"Love is for him who knows how to win!"

He could not see how she flushed and paled with anger as he sang, for it
was growing dark over the water and her face was turned from him; but
she straightened herself uncompromisingly, and he was watching with
subtle comprehension.

He could not have told why he persisted in this strange wooing, for
there had been but one response during the two years of his widowhood,
while his child had been Marina's ceaseless care. Marina had loved the
baby the more passionately, perhaps, for the sake of her only sister
Toinetta, Piero's child-bride, who had died at the baby's birth, because
she was painfully conscious that Toinetta's little flippant life had
needed much forgiveness and had been crowned with little gladness.
Marina was now the only child of Messer Girolamo Magagnati, which was a
patent of nobility in Murano; and she was not the less worth winning
because she held herself aloof from the freer life of the Piazza, where
she was called the "donzel of Murano," though there were others with
blacker eyes and redder cheeks. Piero did not think her very beautiful;
he liked more color and sparkle and quickness of retort--a chance to
quarrel and forgive. He was not in sympathy with so many aves, such
continual pilgrimages to the cathedral, such brooding over the lives of
the saints--above all, he did not like being kept in order, and Marina
knew well how to do this, in spite of her quiet ways. But he liked the
best for himself, and there was no one like Marina in all Murano. During
all this time he had been coming more and more under her sway, changing
his modes of living to suit her whims, and the only way of safety for
him was to marry her and be master; then she should see how he would
rule his house! His own way had always been the right way for him--rules