When they were seated at the table under the laurel-trees before the Buon Pesche, Lawrence threw himself into the situation, with all the robustness of a moral resolve to do the delightful and sinful thing. Just why it should be sinful to dine there out-doors in an evening light of luminous gold, with the scent of locusts eddying about, and the mirage-like show of Venice sleeping softly over beyond—was not quite clear. Perhaps because his companion seemed so careless and unfamiliar with the monitions of strenuous living; perhaps because her face was brilliant and naïve—some spontaneous thing of nature, unmarked by any lines of consciousness.
Under a neighboring tree a couple were already eating, or quarrelling in staccato phrases. Lawrence thought that the man was an artist.
Miss Barton smiled at his seriousness, crossing her hands placidly on the table and leaning forward. To her companion she gleamed, as if a wood-thing, a hamadryad, had slipped out from the laurel-tree and come to dine with him in the dusk.
The woman of the inn brought a flask of thin yellow wine and placed it between them. Lawrence mutely decanted it into the glasses.
"Well?" she said, questioningly.
Her companion turned his head away to the solemn, imperial mountains, that were preparing with purple and gold for a night's oblivion.
"You are thinking of Nassau Street, New York, of the rooms divided by glass partitions, and typewriters and the bundles of documents—bah! Chained!" She sipped scornfully a drop or two from the glass.
The man flushed.
"No, not that exactly. I am thinking of the police courts, of the squalor, of taking a deposition in a cell with the filthy breathing all about. The daily jostle." He threw his head back.
"Don't try it again," she whispered.