"I don't know what made it," she said, "I can't account for it,
but I've been thinking of him all through that last song."

Perhaps not so strange, since one may know how wildly that poor
devil had been thinking of her!

"I've thought of him so often," the gentle voice went on. "I
felt so sorry for him. I never felt sorrier for any one in my
life. I was sorry for the poor, thin cab-horses in Paris, but I
was sorrier for him. I think it was the saddest sight I ever
saw. Do you suppose he still has to do that, Rufus?"

"No, no," he answered, in haste. "He'd stopped before I left.
He's all right, I imagine. Here's the Danieli."

She fastened a shawl more closely about her mother, whom I, with
a ringing in my ears, was trying to help up the stone steps.
"Rufus, I hope," the sweet voice continued, so gently,--"I
hope he's found something to do that's very grand! Don't you?
Something to make up to him for doing that!"

She had not the faintest dream that it was I. It was just her
beautiful heart.

The next afternoon Venice was a bleak and empty setting, the
jewel gone. How vacant it looked, how vacant it was! We made not
any effort to penetrate the galleries; I had no heart to urge my
friend. For us the whole of Venice had become one bridge of
sighs, and we sat in the shade of the piazza, not watching the