"You can't. It's really very wet. Do come and take a look at the Madonna."
She turned, with neither protest nor assent, and walked with him down the room. She felt that she had relaxed her hold upon herself. What was it she was yielding to? Something imperative and masterful in him, or something still more masterful and imperative in her own soul? She did not know, she did not consider. She walked with him down the stairs, and out into the outer world, and she knew that she would have walked with him across the very waters of the Canal with the unquestioning faith of the pious little princess whom legend carries over dry-shod to her prayers.
Pauline spoke only once, and that was when her eyes fell upon the gondola coming to meet them.
"The felze!'" she exclaimed, under her breath. If Geof heard her, he was too wise to admit that he did.
"To the Madonna of the Palazzo Rezzonico," he commanded, quite as if Vittorio had been his own gondolier. It crossed his mind that he ought to apologise for his presumption, but he was not in the mood for apologies.
The felze was arranged for three, the little box-seats taken out, and the chair in place of them; Geof took the chair. And Vittorio rowed them swiftly with the tide, up the Canal, past the tiny striped church of San Vio, to which the pious little princess crosses, in the pretty legend, and on, to the stern and massive Palazzo Rezzonico. The gondola turned down the narrow rio that flows beneath the poet's memorial tablet, and a few strokes of the oar brought them to the feet of the Madonna.
Geoffry and Pauline stepped out of the felze and stood looking up at the lovely figure in its flowing garments, with hands clasped upon the breast, and head bowed beneath its floating aureole of stars. Vittorio, too, stood with his eyes fixed upon the benignant face, and perhaps an ave in his heart if not on his lips.
Presently Pauline said, softly: "You were right."
"I was sure you would think so. It's only once in a while that one knows exactly what is good for one; but then,—one knows!"
"Did you ever notice the inscription on the pedestal?" he asked, after a moment. "Hardly anybody ever does."