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His lips closed.

“Go on!”

“I have met you,” he added, sullenly, “and should I turn away, I should not forget you. You will go with me, and I shall hunger for you and hate you, and you will make it over, my life, to fill the hollow of your hand.”

“To fill the hollow of my hand,” she repeated softly, as if not understanding.

“You will mould it and pat it and caress it, until it fits. You will never reason about it, nor doubt, nor talk; the tide flows underneath into the laguna morta, and never wholly flows out. God has painted in man’s mind the possible; and he has painted the delusions, the impossible–and that is woman?”

“Impossible,” she murmured. “Oh, no, not that!”

Her eyes compelled him; her hand dropped to his hand. Venice sank into a gray blot in the lagoon. The water was waveless like a deep night.

“Possible for a moment,” he added, dreamily, “possible as the unsung lyric. Possible as the light of worlds behind the sun and moon. Possible as the mysteries of God that the angels whisper—-“

“The only possible,” again her eyes flamed; the dark hair gleamed black above the white face.

“And that is enough for us forever!”

V

The heavy door of the Casa Lesca swung in, admitting Lawrence to a damp stone-flagged room. At the farther end it opened on a little cortile, where gnarled rose-bushes were in bloom. A broken Venus, presiding over a dusty fountain, made the centre of the cortile, and there a strapping girl from the campagna was busy trimming the stalks of a bunch of roses. The signorina had not arrived; Lawrence lounged against the gunwale of a gondola, which lay on one side of the court.

A pretentious iron gate led from the cortile to the farm, where the running vines stretched from olive-stump to trellis, weaving a mat of undulating green. It was so quiet, here in the rear of the palace, that one could almost hear the hum of the air swimming over the broad vine leaves.

Lawrence, at first alert, then drowsy, reclined in the shade, and watched the girl. From time to time she threw him a soft word of Venetian. Then, gathering her roses, she shook them in his face and tripped up the stairs to the palace above.

He had made the appointment without intention, but he came to fulfil it in a tumult of energy.

She must choose and he arrange–for that future which troubled his mind. But the heated emptiness of the June afternoon soothed his will. He saw that whatever she bade, that he would do. Still here, while he was alone, before her presence came to rule, he plotted little things. When he was left with himself he wondered about it; no, he did not want her, did not want it! His life was over there, beyond her, and she must bend to that conception. People, women, anyone, this piece of beauty and sense, were merely episodic. The sum was made from all, and greater than all.

The door groaned, and he turned to meet her, shivering in the damp passage. She gathered a wrap about her shoulders.

“Caspar would not go,” she explained, appealingly.

“Which one is to go?” the young man began. She sank down on a bench and turned her head wearily to the vineyard. Over the swaying tendrils of the vine, a dark line, a blue slab of salt water, made the horizon.

“Should I know?” her face said, mutely.

“He thinks you should,” she spoke, calmly. “He has been talking two hours about you, your future, your brilliant performances—-“

“That detained you!”

“He is plotting to make you a great man. You belong to the world, he said, and, the world would have you. They need you to plan and exhort, I believe.”

“So you come to tell me–“

“Let us go out to the garden.” She laid her hand reprovingly on his arm. “We can see the pictures later.”