as if the words had forced themselves out against his will, and he sought escape-heedless of the cigarette between his fingers until it burned them. "Maladetto! It burns like that!" he cried.

Benedetto, the philosopher, lifted his great bulk from the straw chair in which he sat behind the counter, and laid a compelling hand on the boy's shoulder.

"What burns, Nicolo mio? Tell me all."

Nicolo turned and fixed his eyes on the older man's face, pouring forth a torrent of passionate, incoherent words.

"It is Giulietta! I love her with a love that consumes me to the heart, that burns my nights and eats my days. If I do not get her I shall die soon. I know it. Look! I am wasting. I cannot eat, I cannot drink. My limbs tremble. The beating of my heart suffocates me when I see her. I am consumed as with a flame." He paused for breath.

"And she?"

He threw out his arms with a despairing gesture. "She? She is a child, and like all children knows no better than to play with fire. The smallest spark may light a furnace that many waters cannot quench. I do not understand women. Sometimes I think she despises me; sometimes I think she is not altogether indifferent. She laughs at me and mocks me, and then, when she thinks I am not looking, she glances out of the corner of her eye to see how I take it."

"What, then, of this foolish talk? Thou wouldst not murder her for that?"

"Murder Giulietta? I could kill thee, Benedetto, for the word. No; it is old Matteo, who has cast eyes of longing at her, and whom her mother-a bad one, that-wishes her to marry."

"But why? He is dry and withered as a sucked orange."

"He gloomily.

has money," said Nicolo "And Monna Rosa would sell her grandmother to the devil for a soldo."

"Softly, softly, amico. She is not as bad as that. Thou art young, and so is Giulietta. Wait a little. Fires burn out and wastings cease." "With death, of a certainty." "Enough of that," said Benedetto sternly. "It is well that the powers of life and death are in less foolish hands than thine. Thou dost not even know if Giulietta loves thee. Find that out first, and then I would advise thee to talk to Matteo. Reason with him calmly-tell him that youth must to youth-counsel him to take a maturer bride, and leave Giulietta to thee."

Nicolo's face cleared. "Philosophy is of some use, after all, though it be cold as marble. I will take thine advice, and tell thee the result. Thou hast a good heart, my philosopher."

He leaped off the counter and went to the door, but stopped on the threshold and turned back. Of a truth I had almost forgotten. These are the designs I promised thee." He took a roll of paper from his pocket and spread it out upon the counter.

Benedetto bent forward eagerly. "Ah, the designs for Mariana's angel," he said, a tender inflection creeping into his voice.

This was Benedetto's great ambition -to erect over the grave of his wife a wonderful marble tomb, crowned with a triumphing angel. For this he had saved and scraped; for this he had earned the reputation of having a closed hand with his soldi-but he did not care. He had neither child nor relative, and when the time came for him to join his Mariana, he would lie beside her under the marble monument, and the angel should watch over them both until the Day of Judgment.

The touch of twenty-five years had

healed his wound: Mariana was to him now but a sweet and tender memory, and the hope of saving for what he always called "Mariana's angel" gave a zest and meaning to his life.

Nicolo pointed out the beauties of each design with an artist's pride: one angel had arms outstretched, one hands uplifted; but the one which Benedetto preferred was blowing a challenging trumpet towards the sky. He hung entranced over it.

"This! this is Mariana's angel. This and no other. See thou, my little Nicolo, how much would this one cost?"

Nicolo considered. "If it were of white Carrara it could be done forsay four to five hundred lire."

Benedetto's face fell. "That is a sum," he returned gravely-"ma che, a sum! How is one to make it out of glass, a soldo here and a soldo there?" Then his lines relaxed, and he laughed. "Per bacco, 'tis a droll idea. An angel of glass! My Mariana's angel, though of best Carrara, to be made out of glass." His fat sides shook. "I am a man of humor-no?"

"Thou art a mountain of philosophy," said Nicolo, restored to temporary sanity, and folding up his paper.

"No, no. Leave it there, and let me feast my eyes upon my angel of glass. There is a new idea for thee, which flew at once into my open mind!"

Nicolo turned again to go. "I will reason with that withered leaf. I will not yet shake him from his tree of life. Già, thou seest I am a man of humor and ideas as well as another."

"The conceit of youth," murmured Benedetto as he went. "Where is the modesty that we were taught to practise?"

He put the drawings carefully away, and taking a cloth began to dust the crystal chalice, which in some subtle undefinable way he always associated with the dead Mariana. Perhaps it was an intangible linking of his one

He

perfect possession with what had been for five happy years the joy of his life, the very breath of his nostrils. had never thought of filling her place: to honor her memory with a tomb that should be the envy and admiration of all Venice was ambition enough to pack his life with interest. No banks for him; he added soldo to soldo until he had enough to make one lira-lira to lira until they were transmutable to gold-gold piece to gold piece until the hoard, which he kept in one of Mariana's gaily striped stockings, now reached the respectable sum of nearly four hundred lire.

