He had always liked to believe that _“grandes dames”_ leaned back in the luxurious upholstery of their victorias, landaulettes, daumonts or automobiles with an air of inexpressible though languid hauteur. The Newport letter in the Cranston Telegraph often referred to it. But the gayety of that greeting from the Countess' little handkerchief was infinitely refreshing, and Mellin decided that animation was more becoming than hauteur--even to a _“grande dame.”_ That night he wrote (almost without effort) the verses published in the Cranston Telegraph two weeks later. They began: _Marquise, ma belle_, with your kerchief of lace Awave from your flying car, And your slender hand-- The hand to which he referred was the same which had arrested his gondola and his heart simultaneously, five days ago, in Venice. He was on his way to the station when Madame de Vaurigard's gondola shot out into the Grand Canal from a narrow channel, and at her signal both boats paused. “Ah! but you fly away!” she cried, lifting her eyebrows mournfully, as she saw the steamer-trunk in his gondola. “You are goin' return to America?” “No. I'm just leaving for Rome.” “Well, in three day' _I_ am goin' to Rome!” She clapped her hands lightly and laughed. “You know this is three time' we meet jus' by chance, though that second time it was so quick--_pff_! like that--we didn't talk much togezzer! Monsieur Mellin,” she laughed again, “I think we mus' be frien's. Three time'--an' we are both goin' to Rome! Monsieur Mellin, you believe in _Fate_?” With a beating heart he did. Thence came the invitation to meet her at the Magnifique for tea, and the card she scribbled for him with a silver pencil. She gave it with the prettiest gesture, leaning from her gondola to his as they parted. She turned again, as the water between them widened, and with her “_Au revoir_” offered him a faintly wistful smile to remember. All the way to Rome the noises of the train beat out the measure of his Parisian verses: _Marquise, ma belle_, with your kerchief of lace Awave from your flying car-- He came out of his reverie with a start. A dozen men and women, dressed for dinner, with a gold-fish officer or two among them, swam leisurely through the aquarium on their way to the hotel restaurant. They were the same kind of people who had sat at the little tables for tea--people of the great world, thought Mellin: no vulgar tourists or “trippers” among them; and he shuddered at the remembrance of his pension (whither it was time to return) and its conscientious students of Baedeker, its dingy halls and permanent smell of cold food. Suddenly a high resolve lit his face: he got his coat and hat from the brass-and-blue custodian in the lobby, and without hesitation entered the “bureau.” “I 'm not quite satisfied where I am staying--where I'm stopping, that is,” he said to the clerk. “I think I'll take a room here.”