* * * * *

It was even better to sit with Miriam Arniston in reality in the great sun-lit square of St. Mark’s than it had been in fantasy with Miriam Gale.

The only disappointment was, that the pigeons of the Square were certainly fatter and greedier than the pictured cloud of doves, which in his day-dream he had seen flash the under-side of their wings at his love as they checked themselves to alight at her feet.

But on Lido side there was no such rift in the lute’s perfection.  The sands, the wheeling sea-birds, the tall girl in white whose hand he held—­all these were even as he had imagined them.  Thither they came every day, passing along the straight dusty avenue, and then wandering for hours picking shells.  They talked only when the mood took them, and in the pauses they listened idly to the slumbrous pulsations of Adria.  John Arniston had lied at large in the letter he had written to his love.  He had assaulted a man who righteously withstood him in the discharge of his duty, in order to steal that letter back again.  Yet his conscience was wholly void of offence in the matter.  The heavens smiled upon his bride and himself.  There was now no stern voice to break through upon his blissful self-approval.

Why there should be this favouritism among the commandments, was not clear to John.  Indeed, the thing did not trouble him.  He was no casuist.  He only knew that the way was clear to Miriam Gale, and he went to her the swiftest way.

But there were, for all that, the elements of a very pretty dilemma in the psychology of morals in the case of Miriam Gale and John Arniston.  True, the calf-skin Bible said when it was consulted, “The letter killeth, but the spirit maketh alive.”

But, after all, that might prove upon examination to have nothing to do with the matter.

VI

THE GLISTERING BEACHES

  For wafts of unforgotten music come,
    All unawares, into my lonely room,
      To thrill me with the memories of the past—­
  Sometimes a tender voice from out the gloom,
    A light hand on the keys, a shadow cast
      Upon a learned tome
  That blurs somewhat Alpha and Omega,
    A touch upon my shoulder, a pale face,
    Upon whose perfect curves the firelight plays,
  Or love-lit eyes, the sweetest e’er I saw.

  “Memory Harvest.”

It was clear morning upon Suliscanna.  That lonely rock ran hundreds of feet up into the heavens, and pointed downwards also to the deepest part of the blue.  Simeon and Anna were content.