Each word came out winged and charged with a strange intensity of passion.

“Do I?” said Cliffe, raising his eyebrows—­“do I want to know?”

Her look held him.

“My husband, William Ashe!”

And she fell back, flushed and breathless, like one who throws out a rebel and challenging flag.

Cliffe was silent a moment, observing her.

“Strange!” he said, at last.  “It is only when you are miserable you are kind.  I could wish you miserable again, cherie.”

Tone and look broke into a sombre wildness before which she shrank.  Her own violence passed away.  She leaned over the side of the boat, struggling with tears.

“Then you have your wish,” was her muffled answer.

The three bronzed Venetians, a father and two sons, who were working the bragozzo glanced curiously at the pair.  They were persuaded that these charterers of their boat were lovers flying from observation, and the unknown tongue did but stimulate guessing.

Cliffe raised himself impatiently.

They were nearing a point where the line of murazzi they had been following—­low breakwaters of great strength—­swept away from them outward and eastward towards a distant opening.  On the other side of the channel was a low line of shore, broadening into the Lido proper, with its scattered houses and churches, and soon lost in the mist as it stretched towards the south.

“Ecco!—­il Porto del Lido!” said the older boatman, pointing far away to a line of deeper color beneath a dark and lowering sky.

Kitty bent over the side of the boat staring towards the dim spot he showed her—­where was the mouth of the sea.

“Kitty!” said Cliffe’s voice beside her, hoarse and hurried—­“one word, and I tell these fellows to set their helm for Trieste.  This boat will carry us well—­and the wind is with us.”

She turned and looked him in the face.

“And then?”

“Then?  We’ll think it out together, Kitty—­together!” He bent his lips to her hand, bending so as to conceal the action from the sailors.  But she drew her hand away.

“You and I,” she said, fiercely—­“would tire of each other in a week!”

“Have the courage to try!  No!—­you should not tire of me in a week!  I would find ways to keep you mine, Kitty—­cradled, and comforted, and happy.”

“Happy!” Her slight laugh was the forlornest thing.  “Take me out to sea—­and drop me there—­with a stone round my neck.  That might be worth doing—­perhaps.”

He surveyed her unmoved.

“Listen, Kitty!  This kind of thing can’t go on forever.”

“What are you waiting for?” she said, tauntingly.  “You ought to have gone last week.”

“I am not going,” he said, raising himself by a sudden movement—­“till you come with me!”

Kitty started, her eyes riveted to his.

“And yet go I will!  Not even you shall stop me, Kitty.  I’ll take the help I’ve gathered back to those poor devils—­if I die for it.  But you’ll come with me—­you’ll come!”