,
that I considered it best for us to be married right away, I shouldn't
expect you to contradict me."

"Oh, Peter!"

"We can't keep Mrs. Merrithew on forever, you know," he suggested, "and
we've such a lot to do--there's Greece and Egypt and the Holy Land----"

"But can we--be married in Venice, I mean?"

"That," said Peter, "is what I'm waiting your permission to find out."

He spent the greater part of the afternoon at that business without,
however, getting satisfaction. "Marriage in Italy," the consul told
him, "is a sort of world-without-end affair. Even if you cable for the
necessary papers it will be a matter of a month or six weeks before the
ceremony could be accomplished. You'll do better to go to Switzerland
with the young lady."

For the present he went back to her with a list of the required
certificates, and another item which he brought out later as a
corrective for the disappointment for the first.

"My birth and baptismal certificates? I haven't any," said Miss
Dassonville, "and I don't believe you have either; and I don't want to
go to Switzerland."

"No," said Peter, "even that takes three weeks."

"Why can't he marry us himself--the consul, I mean? I thought wherever
the flag went up was territory of the United States."

"If you will come along with me in the morning we can ask him," Peter
suggested, and on the way there he loosed for her benefit the second
item of his yesterday's discovery. They slid past the facade of a
certain palace and she kissed the tip of her finger to it lightly. "It's
as if we had a secret between us," she explained, "the secret of the
garden. Besides, I shall always love it because it was there I first
suspected that you--cared. When did you begin to care, Peter?"

"Since before I can remember. Would you like to live in it?"

"In this palace? Here in Venice?"

"It's for rent," he told her; "the consul has it."

"But could we afford it?"

"Well," said Peter, "if you like it so much, at the rate things are
here, we can pull it up by the roots and take it back to Bloombury."

They lost themselves in absurd speculations as to the probable effect on
the villagers of that, and so failed to take note as their gondola nosed
into the green shadow under the consulate, of the _Merrythought's_
launch athwart the landing, until the captain himself hailed them.

"This port," he declared, "is under embargo. I have been waiting her