“I acted in the teeth of a bitter Venetian prejudice against priests. All my friends here--they’re mostly young men with the modern Italian ideas, or old liberals--hate and despise the priests. They believe that priests are full of guile and deceit, that they are spies for the Austrians, and altogether evil.” “Don Ippolito is welcome to report our most secret thoughts to the police,” said Florida, whose look of rising alarm relaxed into a smile. “Oh,” cried the painter, “how you leap to conclusions! I never intimated that Don Ippolito was a spy. On the contrary, it was his difference from other priests that made me think of him for a moment. He seems to be as much cut off from the church as from the world. And yet he is a priest, with a priest’s education. What if I should have been altogether mistaken? He is either one of the openest souls in the world, as you have insisted, or he is one of the closest.” “I should not be afraid of him in any case,” said Florida; “but I can’t believe any wrong of him.” Ferris frowned in annoyance. “I don’t want you to; I don’t, myself. I’ve bungled the matter as I might have known I would. I was trying to put into words an undefined uneasiness of mine, a quite formless desire to have you possessed of the whole case as it had come up in my mind. I’ve made a mess of it,” said Ferris rising, with a rueful air. “Besides, I ought to have spoken to Mrs. Vervain.” “Oh no,” cried Florida, eagerly, springing to her feet beside him. “Don’t! Little things wear upon my mother, so. I’m glad you didn’t speak to her. I don’t misunderstand you, I think; I expressed myself badly,” she added with an anxious face. “I thank you very much. What do you want me to do?” By Ferris’s impulse they both began to move down the garden path toward the water-gate. The sunset had faded out of the fountain, but it still lit the whole heaven, in whose vast blue depths hung light whiffs of pinkish cloud, as ethereal as the draperies that floated after Miss Vervain as she walked with a splendid grace beside him, no awkwardness, now, or self-constraint in her. As she turned to Ferris, and asked in her deep tones, to which some latent feeling imparted a slight tremor, “What do you want me to do?” the sense of her willingness to be bidden by him gave him a delicious thrill. He looked at the superb creature, so proud, so helpless; so much a woman, so much a child; and he caught his breath before he answered. Her gauzes blew about his feet in the light breeze that lifted the foliage; she was a little near-sighted, and in her eagerness she drew closer to him, fixing her eyes full upon his with a bold innocence. “Good heavens! Miss Vervain,” he cried, with a sudden blush, “it isn’t a serious matter. I’m a fool to have spoken to you. Don’t do anything. Let things go on as before. It isn’t for me to instruct you.”