"If I were not poor, but rich instead, I'd take you to one of the fashionable hotels. You are out of place here, in this rambling old ruin." "Not half so much as you are," Kitty replied. "I am never out of place. I can live comfortably in the fields with the peasants, in cities, in extravagant hotels. It is the mind, my dear, not the body. My mind is always at one height; where the body is does not matter much." There was a subtle hauteur in the voice; it subdued Kitty's inquisitiveness. And no other woman had, till recently, accomplished this feat. Kitty was proud, but there was something in her companion that she recognized but could not express in words. "Come!" said the older woman. "I myself am lonely and desperate to-night. I am going to throw away a precious bit of silver on a gondolier. We haven't been out three times together since we arrived. Perhaps it would have been better had we all remained in Rome; but there I could not have helped you. The band plays in the Piazza to-night. They are going to play light opera, and it will tone us both up a bit. More than that, we'll have coffee at Florian's, if we can find a table. To-morrow we may have to do without breakfast. But there's the old saying that he who sleeps dines. _Avanti!_" "Sometimes," said Kitty, drying the final tear, "sometimes I am afraid of you." "And wisely. I am often afraid of myself. I always do the first thing that enters my head, and generally it is the wrong thing. Never mind. The old woman here will trust us for some weeks yet." She leaned from the window and called. "Pomp-_e_-o!" From the canal the gondolier answered. "Now then!" said the woman to the girl. Kitty threw a heavy shawl over her head and shoulders, while the other wound about her face the now familiar dark grey veil; and the two went down into the Campo to the landing. Kitty longed to ask La Signorina why she invariably wore that veil, but she did not utter the question, knowing full well that La Signorina would have evaded it frankly. Pompeo threw away his cigarette and doffed his hat. He offered his elbow to steady the women as they boarded; and once they were seated, a good stroke sent the gondola up the canal. The women sat speechless for some time. At each intersection Pompeo called right or left musically. Sometimes the moon would find its way through the brick and marble canon, or the bright ferrule of another gondola flashed and disappeared into the gloom. Under bridges they passed, they glided by little restaurants where the Venetians, in olden days, talked liberty for themselves and death to the Austrians, and at length they came out upon the Grand Canal where the Rialto curves its ancient blocks of marble and stalactites gleam ghostly overhead. "There, this is better." "It is always better when you are with me," said Kitty.