It was towards evening that we sighted Venice, floating between sea and sky in a tepid light. Where we parted from the mainland, thin trees ran down to the water’s edge, shivering and gleaming, like naked boys. As the train thundered across the trestled bridge which spans the lagoon, Fiesole and I crowded against the window, tingling with excitement. The salt wind smote upon our faces and loosened a strand of her red-brown hair. Laughing, I fastened it into place. She snatched up my hand and kissed the fingers separately. We were children, so thrilled with happiness that we could speak only by signs and exclamations. A gondola drifted by, rowed by a poppe in a scarlet sash. Though we both saw it, we cried to one another that it was a gondola, and waved. Then the gold sun fell splashing through the clouds; Venice was stained to orange, and the lagoon to the purple of wine. Not until the train had halted in the station did it occur to me that we had made no plans. Hotel porters were already fighting to get possession of our baggage. “Where are you going to stay?” I asked. “Wherever you like,” she said. “A good place is the _Hotel D’Angleterre_ on the Riva degli Schiavoni.” So she took it for granted that we should put up at the same hotel! We went aboard the steamer and traveled down the Grand Canal in prosaic fashion, with the nodding black swans of gondolas all about us. The _Hotel D’Angleterre_ stands facing the Canale di San Marco, looking across to San Maria della Salute. The angle is that from which so many of Canaletto’s Venetian masterpieces were painted. The proprietor came out to greet us suave and smiling. “A room for Monsieur and Madame?” “Two rooms,” I said shortly. When we went upstairs to look at them, we found that they were next door to one another. Fiesole made no objection. They were both front rooms and faced the Canal. One could hardly find fault with them on the ground that they were too near together. By the time dinner was over the silver dusk was falling. A hundred yards out two barche, a little distance separated, drifted with swinging lanterns. The tinkling of guitars sounded and the impassioned singing of a girl. Above embattled roofs of palaces to the westward fiery panthers of the sunset crouched. The beauty of it all was stinging--it seemed the misty fabric of a dream which must instantly shatter and fade into a pale and torturing remembrance. We stepped into a gondola. She spoke a few hasty words in Italian, then we stole out from the quay across the velvet blackness. “Where are we going?” I asked her. “Round the old canals of the Rialto.”