Miss Barnett, with an air of wishing to find out how bad a fool Peter was, leaned across Mrs. Johnson and said, “What are you to Venice, Mr. Margerison, and Venice to you?  What, I mean, are you going to get out of her?  Which of her aspects do you especially approach?  She has so infinitely many, you know.  What, in fact, is your connecting link?” She waited with some interest for what Peter would say.  She had not yet “placed” him.

Peter said, “Oh, well ...  I look at things, you know ... much the same as anyone else, I expect.  And I go in gondolas; and then there are the things one would like to buy.”

Mrs. Johnson approved this.  “Lovely, ain’t they!  Only one never has the money to spend.”

“I watch other people spending theirs,” said Peter, “which is the next best thing, I suppose ...  I’m sorry I’m stupid, Miss Barnett—­but it’s all so jolly that I don’t like to be invidious.”

“Do you write?” she enquired.

“Sometimes,” he admitted.  “You’re illustrating a book about Venice, aren’t you?  That must be awfully interesting.”

“I am trying,” she said, “to catch the most elusive thing in the world—­the Spirit of Venice.  It breaks my heart, the pursuit.  Just round the corner, always; you know Browning’s ‘Love in a Life’?

  Heart, fear nothing, for heart, thou shalt find her,
  Next time herself!—­not the trouble behind her ... 
  Still the same chance! she goes out as I enter. 
  Spend my whole day in the quest;—­who cares? ...

It’s like that with me and my Venice.  It hurts rather—­but I have to go on.”

“You shouldn’t, my dear,” Mrs. Johnson murmured soothingly.  “I’m sure you should be careful.  We mustn’t play tricks with our constitutions.”

Rhoda kicked Peter under the table in mistake for her mother, and never discovered the error.

“Can you tell me,” Miss Barnett added abruptly, in her cheerful voice, “where it hides?”

Peter looked helpful and intelligent, and endeared himself to her thereby.  She thought him a sympathetic young man, with possibilities, probably undeveloped.

Vyvian, who regarded Miss Barnett and “Venice, Her Spirit,” with contemptuous jealousy, thought that Rhoda was paying them too much attention, and effectually called her away by saying, “If you care to come with me to the Schiavoni, I can better explain to you what I mean.”

Rhoda kindled and flushed and looked suddenly pretty.  Peter heard a smothered sigh on his left.

“I don’t like it,” Mrs. Johnson murmured to him.  “No, I don’t.  If it was you, now, as offered to take her—­But there, I daresay you wouldn’t be clever enough to suit Rhoder; she’s so partic’lar.  You and me, now—­we get on very well; seems as if we liked to talk on the same subjects, as it were; but Rhoder’s different.  When we go about together, it’s always, ’Mother, not so loud!  Oh, mother, you mustn’t!  Mother, that ain’t really beautiful at all,