Across the square, giving access to the Merceria, the Way of the Merchants, was the clock tower. As the great painted face recorded noon two giant moors slowly struck a bronze bell with big hammers, marking the hour. “Lovely!” murmured Cynthia. “Oh Chick, I wish ... I wish we didn’t have to go back, ever. I wish we could stay on, in one of those sweet old palaces. ...” “Like Othello and Desdemona?” “No ...,” slowly. “She got smothered, didn’t she? I guess I wouldn’t care for that.” “New York will be fun too,” hazarded Chick. “And with all the advertisement you’ve had, young lady; your magazine covers on every newstand, month after month.” “Chick! Are they really? Yes, I suppose they are, I hadn’t thought of that. Better hurry back, hadn’t I?” And then laughed at her own weather-vane mood. “Well, what shall we do next, Chick? I feel sane once more.” Chick’s suggestion was: lunch at the Danieli, which was the swankiest hotel in Venice, and, he had heard, one of the loveliest of the old Venetian palaces. Then back to the traghetti to see if Luigi had come. Oh, that again! Cynthia made an impatient gesture. Save us from a man with one idea! But she adored the lunch, loved the gracious old palace with its carved, minstrel gallery, its floor of multicolored tiles, its ceiling carved and painted in deep blue and rose and gold. Out into the sunlight again, and the Adriatic shimmering as blue as the ceiling, a pleasant little wind chilled by the snows of the Dalmatian Alps and the white bubble of the Church of the Salute rising across the lagoon. “Shall we ride, or walk?” asked Chick. By the way he said it Cynthia knew he wanted to walk. “We see more on foot, don’t we?” she suggested amiably. Perhaps a little later they could go through the Grand Canal in a gondola. And indeed she loved the great Piazza flanked by the Doges Palace, by St. Mark’s and the long colonnade of the Library and the Mint. And the shops beneath those columns most fascinating of all. Cynthia’s whole allowance for abroad had been divided between seeing places, and saving up a bit for what might, when she got home, prove to be a long wait for more work. But she had learned a lot by looking just in windows, had learned that you can so memorize a beautiful thing you can at least carry it away with you in your mind. “See, Chick, isn’t that the loveliest old bracelet? ...” A thick circle, not quite joined, of gold, the two ends which almost touched circled with tiny crowns of blue, blue turquoises. “And oh, Chick, just look at that ring. ...” A lovely old thing of Florentine gold, studded with seed pearls and surrounding a topaz as richly dark as the gold itself. Chick put a hand on her arm and urged her along to the next window which, being full of ancient books and maps was not quite so enthralling.