of all orders to the contrary--whether he had been a wandering
gondolier, a despised _barcariol toso_, lording it so outrageously over
the established traghetti that they were glad to forgive him his bandit
crimes and swear him into membership, if only to stop his influence
against them; or whether it had been the stealing away of a promised
bride, as on that memorable day at San Pietro in Castello, when he had
married Toinetta--it was never safe to bear "vendetta" with one so
strong and handsome and unprincipled as Piero.

Gabriele, the jilted lover of Toinetta, over whom Piero had triumphed,
soon became the husband of another _donzel_, handsomer than Toinetta had
been--poor, foolish Toinetta!--and the retributive tragedy of her little
life had warmed the sullen Gabriele into a magnanimity that rendered him
at least a safe, if a moody and unpleasant, member of the traghetto in
which Piero had since become a rising star. A man with a home to keep
may not "cast away his chestnuts," and so when Piero, in that masterful
way of his, swept everything before him in the traghetto--never asking
nor caring who stood for him or against him, but carrying his will
whenever he chose to declare it--to set one's self against such a man
was truly a useless sort of fret, only a "gnawing of one's chain," in
the expressive jargon of the people.

Piero finished his song, and there was a little pause. They were nearing
the long, low line of Murano.

"It is not easy," he said, "when women are in the way, 'to touch the sky
with one's finger.'"

She turned with a sudden passionate motion as if she would answer him,
and then, struggling for control, turned back without a word, drawing