trailed and twisted, and stretched out, till it
looked like a bridge reaching from one sky margin to the other, and
then rolled together again and fled away to the east just as it had
approached from the west--now a thin white one, that flew past like
smoke, and then a still more delicate one, that hung like a spider's
web in the blue, and suddenly vanished in the midst of the sky, as if
the depths had opened to draw it in.

Cain's boat sped over the water, and the play of the clouds in the sky,
was all around the boat on the lake.

"Look at the clouds," said Vincenza, pointing to the water.

When they had pushed off from the shore, clear sunshine had been
shining over the lake. Now it was quenched, and the shadows always made
the valley seem gloomy like night. But all at once the clouds that were
sailing over the sky began to glow. The white ones turned to fragments
of flying flame, and a mysterious light shone through the dark ones,
and bordered them with purple. And the steep and desolate banks and the
lake itself glowed with the rosy hue of the clouds. It was almost as if
an invisible torchlight procession were climbing upward over one of the
mountains or rocky wildernesses, and all the flickering torches cast
their light into the lonely valley as they moved onward and upward,
step by step.

"It was never so beautiful before," said Vincenza, speaking softly for
surprise and reverent joy. "You're on fire, Franz," she added with a
smile, that like her voice was almost reverent.

The glow poured over the boat and the two figures in it. Cain had laid
aside his workman's blouse and stood in his dark trousers and white
shirt. As he sculled, his figure bent forward and back with a great
pleasure in the motion, and something like timidity came over Vincenza
as she kept on looking at him, and she said hesitatingly: "You are--a
handsome fellow--Franz Fausch."

"Shall we sing something?" asked Cain.

Vincenza did not answer, but as he unconsciously began to sing, she
joined in with him.

They used often to sing together, when they were climbing some mountain
path, but always before their singing had been some gay melody to which
their steps kept time, and they had not paid much attention to what
they were singing: But now Cain started one song after another, and the
boundless silence that surrounded them, carried their voices back to
them, in a way that delighted them. At first they sang of their
fatherland, then one