I found it not difficult to revive with a certain vividness the
memory of those cold and rainy November weeks that I had
happened to spend alone, some years ago, in Venice, and of the
churches which I had so frequently haunted. Especially I
remembered the great dreary church in the piazza near my
lodgings, into which I would often go on my way to my rooms in
the twilight. It was the season when all the Venice churches are
draped in black, and services for the dead are held in them at
dawn and twilight; and when I entered this Baroque interior,
with its twisted columns and volutes and high-piled, hideous
tombs, adorned with skeletons and allegorical figures and angels
blowing trumpets--all so agitated, and yet all so dead and empty
and frigid--I would find the fantastic darkness filled with
glimmering candles, and kneeling figures, and the discordant
noise of chanting. There I would sit, while outside night fell
with the rain on Venice; the palaces and green canals faded into
darkness, and the great bells, swinging against the low sky,
sent the melancholy sound of their voices far over the lagoons.

It was here, in this church, that I used to see Sir Eustace Carr;
would generally find him in the same corner when I entered, and
would sometimes watch his face, until the ceremonious extinguishing
of the candles, one by one, left us in shadowy night. It was a
handsome and thoughtful face, and I remember more than once
wondering what had brought him to Venice in that unseasonable
month, and why he came so regularly to this monotonous service.
It was as if some spell had drawn him; and now, with my curiosity
newly wakened, I asked myself what had been that spell? I also
must have been affected by it, for I had been there also in his
uncommunicating company. Here, I felt, was perhaps the answer to