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! During that honeymoon summer, Venice indoors, with all its matchless art treasures, appealed to me less than Venice out-of-doors. At the time of my first stay there I was only sixteen, but mature enough to appreciate what I was seeing, and my dear old step-father was a splendid guide and allowed us to miss nothing. He was a strange combination, dear man—an expert at explaining beauty of colour and technique and stonily impervious to impression or atmosphere. All that remained to him of his Calvinistic New England education was a giant conscience, to which other people’s inclinations had to bow wherever he took the lead, as he did, imperiously, in matters of sight-seeing. Often I would have begged off some expedition, feeling surfeited already with beauty and history, and longing to be healthily frivolous for a few hours, as youth needs to be sometimes. But it was of no use—go with him I must, and very glad I was of it afterwards, for, returning in later years to the places where he had piloted me about, I could make at once for the things I wanted to see again, without troubling my head about the others. One of these, alas! was gone when Hugh and I, just married, came to Venice. The St. Peter Martyr of Titian had perished in a fire. I had lingered before it long, as a girl, for there was something more than mere beauty in the painting; one felt there was truth, relatively as absolute as that for which the Saint gave his life—a picture not only of himself, but of what he died for, loyalty to the unalterable essence of things as they are.