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“Of only one ghost—-“

“Not yet a ghost!” Indeed, her warm, breathing self threw a spirit of life into the moonlight and gainsaid his idle words.

“I have come for you,” he said, a little peremptorily. “To do it I have lost my engagement with life.”

“So the message came. You refused, and now you look for a reward. A man must be paid!”

“I tried to keep the other engagement and could not!”

“I shall make you forget it, as if it were some silly boyish dream.” She began to walk over the moonlit grass. “I was waiting for that–sacrifice. For if you desire me, you must leave the other engagements, always.”

“I know it.”

“I lie in the laguna morta, and the dead are under me, and the living are caught in my sea-weed.” She laughed.

“Now, we have several long hours of moonlight. Shall we stay here?”

The young man shivered.

“No, the Lady Dogessa might disturb us. Let us go out toward Murano.”

“Are you really–alive and mine, not Severance’s?” he threw out, recklessly.

She stopped and smiled.

“First you tell me that I disturb your plans; then you want to know if I am preoccupied. You would like to have me as an ‘extra’ in the subscription.”

As they came out on the flags by the gondola, another boat was pushing a black prow into the rio from the Misericordia canal. It came up to the water-steps where the two stood. Caspar Severance stepped out.

“Caspar!” Miss Barton laughed.

“They told me you were here for dinner,” he explained. He was in evening clothes, a Roman cloak hanging from his shoulders. He looked, standing on the steps below the other two, like an impertinent intrusion.

“Lawrence! I thought you were on your way home.”

Lawrence shook his head. All three were silent, wondering who would dare to open the final theme.

“The Signora Contessa had a headache,” Miss Barton began, nonchalantly.

Severance glanced skeptically at the young American by her side.

“So you fetched il dottore americano? Well, Giovanni is waiting to carry us home.”

Miss Barton stepped forward slowly, as if to enter the last gondola whose prow was nuzzling by the steps.

Lawrence took her hand and motioned to his gondola.

“Miss Barton—-“

Severance smiled, placidly.

“You will miss the midnight train.”

The young man halted a moment, and Miss Barton’s arm slipped into his fingers.

“Perhaps,” he muttered.

“The night will be cool for you,” Severance turned to the woman. She wavered a moment.

“You will miss more than the midnight train,” Severance added to the young fellow, in a low voice.

Lawrence knelt beside his gondola. He glanced up into the face of the woman above him. “Will you come?” he murmured. She gathered up her dress and stepped firmly into the boat. Severance, left alone on the fondamenta, watched the two. Then he turned back to his gondola. The two boats floated out silently into the Misericordia Canal.

“To the Cimeterio,” Miss Barton said. “To the Canale Grande,” Severance motioned.

The two men raised their hats.

* * * * *

For a few moments the man and the woman sat without words, until the gondola cleared the Fondamenta Nuova, and they were well out in the sea of moonlight. Ahead of them lay the stucco walls of the Cimeterio, glowing softly in the white light. Some dark spots were moving out from the city mass to their right, heading for the silent island.

“There goes the conclusion,” Lawrence nodded to the funeral boats.

“But between us and them lies a space of years–life.”

“Who decided?”

“You looked. It was decided.”

The city detached itself insensibly from them, lying black behind. A light wind came down from Treviso, touching the white waves.

“You are thinking that back there, up the Grand Canal, lie fame and accomplishment. You are thinking that now you have your fata morgana–nothing else. You are already preparing a grave for her in your mind!”

Lawrence took her head in his hands. “Never,” he shot out the word. “Never–you are mine; I have come all these ocean miles to find you. I have come for an accounting with the vision that troubles man.” Her face drew nearer.

“I am Venice, you said. I am set in the mare morto. I am built on the sea- weed. But from me you shall not go. You came over the mountains for this.”

The man sighed. Some ultimate conception of life seemed to outline itself on the whitish walls of the Cimeterio–a question of sex. The man would go questioning visions. The woman was held by one.

“Caspar Severance will find his way, and will play your game for you,” she went on coaxingly. “But this,” her eyes were near him, “this is a moment of life. You have chosen. There is no mine and thine.”

One by one the campaniles of Venice loomed, dark pillars in the white sky. And all around toward Mestre and Treviso and Torcello; to San Pietro di Castello and the grim walls of the arsenal, the mare morto heaved gently and sighed.

CHICAGO, January, 1897.