He stood so long gazing at the words that his cousin went to him.

“Excuse me, Edith, I must go out,” he said, in a stifled voice.

“Good-night, Edward,” she said, and asked no questions, but held out her hand.

The hand that took hers was cold, and her good-night received not a word of response.

He went out and called a gondola.

“Where to?” the gondolier asked.

“Anywhere!”

They went up and down, and across to the Giudecca, and down again, and turned the point of the Public Garden, and the gondolier was about returning, when for the first time his passenger spoke: 

“Go round by San Pietro and inside by San Daniele.  Go where it is dark.”

“He is disappointed in love, or jealous,” the man thought as they threaded the inner ways of the city, now by a lighted piazza, now under shadowing bridges, or along the gloomy, silent walls of palaces that shut them in.

“Where shall I go now?” he ventured to ask, when they had gone the whole length of the city.  “We are in the Cannareggio.”

The passenger raised himself.  He had sat all the time with his head bowed down.  “Let her drop down the canal,” he said, his voice grown gentler.  “Keep well to the left.”

They went out into the canal and downward.  Passing under the Rialto, there rose a deep sigh from the gondola, and the echoing arch whispered back a sigh.

The passenger was alert now, looking at all the palaces at the left, as though he had never seen them before.  As they passed Palazzo Pesaro a gondola touched its steps, and a lady and gentleman got out and walked up to the portone.  The moonlight sparkled on, the uniform of one and on the gilded fan of the other.  They had been out together, and alone, drawing sweetness from the same air where he had breathed in bitterness.

“Well, it is fitting,” he sighed.  “Her head was made to wear a coronet.  God bless her!—­and him.”

He looked at them standing in the archway of the palace saying good-night till distance hid them from him.  He was in front of his cousin’s hotel, and, looking up, he saw her still sitting in the balcony where he had left her.

Late as it was, he landed and went up to her again.  She recognized him when he stepped out of the gondola, and was not too much surprised when he appeared.  He seated himself beside her, and looked out over the water without saying a word.

“Are you not well?” she asked at length, timidly.

He started.  “Why do you ask?”

“You look pale,” she answered.

For a moment he did not speak.  Then he said, “I have had a disappointment, Edith.”

She leaned toward him with a sigh and a hand half extended, compassion in all her attitude.

He took the hand, and rose.  “Let me tell you all, dear,” he said.  “I need comfort.  Come and let me tell you,—­if it will not be a bore,”