smile, the kisses of her lips wrapped you in a poisoned robe which burnt up the last vestiges of your earthly nature.  Her eyes were twin stars that turned you into shadowless light.  You knelt together on the palm-branches of heaven, waiting for the gates of Paradise to be opened; but they turned heavily on their hinges, and in your impatience you struck at them, but could not reach them.  Your hand touched nothing but clouds more nimble than your desires.  Your radiant companion, crowned with white roses like a bride of Heaven, wept at your anguish.  Perhaps she was murmuring melodious litanies to the Virgin, while the demoniacal cravings of the flesh were haunting you with their shameless clamor, and you disdained the divine fruits of that ecstasy in which I live, though shortening my life.”

“Your exaltation, my dear Vendramin,” replied Emilio, calmly, “is still beneath reality.  Who can describe that purely physical exhaustion in which we are left by the abuse of a dream of pleasure, leaving the soul still eternally craving, and the spirit in clear possession of its faculties?

“But I am weary of this torment, which is that of Tantalus.  This is my last night on earth.  After one final effort, our Mother shall have her child again—­the Adriatic will silence my last sigh—­”

“Are you idiotic?” cried Vendramin.  “No; you are mad; for madness, the crisis we despise, is the memory of an antecedent condition acting on our present state of being.  The genius of my dreams has taught me that, and much else!  You want to make one of the Duchess and la Tinti; nay, dear Emilio, take them separately; it will be far wiser.  Raphael alone ever united form and idea.  You want to be the Raphael of love; but chance cannot be commanded.  Raphael was a ‘fluke’ of God’s creation, for He foreordained that form and idea should be antagonistic; otherwise nothing could live.  When the first cause is more potent than the outcome, nothing comes of it.  We must live either on earth or in the skies.  Remain in the skies; it is always too soon to come down to earth.”

“I will take the Duchess home,” said the Prince, “and make a last attempt—­afterwards?”

“Afterwards,” cried Vendramin, anxiously, “promise to call for me at Florian’s.”

“I will.”

This dialogue, in modern Greek, with which Vendramin and Emilio were familiar, as many Venetians are, was unintelligible to the Duchess and to the Frenchman.  Although he was quite outside the little circle that held the Duchess, Emilio and Vendramin together—­for these three understood each other by means of Italian glances, by turns arch and keen, or veiled and sidelong—­the physician at last discerned part of the truth.  An earnest entreaty from the Duchess had prompted Vendramin’s suggestion to Emilio, for Massimilla had begun to suspect the misery endured by her lover in that cold empyrean where he was wandering, though she had no suspicions of la Tinti.