He burst into unmelodious song as he replaced the chalice on its pedestal, and dusted the green and ruby goldsplashed liquor-glasses. A shadow on the threshold made him look up.

"Ahà! it is thou, pretty one. Come in and give an account of thyself."

"What shall I say?" asked Giulietta, entering. She was a pretty girl of the usual Venetian type, with quantities of soft dark hair piled high on her head and fastened with big coral pins. Coral earrings swung in her ears, and a string of coral beads was twisted round her neck. On her arm she carried a basket filled with spicy carnations-pink, scarlet, and sulphur-yellow, whose challenging masses of color made the glimmering opalescence of the glass pale by contrast.

"That thy dark eyes shoot arrows which wound desperately," suggested Benedetto, who had a liking for the girl, because something about the turn of her head and the curve of her soft cheek reminded him of Mariana.

"Già, what wounding! A pin-prick?” Benedetto shook his head. "First it is Nicolo-"

"That boy!"

"Thou hast turned him into a man, curina. Then old Matteo, dried fig that he is; and the saints know who else! Thou hast no heart!"

The girl laughed saucily, and tossed her head. "I have a heart, of a certainty, but it is a cabbage heart. I give a leaf to this one and a leaf to that one, but I keep the core for myself." "And what of poor Nicolo?"

"I have no time to waste. I must hasten to the Piazza to sell my flowers to the forestieri."

She ran off laughing, but Benedetto noticed that she blushed at his words. The little shop was filled with the warm scent of the carnations. The gay awnings on the other side of the canal threw bright reflections in the water, across which gondolas skimmed and set them quivering; fussy little steamers puffed from pier to pier.

A rustle of silk, and two English ladies entered the shop. The day's work had begun.

In the evening Benedetto took his straw chair and sat outside his door. The fires of sunset were fading in the sky, where a star or two now winked. In the green east hung a slender crescent moon. The water was still, except where the passing gondolas furrowed it into long glassy ripples. Bats fluttered, and from a distance came the sound of a bell striking the hour.

Benedetto felt soothed and happy. He would go presently to his favorite wine-shop for a glass of sour wine and a game of dominoes. Meanwhile, it was pleasant to sit there and hear the homely noises of the fondamenta―the tinkle and frizzle and clatter of his neighbors' suppers-the shrill laughter of children, the high humming of a mandoline.

Suddenly down the fondamenta came the sound of hurried steps heralding Nicolo.

"Ohime, this love!" sighed Benedetto, when he saw the boy's white face and burning eyes. "What fortune, amico?"

"The worst of fortune," Nicolo cried, dashing his hat frantically upon

How didst thou Didst call him a

"Now tell me all. reason with Matteo? serpent, or a sucked orange? Be calm. be calm!"

"It is easy to philosophize over the troubles of others," cried Nicolo bitterly. "No, I did not begin by calling him names, but I ended that way. He knows now what one Venetian thinks of him, saints be praised. First I was soft as butter. I reasoned with him as gently as even thou couldst have done, Benedetto. I told him it was an iniquity to think that an ancient like himself, who ought to be making his soul, should contemplate marriage; that he would commit a sin in so doing, that Giulietta's mother was even worse than he to think of such a thing, that they were no better than slavedealers of Constantinople-oh, I was calm and mild as an angel, I promise thee, though rage burned in my heart and my fingers trembled to be at his throat."

"Was he moved by thy gentle arguments, my Nicolo?"

"He laughed at me. He said his marriage was his own concern-curses light upon him like a flock of foul birds! Then I went in a madness; I know not what I did or said-save that I told him

what I thought of him—till I found myself outside his house with the door locked behind me. He has a strength, the old devil! It is all over, Benedetto. Either the canal for me, or a knife between the ribs for him."

Benedetto reflected for a moment. "A foolish alternative," he said at length.

He looked at the boy. Verily, for the moment the light of reason seemed to have fled from his eyes. It was useless to argue with him. "Tell me this. Thou earnest a fair wage? Thou couldst keep a wife?"

"As well as another," said Nicolo sullenly.

The fires of rage appeared to have burned themselves out, leaving behind a smouldering despair.

"Then I will go to Giulietta's mother and see what I can do." He looked for a brightening of the dark face, but none came. "Thou knowest, amico, that I am very persuasive. In all modesty I say that few can withstand me when I choose."

"An angel out of heaven could not change her now," said Nicolo gloomily. "Matteo is to give her two hundred lire on the wedding-day-not that there will be a wedding-day for him."

"Softly, softly. He must be rich as the Jews."

"He has been saving for years, while I-I have only enough to buy the sauce-pans."

