was not over-long, though the thought was very strange for this simple
maiden of Murano; so the precious painting was finished and in the hands
of the decorators. And meanwhile, during those days when Marina had been
watching the flickering of the little Zuane's pale flame of life and
there had been no spare moments for Marcantonio, he had tried to absorb
himself, as far as possible, in the preparation of this gift--since she
would not let him go to her--and he had come to regard it as the symbol
of success; for failure was never for an instant contemplated in his
vision of the future. There were pearls to be selected, one by one, in
visits innumerable to the Fondaco dei Turchi, where the finest of such
treasures were not secured at a first asking, and in these his mother
was a connoisseur; but there were many more anxious visits to Murano, to
be assured that no step in the fashioning of his gift was endangering
its perfection.

But even for the most impatient, time may not tarry indefinitely, and
the lagging moments had at last brought round that festa of San Marco
which meant so much for Venice, with its splendid pageants for the
Church, its festivities for the people, its fluttering of doves in the
Piazza, and of timid, eager maiden hearts, waiting in a sort of shy
assurance for that earliest Venetian love-token, the _boccolo_--the
rosebud which breathed the secret of many a young Venetian lover to his
_inamorata_ under those April skies, on the festa of this patron saint
of Venice.

And the next morning the stately lady of the Giustiniani stood quite
alone on the balcony of the great palace at the bend of the Canal
Grande, leaning upon her gold-embroidered cushions to watch the gondola
that was just landing at the step of the Piazzetta; the restless
movements of her tapering jeweled fingers were the only sign of an