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 ca.n.a.l, and edged around the deserted Campo di Marte. There the gondolier labored in the viscous sea-gra.s.s.

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 ash.o.r.e. 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 G.o.d made to stir life. You would draw all activities to you, and through you nothing may pa.s.s.

Like the dead sea of gra.s.s you encompa.s.s 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!"

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. G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 tr.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 pa.s.sage. 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.