Three Weeks

And once again her vast knowledge came as a fresh wonder to Paul--no smallest detail of history seemed wanting in her talk, so that he lived again in that old world and felt himself a Doge.

When they were alone at last, tasting the golden wine, she rose and drew him to the loggia balustrade. Dmitry had drawn back the curtains and extinguished the lights, and only the brilliant moon lit the scene; a splendid moon, two nights from the full. There she shone straight down upon them to welcome them to this City of Romance.

What loveliness met Paul's view! A loveliness in which art and nature blended in one satisfying whole.

"Darling," he said, "this is better than the Bürgenstock. Let us go out on the water and float about, too."

It was exceedingly warm these last days of May, and that night not a zephyr stirred a ripple. A cloak and scarf of black gauze soon hid the lady's splendour, and they descended the staircase hand in hand to the waiting open gondola.

It was a new experience of joy for Paul to recline there, and drift away down the stream, amidst the music and the coloured lanterns, and the wonderful, wonderful spell of the place.

The lady was silent for a while, and then she began to whisper passionate words of love. She had never before been thus carried away--and he must say them to her--as he held her hand--burning words, inflaming the imagination and exciting the sense. It seemed as if all the other nights of love were concentrated into this one in its perfect joy.

Who can tell of the wild exaltation which filled Paul? He was no longer just Paul Verdayne, the ordinary young Englishman; he was a god--and this was Olympus.

"Look, Paul!" she said at last. "Can you not see Desdemona peeping from the balcony of her house there? And to think she will have no happiness before her Moor will strangle her to-night! Death without joys. Ah! that is cruel. Some joys are well worth death, are they not, my lover, as you and I should know?"

"Worth death and eternity," said Paul. "For one such night as this with you a man would sell his soul."

It was not until they turned at the opening of the Guidecca to return to their palazzo that they both became aware of another gondola following them, always at the same distance behind--a gondola with two solitary figures in it huddled on the seats.

The lady gave a whispered order in Italian to her gondolier, who came to a sudden stop, thus forcing the other boat to come much nearer before it, too, arrested its course. There a moonbeam caught the faces of the men as they leant forward to see what had occurred. One of them was Dmitry, and the other a younger man of the pure Kalmuck type whom Paul had never seen.