"I am only over for six weeks, you know, health—"
"Yes? and there is a girl in Lowell,"—she read his mind impudently.
"Was," he emended, with an uneasy blush.
"Poor, starved one! Here is our fish and spaghetti. To-night is a night of feast."
The dusk grew grayer, more powderish; the mountains faded away, and the long Lido banks disappeared into lines pointed by the lights of Torcello and Murano. Sant' Elena became sea, and the evening wind from the Adriatic started in toward the city. A few sailors who had come for a glass were sitting under the arbor of the Buon Pesche smoking, with an occasional stinging word dropped nonchalantly into the dusk. Their hostess was working in the garden patch behind the house. At last the artist moved off with his companion through the grove of laurel between the great well-heads. Bastian loitered suggestively near.
So they gathered their thoughts and followed the gondolier to the bank. Miss Barton lingered by one of the well-heads to peer at the pitchy bottom.
"Here they came for fresh water, the last gift of Venice before they took sail. And sometimes a man never went farther—it was a safe kind of a grave." She laughed unconcernedly.
"Perhaps you came out of the locusts and took a hand in pitching the bodies in."
The woman shivered.
"No! no! I only brought them here."