“Yes, it is fanciful—­wonderful,” she added to please him, but without warmth, while her eyes wandered over the shelves.  “Oh, father, here are some of the very mosaics that were made for San Marco; thou hast forgotten!”

She lifted eagerly a small opaque basin of turquoise blue and held it toward him; it contained a few bits of gold and silver enamel, the earliest that had been made in Venice, bearing their ancient date.

“Thou askest more of Venice than I,” he said, well pleased with her enthusiasm; “but have a care lest they say I have not taught thee well, or that I do not know my art, or that I claim too much.  At the time of the burning of San Marco these Mosaics for the restoration were from the stabilimenti of the Republic on Rialto—­so early it came to us, this glorious art.  And it was one Piero, a founder of our house, though the name was other than Magagnati, who was the master in that restoration.  But the first mosaics in that old San Marco—­ay, and the workmen,” he added with a conscious effort, so much would he have liked to claim the invention for Venice, “came hither from the East.  Thou shouldst know the history of our art; it is the story of thine ancestry and the nobility of thy house.  Thou hast no other.”

“I have thee, my father!”

IV

The Veronese did not paint that beautiful face the next morning as he had planned; for the first time he had encountered difficulties.  Slowly, as he wended his way through the many turnings of the narrow calle to Campo San Maurizio, carrying a beautiful Moorish box filled with the pearly shells which the Venetians call “flowers of the Lido,” and a bouquet of aromatic carnations for the bambino, he recalled the figure and speech of his Madonna, and they were not those of the maidens whom one might encounter at the traghetto or in the Piazza; there had been a dignity and self-forgetfulness in such perfect harmony with the face that, at the moment, this had seemed entirely natural.  But the tones returned to him as he pondered, filled with a deeper melody than the usual winning speech of the Venetian; with the grace of the soft dialect there was a rare, unexpected quality, as if thought had formed the undertone.  He had never heard such a voice in the Piazza—­it was rare even in the palazzo; it was the voice of some sweet and gracious woman with a soul too large for the world; it held a suggestion of peace and convent bells and even-songs of nuns.

Then, still more passionately, the desire overcame him to paint that face for his Madonna; he would never give it up!  Yet this maiden was not one of whom he could ask the favor that he craved, nor to whom he could offer any return.