By the time dinner was over the silver dusk was falling. A hundred yards out two barche, a little distance separated, drifted with swinging lanterns. The tinkling of guitars sounded and the impassioned singing of a girl. Above embattled roofs of palaces to the westward fiery panthers of the sunset crouched. The beauty of it all was stinging—it seemed the misty fabric of a dream which must instantly shatter and fade into a pale and torturing remembrance.
We stepped into a gondola.
She spoke a few hasty words in Italian, then we stole out from the quay across the velvet blackness.
“Where are we going?” I asked her.
“Round the old canals of the Rialto.”
Soon every sound, even the faint sounds of Venice, grew fainter and vanished. Only the dip of the oar was heard, the water lapping, and the weird plaintive cry of the poppe as we approached a corner, “A-òel,” and “Sia stali” or “Sia premi” as we turned. We crept along old waterways where the oozy walls ground against the gondola on either side. Far, far up the narrow ribbon of ink-blue sky and the twinkling of stars looked down. Fiesole cuddled against me, like a contented tired child. I kept thinking of what she had said, “Have you ever wanted anything so badly that your whole body ached to get it?” I wondered if she had got that something now.
When we returned to the hotel it was past midnight. The sharp tang of morning was in the air. Lights which had blazed across the lagoon, now smoldered like torches burnt to the socket. Venice floated, a fair Ophelia with eyes drowned and hair disordered; one saw her mistily as through water.
Our gondola creaked against the landing, banged by the little waves. A poppe in a nearby barca groaned in his sleep and stirred. We were cramped with our long sitting. I gave Fiesole my arm; she shrank against me. At the door of her room I paused.
“We’ve had one brilliant day to remember. You’re happy now?”
“Very happy, dear Dante.”