For a day or two after that we stayed within call, so to speak, and had no fancy for putting out to the Lagoons. There were mornings when it was pleasant to be utterly and frankly frivolous and do nothing but wander under the arcades of the Piazzetta and in and out of the bewilderingly pretty shops. Such a spread of colour and glitter they were, and so tempting was it to pick up some of the alluring trifles for the new home we were going to make in Peking! The Murano glass at Salviati’s I still think the most beautiful product of our own or any other time. Every tint of sea and sky and jewel gleamed in the ethereal beakers and vases; I remember a tall goblet of transparent topaz, shot with gold, that twisted and curled on its tendril stem like a newly opened convolvulus, spreading at last into a cup too ethereal for earthly lips to touch, so full of light that the most sparkling wine would have darkened it; and all round, for handles, were blown wreaths of milky iridescent foam, so faint that it seemed as if they must run down its sides and wet your fingers with salt spray. It was like getting into the Sea-King’s palace under the sea to spend an hour at Salviati’s; every lovely freak and fancy of sun and water, from the brooding sapphire of secret caves to the last bubble of spray on a curling wave, it was all there, caught and crystallised for mortals to love and handle. Those were the days of beads—one wore as many chains as one liked, the more the better—and for years I went round with a little Venetian rosary of blue and gold flecked with fairy roses round my neck. The mother-of-pearl overcame me altogether—long garlands of the tiny shells strung in fanciful patterns—each perfect in itself and shot with rainbows through its moonlight sheen—but the dignity of a married woman forbade the wearing of such things now. For years they lay about on my dressing-table reflected in the depths of a Venetian mirror which also accompanied me everywhere, a big oval set in a frame of translucent flowers and leaves, neither white nor silver nor pearl, but just the colour of the foam when the sun shines through it. We went out to Murano once and saw all the processes of glass-blowing, and they made a little vase for me while I was there; but the secrets of those marvellous colours were not explained, and I came away with one cherished illusion intact—I am still sure that the glass-blowers have a tributary tribe of nymphs and fairies who gather their tints for them out at sea, in nets woven of sunbeams and moonrays!