Some one for the amusement of the guests of Venice was experimenting on the top of the campanile of St. Mark’s with those electric lights which were then the toys of science, and are now the eyes and tools of war.  A search-light was playing on the basin of St. Mark’s and on the mouth of the canal.  Suddenly it caught the Church of the Salute—­and the whole vast building, from the Queen of Heaven on its topmost dome down to the water’s brim, the figures of saints and prophets and apostles which crowd its steps and ledges, the white whorls, like huge sea-shells, that make its buttresses, the curves and volutes of its cornices and doorways, rushed upon the eye in a white and blinding splendor, making the very darkness out of which the vision sprang alive and rich.  Not a Christian church, surely, but a palace of Poseidon!  The bewildered gazer saw naiads and bearded sea-gods in place of angels and saints, and must needs imagine the champing of Poseidon’s horses at the marble steps, straining towards the sea.

The vision wavered, faded, reappeared, and finally died upon the night.  Then the wild beams began to play on the canal, following the serenata, lighting up now the palaces on either hand, now some single gondola, revealing every figure and gesture of the laughing English or Americans who filled it, in a hard white flash.

“Oh! listen, Kitty!” said Margaret.  “Some one is going to sing ’Che faro.’”

Miss French was very musical, and she turned in a trance of pleasure towards the barca whence came the first bars of the accompaniment.

She did not see meanwhile that Kitty had made a hurried movement, and was now leaning over the side of the gondola, peering with arrested breath into the scattered group of boats on their left hand.  The search-light flashed here and there among them.  A gondola at the very edge of the serenata contained one figure beside the gondolier, a man in a large cloak and slouch hat, sitting very still with folded arms.  As Kitty looked, hearing the beating of her heart, their own boat was suddenly lit up.  The light passed in a second, and while it lasted those in the flash could see nothing outside it.  When it withdrew all was in darkness.  The black mass of boats floated on, soundless again, save for an occasional plash of water or the hoarse cry of a gondolier—­and in the distance the wail for Eurydice.

Kitty fell back in her seat.  An excitement, from which she shrank in a kind of terror, possessed her.  Her thoughts were wholly absorbed by the gondola and the figure she could no longer distinguish—­for which, whenever a group of lamps threw their reflections on the water, she searched the canal in vain.  If what she madly dreamed were true, had she herself been seen—­and recognized?

The serenata in honor of Italy’s beautiful princess duly made its way to the Grand Canal.  The princess came to her balcony, while the “Jewel Song” in “Faust” was being sung below, and there was a demonstration which echoed from palace to palace and died away under the arch of the Rialto.  Then the gondolas dispersed.  That of Lady Kitty Ashe had some difficulty in making its way home against a force of wind and tide coming from the lagoon.