Part 38

"Perhaps we do," May replied; adding, with apparent irrelevance, "and I'm not sure that I should be willing to have missed it."

* * * * *

That same evening, in the fever ward of a Milan hospital, two figures were standing beside a narrow cot in earnest consultation. The patient was a child of ten. The little face had the look of many another little fever-stricken face, but the hair that lay tossed upon the pillow was of exceptional beauty.

"Can we save her, Signor Dottore?" It was the nun who spoke.

"We must," the doctor answered, with quiet emphasis.

He stooped and lifted in his hand one of the disordered tresses. It was neither blonde nor auburn, but pure gold, the lovely gold that sometimes shines in the heart of the sunset. Even the nun felt the beauty of it.

"Did you ever see such hair as that?" she asked.

He laid the tress back upon the pillow, very gently, and, looking into the quiet eyes of the Sister, he answered:

"Never but once."

XIX

"Decus et Praesidium"

The search-lights of that evening's talk had betrayed more to Pauline Beverly than the transitory trouble of her sister's mind. In vain did she try to dwell only upon what May had told her, upon the awakening of imagination and feeling that had been revealed in the clear depths of that singularly limpid nature. Unlike as the sisters were, they were yet of closely kindred fibre, and no one but Pauline could have so clearly apprehended or so justly gauged the true significance of the experience which the young girl herself had found so perplexing. Yet because Pauline so well understood it, the thought of it did not wholly possess her mind, and she could not escape an unwilling cognizance of something deeper and far more disquieting, that she had caught a glimpse of in her own soul.

There was nothing of the repellent reserve in Pauline's character which makes itself evident to the chance acquaintance. If she was innately reticent, it was in a deep, still wise, to the exclusion sometimes of her own consciousness,--and it was this inner reticence that had been violated.

In the succeeding hours of the night, her mind recurred many times to that sudden vision of the Salute dome, flashing, white and luminous, upon a shadowy background. It had been the apparition of an instant, and yet it was so clearly imaged on her brain, even now, that every slightest detail stood out in her memory, distinct as in the light of day. And simultaneously with that, a search-light had flashed upon the hidden places of her own soul, and she had had a vision which she knew that no veil of reserve, impenetrable though it might be, could annul. The night had fallen upon the Salute and wrapped it from sight, but was it the less real for that?

In the first dawning light, she got up, and, throwing on a loose gown of soft, pink cashmere, she stepped out upon the balcony to get a breath of air. She did not look toward the Salute; something withheld her from doing so, as if it had involved a self-betrayal which she shrank from. She turned, instead, to the east, where, rising pale, but distinct, against the faint rosy flush of the sky, was the tower and dome of San Pietro di Castello. A single star still pricked through the deepening colour, but, as she looked, it vanished. The dip of an oar, that sound that never ceases, night nor day, on the great thoroughfare of Venice, reached her ear, and a bird chirped in the garden. Each suggestion came to her, isolated and delicately individualised: the star, the oar-dip, the bird-note. She felt herself played upon, like a passive instrument, as if a light hand had just touched one vibrating string and another, careless of definite melody.

The colour in the east deepened to a wonderful rose, against which the tower and dome of San Pietro stood out in purest dove-colour, and more birds chirped, and one burst into a little gush of song. Pauline, standing on her high balcony, wrapped in the soft cashmere whose rosy colour seemed a reflection of the dawn, felt herself in some peculiar sense a partaker in that exquisite awakening; and, in truth, the surface of the water was not more sensitive to the growing wonder than the delicately expressive face, turned still to the east. Not until the sun had fairly risen, and swept the colour from the face of the sky, did she look toward the Salute. There it stood, beautiful and strong and invulnerable, but behind it were dark rain-clouds, heaped high and threatening.

Then Pauline moved away, with a feeling of assured strength and peace. She could not account for it, she could not have defined it; she only felt as if she had come face to face with a great experience, whether of joy or sorrow she could not tell,--but whatever its countenance she felt serenely ready to meet it.

She slept a deep, peaceful sleep after that, nor did her mind misgive her when she awoke again, to find that those threatening clouds had taken possession of the sky, and were drenching the world with rain.

They went to the Belle Arti that morning, Pauline and May and Uncle Dan, their faithful squire. Vittorio took them there in the hooded gondola, himself radiant in a new "impermeable" hat and coat, which gave him the appearance of a gigantic wet seal, swaying genially on its supple tail.

As they looked out from the shelter of the felze, more impermeable than many rubber coats, May observed that it was a terrible waste of opportunities to go about in a felze with a mere uncle and sister.

"What do you take it that a felze is for?" asked Uncle Dan, enchanted with her disparaging tone.

"I suppose it was originally invented for the accommodation of lovers," May replied, with her familiar air of scientific investigation, which caused Pauline to smile contentedly.

"Other kinds of conspirators are said to have found it convenient," Uncle Dan observed. "Thieves and cut-throats, for instance. But it strikes me as being a very good place for an uncle, especially in weather like this."

"And you, Pauline,--what is your vote?"

"I should think it was a very excellent place to be in with an uncle, or----"

"Or?"

"Or anyone else one thought particularly well of," and Pauline gave her sister an appreciative smile.

Then May, usually rather unsusceptible to such quiet demonstrations of affection, put her hand in her sister's and said: "Pauline, you are a good deal of a dear!" and there was a certain bright sweetness in the young girl's face that caused Pauline to think of the dawn, and of what a perfect hour it was,--and that there was never any hurry about the sunrise.