"You’ve got to see Venice," he began, "you’ve got to see a city of slender towers and white domes, sleeping in the water like a mass of water lilies. You’ve got to see dark water-ways, mysterious threads of shadow, binding all these flowers of stone together. You’ve got to hear the silence in which the whispers of lovers of a thousand years ago, and the cries of men, betrayed, all breathe and echo in every bush. These are the only noises in Venice--these and the plash of the gondolier’s oar or his call--’Ohé!’ as he rounds a sudden corner. You’ve got to see it all in the night--at night, when the great white lily flowers are blackened in shadow, and the darkened water-ways are lost in an impenetrable depth of gloom. You’ve got to hear the stealthy creeping of a gondola and the lapping of the water against the slimy stones as it hurries by. In every little burning light that flickers in a barred window up above, you must be able to see plotters at work, conspirators planning deeds of evil or a lover in his mistress’ arms. You’ve got to see magic, mystery, tragedy, and romance, all compassed by grey stone and green water, to know the sort of place where my mother and father live, to know the place where I should have taken you, if--if things had been different." "Should we have gone there together?" she said in a breath. "Yes--I’ve always sort of dreamed, when I’ve thought of the woman with God’s good gift of understanding, I’ve always sort of dreamed of what we should do together there." She looked up into his face. The picture of it all was there in his eyes. She saw it as well. She saw the vision of all she was losing and, as you play with a memory that hurts, as a mother handles the tiny faded shoe of the baby she has lost, she wanted to see more of it. "Should we have gone there together?" she whispered. He smiled down at her--mock bravery--a smile that helped him bear the pain. "Yes,--every year--as long as they lived and every year afterwards, if you wished. Every morning, we’d have got up early--you know those early mornings when the sun’s white and all the shadows are sort of misty and the water looks cleaner and fresher than at any other time because the dew has purged it. We’d have got up early and come downstairs and outside in the little Rio, the gondolier would be blowing on his fingers, waiting for us. They can be cold those early mornings in Venice. Then we’d have gone to the Giudecca, where all the ships lie basking in the sun--all the ships that have come from Trieste, from Greece, from the mysterious East, up through the Adriatic, threading their way through the patchwork of islands, past Fort San Nicolo and Lido till they reach the Giudecca Canal. They lie there in the sun in the early mornings like huge, big water-spiders, and up from all the cabins you’ll see a little curl of pale blue smoke where the sailors are cooking their breakfasts." "And how early will that be?" asked Jill in a whisper.