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IV

He waited for a sign from the Giudecca. He told himself that Theodosia Barton was not done with him yet, nor he with her.

The tourist-stream, turning northward from Rome and Florence, met in Venice a new stream of Germans. The paved passage beside the hotel garden was alive with a cosmopolitan picnic party. Lawrence lingered and watched; perhaps when the current set strongly to the north again, it would carry him along with it.

He had not seen Caspar Severance. Each day of delay made it more awkward to meet him, made the confession of disappointment more obvious, he reflected. Each day it was easier to put out to the lagoons for a still dream, and return when the Adriatic breeze was winding into the heated calles. Over there, in the heavy-scented garden on the Giudecca, lined against a purplish sea, she was resting; she had given free warning for him to go, but she was there—-.

“She holds me here in the Mare Morto, where the sea-weeds wind about and bind.”

And he believed that he should meet her somewhere in the dead lagoon, out yonder around the city, in the enveloping gloom of the waters which held the pearl of Venice.

So each afternoon his gondola crept out from the Fondamenta del Zattere into the ruffling waters of the Giudecca canal, and edged around the deserted Campo di Marte. There the gondolier labored in the viscous sea- grass.

One day, from far behind, came the plash of an oar in the channel. As the narrow hull swept past, he saw a hand gather in the felza curtains, and a woman kneel to his side.

“So Bastian takes you always to the dead sea,” she tossed aboard.

“Bastian might convoy other forestieri,” Lawrence defended.

“Really? here to the laguna morta?” and as his gondola slid into the channel, she added:

“I knew you were in Venice; you could not go without–another time.”

“What would that bring?” he questioned her with his eyes.

“How should I know?” she answered, evasively. “Come with me out to the San Giorgio in Alga. It is the loneliest place in Venice!”

Lawrence sat at her feet. The gondola moved on between the sea-weed banks. Away off by Chioggia, filmy gray clouds grew over the horizon.

“Rain.”

She shook her head. “For the others, landward. Those opalescent clouds streaking the sky are merely the undertone of Venice; they are always here.”

“The note of sadness,” he suggested.

“You thought to have ended with me.”

She rested her head on her hands and looked at him. He preferred to have her mention Caspar Severance.

“Whenever I was beyond your eyes, you were not quite sure. You went back to your hotel and wondered. The wine was over strong for your temperate nerves, and there was so much to do elsewhere!” she mocked him.

“After all, I was a fragment. And you judged in your wise new-world fashion that fragments were–useless.”

Just ahead was a tiny patch of earth, rimmed close to the edge by ruined walls. The current running landward drew them about the corner, under the madonna’s hand, and the gondola came to rest beside the lichens and lizards of a crumbling wharf.

“No,” she continued, “I shall not let you go so easily.” One hand fell beside his arm, figuratively indicating her thought.

“And I shall carry you off,” he responded, slowly. “It lies between you– and all, everything.”

The gondolier had gone ashore. Silence had swallowed him up.

“All, myself and the others; effort, variety–for the man who loves you, there is but one act in life.”

“Splendid!” Her lips parted as if savoring his words.

His voice went on, low, strained to plunge his words into her heart.

“You are the woman, the curious thing that God made to stir life. You would draw all activities to you, and through you nothing may pass. Like the dead sea of grass you encompass the end of desire. You have been with me from my manhood, the fata morgana that laughed at my love of other creatures. I must meet you, I knew, face to face!”