“Short, love! why, eight weeks have seemed an eternity to me without you; and you honoured me just now by saying that the time had appeared long, even to you--even to my liege lady, sitting serene in her palace of art, painting contadinas and their olive-faced offspring--even to you, whose love is as a thread of silk against a cable, compared to mine. Even to you, my mistress and my tyrant.” “That was because you were so far away. But there will be nothing to hinder our seeing each other, as often as you may find convenient. I have set my heart upon painting steadily for a twelvemonth, without any distractions.” “There is no such place as Venice for a painter. Think of the Miss Montalbas, and the splendid work they have done at Venice. Would you not like to be like them?” “Would I not like to be like Apelles?” “Well, Venice will be your treasury; Venice will fill that busy brain with ideas. You shall be fed upon pictures old and new--the new living pictures in the narrow streets and canals; the old masters in the churches and palaces. You shall learn of Tintoret and Veronese. You shall paint as much as you like. You shall have no distractions. We shall be strangers there, can live as we choose. Summer is the time for Venice, Allegra. Benighted English people have an idea that Italy is a place to winter in, and they go and shiver in marble palaces, and watch the torrential rain beating against windows that were never meant to shut out bad weather. The Italians know that their land is a land of summer, and they know how to enjoy sunny days and balmy nights. You don’t know how delicious life is on the Lido when the night is only a brief interval of starshine betwixt sunset and dawn. You don’t know what a dream of delight it is to float along the lagoons and watch the lamp-lit city melt into the mists of evening, breathing faint echoes of music and song. A great many things of beauty have been turned to ugliness, Allegra, since printing and the steam engine were invented; but, thank God! Venice is not one of them. You will think of my plan, won’t you, love? At the least, it is a thing to be considered.” “Anything you say is worthy to be considered, John. And now come in and see Isola and Martin.” He felt that he had gone far enough--he felt that it were unwise to press the question too much at first. He meant to be gently persistent; and he meant to have his own way. He followed Allegra into the drawing-room--a room full of light and sunshine, which had been beautified and made home-like by the addition of a few Japaneseries and a little old Italian furniture which Martin Disney had picked up at a bric-à-brac shop in the Via Vittorio Emanuelo. There were flowers everywhere, in the bright Italian pottery, so artless, so cheap, so gay, in its varieties of form and colouring. To Hulbert’s fancy it was the prettiest room he had seen for an age.