She put her hands behind her back; the mantle trailed over her train and her fragile dress glimmered in the shade. “It was after the opera at Versailles,” she began. “I was dressed for the ballet and was leaving my dressing-room, when they put a cloak over my head and carried me out to a coach–we drove all night to the house of an English lord in the Rue de Vaugirard—” She stepped suddenly and noiselessly behind the Duke. “—as I was descending from the coach they put a handkerchief over my eyes, so—” Philip Wharton felt a scrap of muslin flung over his head and drawn tight over his eyes, leaving him in pleasant darkness. “—and one led me by the hand, thus—” Her fingers touched his; he smiled passively beneath the bandage. “—and took me into the presence of my lord, who had betted a thousand guineas that I should ride in his cabriolet through Paris. But it was not very long before he was tired of me.” She loosened the handkerchief and withdrew it gently. Philip Wharton opened his eyes on cool shade, a room hung with raised crimson and white velvet and furnished in a very stately style. An arched marble window looked on to a blue canal on which the rays of the setting sun sparkled, and in the seat of this window, that was piled with cushions, a lady sat; she wore a great hooped skirt, fluttering with sarcenet ribbons, and in her red-gold locks drooped a red rose. “As I was saying,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, “you very soon got tired of me.” “_Carina_, no,” answered the Duke. “I have always been in love with you and Venice.” “You went away. It was the day of the Carnival. I was then wearing an orange cloak with a fringe. It was exactly five days since I had met you. But you cared for me more than for any woman you met in Venice.” “I love you now,” said Philip Wharton, “for I have come back to you when I am dying.” She looked at him gravely and stepped out of the window on to the balcony. “Will you come once more in my gondola?” she asked. He followed her. Light steps led from the balcony to the Canal, where a gay gondola cushioned in sapphire blue floated. The lady stepped in and the Duke after her; the gondolier sped the light boat forward between the palaces. “This has always been a pleasant memory to me,” he said. She sat erect with a fan of curled white ostrich to lips and looked at him over the feather tips. “The night you went away,” she said, “my husband hired three bravos. I was crossing the bridge when I met them–this bridge—” Suddenly the Rialto was over them; the gondola had shot from blue and gold into darkness. “They thought I was coming to meet you. My husband—” The boat stopped in the blackness; he felt, though he could not see, the lady rise and step out. Her hand touched his, and blindly following the guidance of it, he stepped ashore, and felt a step beneath his feet; the firm clasp on his wrist drew him through a doorway.