unkind. That sort of uncongenial admonition might be left to one's
confessor; wasn't that what confessors were there for?

But why think of stealing purses so late at night? No doubt merely
because it was late at night. Peter curled himself up and drew the sheet
over his ears and sighed sleepily. He seemed to hear the rich, pleasant
echoes of Peggy's best nursery voice far off, and Hilary's high,
plaintive tones rising above it.

But above both, dominant and insistent, murmured the lapping voice of the
wonderful city at night. A faint rhythm of snoring beyond a thin wall
somehow suggested Mrs. Johnson, and Peter laughed into his pillow.

CHAPTER VIII

PETER UNDERSTANDS

On the shores of the Lido, three days later, Peter and Leslie came upon
Denis Urquhart. He was lying on the sand in the sun on the Adriatic side,
and building St. Mark's, rather well. Peter stood and looked at it
critically.

"Not bad. But you'd better let us help you. We've been studying the
original exhaustively, Leslie and I."

"A very fine and remarkable building," said Leslie, ponderously, and
Peter laughed for the sheer pleasure of seeing Urquhart's lazy length
stretched on the warm sand.

"Cheriton's somewhere about," said Urquhart. "But he wouldn't help me
with St. Mark's. He was all for walking round the island at a great pace
and seeing how long it took him. So superfluously energetic, isn't he?
Fancy being energetic in Venice."

Peter was thankful that he was. The thought of Cheriton's eyes upon him
made him shudder.

"He has his good points," Urquhart added; "but he excites himself too
much. Always taking up some violent crusade against something or other.
Can't live and let live. Another dome here, I think."

Peter wondered if Cheriton's latest crusade was against Hilary's taste
in art, and if so what Urquhart thought on that subject. It was an
uncomfortable thought. He characteristically turned away from it.

"The intense blue of the sea, contrasted with the fainter blue of the
Euganean Hills," said Leslie suddenly, "is most remarkable and beautiful.
What?"

He was proud of having noticed that. He was always proud of noticing
beauty unaided. He made his remark with the simple pleasure of a child
in his own appreciation. His glance at Peter said, "I am getting on, I
think?"

The others agreed that he was correct. He then bent his great mind to the
completion of St. Mark's, and Urquhart discovered what Peter had lon