Sometimes grown-up Venice is a little overpowering; one feels called upon to note every turn and building for fear of missing some exquisite bit of architecture, some play of light and shade that must be remembered. Then one is glad to get away to one or another of the islands that lie around her, the nurseries where she played, and dreamed of the future, a thousand years ago. The dearest of them all to me is Torcello. We rowed out there one morning in August, when the sea was very calm and the sun a little veiled by clouds sweeping slowly up from the south. As we approached the island it seemed as if its few buildings were flush with the water; so low does it lie that the grasses and wild roses on the shore were dipping in the wash of the ripples. Some peasants had been cutting the grass, the scent of new-mown hay filled the air, and two great boats pushed out from some inlet and passed between us and the land, laden ten feet high with a cargo of fragrant green gold. As they met the breeze, up went the tawny sails, and they skimmed away over the blue water like bees heavy with pollen. Then there was the cool rush of the turning prow, our gondola ran in softly to the strand, some one held up an arm and I sprang on shore—to find myself in another age and another clime. I had to wait a few minutes to realize what it all meant, for the _ambiente_ was new to my senses. A stretch of turf and wild roses—that explained itself—youth and roses never need introduction—but the still white church, so long and low, with its slender columns like altar candles, its grave Byzantine lines—that made me pause. It seemed as if some saint had turned from his prayers to ask me what I came for, and I could only reply, “You must tell me: there is nothing here that I have a name for, but there is something that was mine—give it back to me!” When I walk through a familiar room in the dark, a peculiar warning like a ghostly touch is laid on my forehead as I come near any object on a level with it, and that same feeling came to me there at Torcello, I remember. It seemed as if it all were known to me, as if every flower and blade of grass called out, “We were here with you before!”—as if the small forsaken basilica had meant the heart of home in some lapsed period that life, as I knew it, could in no way account for. Its loveliness was so removed, so ascetic, that one held one’s breath for fear of disturbing its peace: the marble seats, the central throne, seemed all peopled by grave shades of presbyters, surrounding their Bishop, their long, straight vestments marked with the gold cross from shoulder to shoulder and from neck to feet: I could almost fancy I heard their deep chant, first from this side of the mounting tribune and then from that, echoing in the cold spaces overhead and dying away down the nave among the columns.