"He who sleeps catches no fish," quoted Benedetto slowly. A new idea had flown to his open mind, but contrary to his creed he closed the doors against it. To his uneasy subconsciousness it seemed that he could hear the persistent beating of its wings.

"It is easy for the old to save," flashed Nicolo. "They have neither cat nor child. I spent my nest-egg on corals for Giulietta for the festa."

"The more fool thou!" grunted

Benedetto.

His vigilance relaxing for a moment, the idea found a chink, and having effected an entrance proceeded to make itself quite at home. It became persuasive finally irresistible. "It is a mistake to be a man of good heart and overflowing kindliness," he burst out suddenly. "It is a misfortune to have brains and a ready application. It is a veritable calamity to possess the power of putting two and two together without owning that fertility in argument which would persuade one that they made five!"

"Eh?" queried Nicolo stupidly. He did not know what to make of this outburst.

"Go thy ways, amico," said Benedetto, calming suddenly. "I will see Rosa Marioni. I am in the vein tonight. I feel that I could argue five feet on a cat! Go home and sleep. The sun will shine again to-morrow."

"The moments go with leaden stockings," said Nicolo. "Sleep has forsaken me these many nights. I will walk till I am wearied out."

"That would be well. Leave me now, amico. I must prepare my-arguments." A wry smile twisted his lips, but it was too dark for Nicolo to notice.

Half an hour later Benedetto, with his cloak flung over his shoulder, knocked at the door of the room where Giulietta and her mother lived. was in a high house in the Calle Agnese, close and stuffy to-night.

It

He entered to a hurried avanti! from within. Rosa Marioni had once been beautiful, but her face was lined and avaricious now.

"What brings thee, Benedetto?" she asked, after a greeting. "There are two Sundays in a week when thou comest hither."

Benedetto still panted from the as

cent.

"A man of weight like me cannot mount thy stairs often, Monna Rosa. I should say it is for the pleasure of

thy conversation I came here, but I am no courtier. The saints know I am a modest man, and realize my limitations. I will not linger by the doorstep, but go straight to the well. I came to speak to thee of the marriage of thy daughter Giulietta with

"With Matteo Abranti."

"Not so with Nicolo Dalzio."

Monna Rosa shook her head and smiled. "The clever Benedetto has been misinformed," she said. "There is no mention of that foolish young Nicolo. Giulietta is betrothed to a man of riper years

"And longer purse," put in Benedetto slyly.

"That may well be," said Monna Rosa, casting a shrewd glance at him. "The girl's heart is not in it. I think she loves Nicolo."

"A fig for love! What has that to do with it? In a year's time it is all the same to a girl what husband she has. Why not one as well as another?"

"Why not, indeed, if the one be Nicolo?"

"Or the other Matteo."

The lamp smoked. Monna Rosa leant over to turn it down.

All at once the room became intolerable to Benedetto; the mingled fumes of oil and garlic, with which the place reeked, almost stifled him. He longed to end the affair and be gone.

"Youth should go to youth," he said— "to maturity the mature."

Monna Rosa shot a sly look at him. "Art thou coming wooing on thine own behalf, Benedetto?"

He rose, alarmed, and moved backwards. Not even to save Giulietta from bondage, and Nicolo from the double sin of murder and suicide, could he do this thing.

"I had no thought of myself, I assure thee," he said hastily. "It is for two children who love and would wed that I plead."

"Thou carriest water to the sea,

then," answered Rosa firmly. "Nothing can change my mind."

"Nothing?" he queried softly.

She looked at him, hesitated, opened her lips as if to speak, and closed them again. His soul sickened at the flame of greed which lit up her dark eyes. "Matteo used a golden argument to persuade thee-no?"

Monna Rosa looked down at the fringe of her shawl and played with it. "Times are hard and I am poor. Three hundred lire is three hundred lire."

"Thou liest. I know of a truth Matteo only offered two hundred."

"And canst thou better it?" she cried, looking up eagerly and unashamed.

"I will give thee three hundred lire on the day Nicolo marries Giulietta."

She shook her head. "That will not do. I must have it now. How do I know what would happen?"

"Can I trust thee?"

"I will swear on the crucifix-I will sign a paper. I will give thee what guarantee thou desirest." She guessed that he must have brought the money with him, and she would have promised anything rather than that it should escape her grasp. "Give it to me now-now, that I may feast my eyes upon the good gold before I sleep."

Benedetto produced a paper which he had prepared. With trembling hands she brought forth a battered ink-bottle and rusty pen, and signed a laborious "Rosa Marioni." Then from beneath his cloak Benedetto drew a gaily. striped stocking filled to bulging, and gravely counted out the sum he had promised. Only the little foot of the stocking was full when he had finished. He tied a knot in it and returned it to his pocket. At the door he looked back. Monna Rosa was on her knees by the table, touching, clasping, gloating over the piles of money. He hastened away.

The cool night air was sweet as a