From behind them came a musical shout. Luigi warning off another gondola. Beyond him, Venice glowed pearl pink in the late light of afternoon, the long paddle made a soft ripple on the blue lagoon. Dark Italian eyes looked over their shoulders, whole heartedly, honestly as curious as Cynthia, and two heads, one brown, one blond bent close together.
Cynthia untied the knot, with slim fingers that were cold and loosened the rumpled white paper. A small box of blue stained leather beautifully tooled in gilt. She lifted the lid.
“Oh Chick ... oh you darling! Chick, is it really, really for me?”
On the third finger of her right hand she slipped it. Quaint old green gold, delicately lacy as the collar of a doge, held firmly in its heart a single pink pearl. Chick reached and took the hand in his, slipped off the ring, slid into his palm the little emerald she had worn all summer, and in its place substituted the other. It fitted as though it had been made for her. Perhaps it was.
“Just for you, yourself,” he said. “It’s quite old, four or five hundred years they told me. I got it yesterday afternoon in one of those shops you looked at, Cynthia. And I’ve been frantic all day. ... I wanted to tell you, just this way, in a gondola, with just this ring. And I couldn’t, darling, tell you before.”
“Chick, it’s the most beautiful, beautiful thing I ever saw in my whole life.”
“Isn’t it?” said Chick, but when she glanced up his eyes were not on the ring. “Tomorrow,” he said, “we’ll see the American consul. I understand he’s the marrying guy about here.”
Behind them suddenly came a great shout, baritone, Italian. “Yum tum tumti tumtum. ... Yum tiddilty tum, tum ti tumitytum. ...” Confidentially Luigi leaned forward, whispered in tones that might have been heard back in Venice. “That, ladiee, gentleman ... that ver’ fine Venezia loove song. You like?”
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