balcony surrounded by a group of friends from the various Boston
suburbs, the vision of Miss Celia Van Tyck melting into delicious
distance with every movement of our gondola, even this was
sufficient for Salemina's happiness and mine, had it been
accompanied by no more tangible joys.

This island, hardly ten minutes by gondola from the Piazza of San
Marco, was the summer resort of the Doges, you will remember, and
there they built their pleasure-houses, with charming gardens at
the back--gardens the confines of which stretched to the Laguna
Viva. Our Casa Rosa is one of the few old palazzi left, for many
of them have been turned into granaries.

We should never have found this romantic dwelling by ourselves; the
Little Genius brought us here. The Little Genius is Miss Ecks, who
draws, and paints, and carves, and models in clay, preaching and
practising the brotherhood of man and the sisterhood of woman in
the intervals; Miss Ecks, who is the custodian of all the talents
and most of the virtues, and the invincible foe of sordid common
sense and financial prosperity. Miss Ecks met us by chance in the
Piazza and breathlessly explained that she was searching for paying
guests to be domiciled under the roof of Numero Sessanta, Giudecca.
She thought we should enjoy living there, or at least she did very
much, and she had tried it for two years; but our enjoyment was not
the special point in question. The real reason and desire for our
immediate removal was that the padrona might pay off a vexatious
and encumbering mortgage which gave great anxiety to everybody
concerned, besides interfering seriously with her own creative
work.