hath been granted him."

"Knowledge is a wonderful mystery," Fra Giulio answered; but softly to
himself, as he crossed the cloister, he added, "but love is sweet, and
the boy is very young."

The boy was kneeling placidly before the crucifix in his cell when Fra
Giulio went to give him his nightly benediction; but the good friar's
heart was troubled with tenderness because of a vision, that would not
leave him, of a hungering mother's face.



II

Many years later one of the great artists of Venice, wandering about at
sunset with an elusive vision of some wonderful picture stirring
impatience within his soul, found a maiden sitting under the
vine-covered pergola of the Traghetto San Maurizio, where she was
waiting for her brother-in-law, who would presently touch at this ferry
on his homeward way to Murano. A little child lay asleep in her arms,
his blond head, which pitying Nature had kept beautiful, resting against
her breast; the meagre body was hidden beneath the folds of her mantle,
which, in the graceful fashion of those days, passed over her head and
fell below the knees; her face, very beautiful and tender, was bent over
the little sufferer, who had forgotten his pain in the weariness it had
brought him as a boon.

The delicate purple bells of the vine upon the trellis stirred in the
evening breeze, making a shimmer of perfume and color about her, like a