“Santa Maria!” her companion ejaculated under his breath; “it is the women, the gentle donzelle, who are hard!”

He stood, tall, handsome, well-made, swaying lightly with the motion of the gondola, which seemed to float as in a dream to the ripple and lap of the water; the blue of his shirt had changed to gray in the twilight, the black cap and sash of the “Nicolotti” accentuated the lines of the strong, lithe figure as he sprang forward on the sloping foot-rest of his gondola with that perfect grace and ease which proved him master of a craft whose every motion is a harmony.  If he were proud of belonging to the Nicolotti, that most powerful faction of the populace, he knew that they were regarded by the government as the aristocrats of the people.

Marina arranged the child’s covering in silence, and stooped her face wistfully to touch his cheek, but she did not turn her head to look at the man behind her.

  “L’amor ze fato per chi lo sa fare,”

he sang in the low, slow chant of the familiar folk-song, the rhythm blending perfectly with the movement of the boat in which these two were faring.  His voice was pleasanter in singing, and song is almost a needful expression of the content of motion in Venice—­the necessary complement of life to the gondolier, a song might mean nothing more.  But Piero sang more slowly than his wont, charging the words with meaning, yet it did not soften her.

“Love is for him who knows how to win!”

He could not see how she flushed and paled with anger as he sang, for it was growing dark over the water and her face was turned from him; but she straightened herself uncompromisingly, and he was watching with subtle comprehension.

He could not have told why he persisted in this strange wooing, for there had been but one response during the two years of his widowhood, while his child had been Marina’s ceaseless care.  Marina had loved the baby the more passionately, perhaps, for the sake of her only sister Toinetta, Piero’s child-bride, who had died at the baby’s birth, because she was painfully conscious that Toinetta’s little flippant life had needed much forgiveness and had been crowned with little gladness.  Marina was now the only child of Messer Girolamo Magagnati, which was a patent of nobility in Murano; and she was not the less worth winning because she held herself aloof from the freer life of the Piazza, where she was called the “donzel of Murano,” though there were others with blacker eyes and redder cheeks.  Piero did not think her very beautiful; he liked more color and sparkle and quickness of retort—­a chance to quarrel and forgive.  He was not in sympathy with so many aves, such continual pilgrimages to the cathedral, such brooding over the lives of the saints—­above all, he did not like being kept in order, and Marina knew well how to do this, in spite of her quiet ways.  But he liked the best for himself, and there was no one like Marina