“By all the saints in heaven, and every Madonna in Venice, and our Lady of every traghetto!” Piero exclaimed, as he wrenched himself away from Girolamo’s angry grasp, while the old man staggered against the wall, still holding a bit of cloth from the gondolier’s cloak in his closed hand, “I am vowed to my mission before this dawn!  What I have spoken is for duty to thine house, and not in anger—­though I could color my stiletto in good patrician blood and die for it gaily, if that would help her!”

But Girolamo could not yet find his voice, and Piero, with his hand on the latch of the great iron gates of the water-story, turned and called back:  “Women are not like men, and Marina is like no other woman that ever was born in Venice.  Whether it be the priests that have bewitched her—­may the Holy Madonna have mercy, and curse them for it!—­or whether she be truly the Blessed Virgin of San Donato come to earth again, one knows not.  But, Messer Magagnati,”—­and the voice came solemnly from the dark figure dimly outlined against the gray darkness beyond the iron bars,—­“thy daughter is dying for this curse of the Most Holy Father—­’il mal anno che Dio le dia!’ (may heaven make him suffer for it!)—­and she hath no peace in Venice. She will never forget nor change.  If thy love be great, as thou hast said, thou wilt find some way to help her. For in Venice she hath no peace.”

The old merchant, dazed by Piero’s hot words, was a pitiful figure, standing, desolate, behind the closed bars of his gate, the night wind lifting his long beard and parting the thin gray locks that flowed from under his cap, while he called and beckoned impotently to Piero to return, repeating meanwhile mechanically, with no perception of their meaning, those strange words of Piero’s—­“In Venice she hath no peace.”  He stood, peering out into the gray gloom and listening to the lessening plash of the oar, until the gondola of the gastaldo was already far on the way to San Marco, where sat the Ten.

But it was not of Piero’s mission he was thinking, but of his child—­saying over and over again those fateful words, “In Venice she hath no peace.”  Had Piero said that?

Suddenly the entire speech recurred to him—­insistent, tense with meaning.  She could not live in Venice.  Marina had no peace in Venice.  She would never forget nor change.  She had need of him—­of her father’s love; and if he loved enough, he would find a way!

Chilled and heart-sick he turned, and with no torch and missing the voice which had guided him through the long, dark passage, he groped his way to his cabinet and sat down to confront a graver problem than any he had ever conquered with Marina’s aid.  He would find a way—­but “it must not be in Venice!” How could they leave Venice?  Were they not Venetians born, and was not Venice in trouble?  To leave her now were to deny her. It could not be!

He put the argument many times, feverishly at first, then more calmly—­coming always to the same conclusion, “it could not be.”  It was a comfort to reach so sensible and positive a decision.  To-morrow he would go to his daughter, and meanwhile he must continue his work; he needed to reassert his power, for he had been strangely shaken.