It was part of the task that Peter had set himself, to persevere for Savilla Dassonville the film of unconsciousness that lay delicately like the bloom of a rare fruit over all that was at that moment going on in her, that made him hasten as soon as Captain Dunham had announced himself, to introduce her particularly by name. To forestall in the jolly sailor the natural interpretation of their appearance together at this hour and occasion, he had to lend himself to the only other reasonable surmise. If they were not, as he saw it on the tip of the good captain's tongue to propose, newly married, they were in a hopeful way to be. The consciousness of himself as accessory to so delightful an arrangement passed from the captain to Peter with almost the obviousness of a wink, as he surrendered himself to the charm of the girl's ethereal excitement. He understood perfectly that his not being able to feel more of a drop from the pregnant mystery of her call and his high response to it, to the homely incident of breakfast, was due to Miss Dassonville's obliviousness of its being one. It was for her, in fact, no drop at all but rather as if they had pulled out for a moment into this little shoal of neighbourly interest and comfortable food, the better to look back at the perfect wonder of it, as from the deck of the _Merrythought_ toward the fair front of the ducal palace and the blue domes of St. Mark's behind the rearing lion. Although he had parted from her that morning with no hint of an arrangement for a next meeting, it had become a part of the day's performance for Peter to call for the two ladies in the afternoon, so much so that his own sense of the unusualness of finally letting the gondola go off without him, and his particular wish at this juncture not to mark his intercourse with any unusualness, led him to send off with it as many roses as Luigi could find at that season on the Piazza. Afterward, as he recalled that he had never sent flowers to Miss Dassonville before, and as he had that morning furnished her from the market boats past her protesting limitation, it was perhaps a greater emphasis to his desertion. However, it seemed that the roses and nothing but the roses might serve as a bridge, delicate and dizzying, to support them from the realization of their situation, into which he had no intention of letting Miss Dassonville fall. He stayed in his room most of that afternoon, knowing that he was shut up with a very great matter, not able to feel it so because of the dryness of his heart, nor to think what was to be done about it because of the lightness of his brain.