“Because,” I answered gravely, “I must not allow myself to forget that one happy moment is not a lifetime.”

“Really, I don’t understand you.“

She looked at me frankly–too frankly–that was the trouble. I hesitated. In spite of the flimsy excuses her aunt had suspiciously erected, I had brought Jacqueline alone with me here to tell her why I must not allow myself to love her; and, I may add, to hear her laugh to delicious scorn my reasons. And yet I hesitated. Sometimes I felt she cared for me. But if I answered her question truthfully, I risked a cruel awakening.

“Do you know how long I have been living in Venice?” I asked presently, with apparent irrelevance.

“Three years, is it not?”

“That is a long time to be dreaming and loafing, isn’t it?”

4“Yes.” Her eyes looked gravely out on the lagoon.

4

“And it seems to you hardly a manly, strenuous life for a man of–shall we say–thirty years of age, to spend three years rocking himself to sleep, as it were, in a gondola?”

“No,” she laughed nervously; “hardly a strenuous life.”

“Such a life as that,” I persisted, “must contrast rather unfavorably with the lives of men you know in New York, for example?”

“I suppose one may spend one’s life well even here in Venice.”

I laughed rather bitterly.

“One gets up at ten,” I murmured. “One has coffee in bed, and dawdles over the papers. A gentle, gentle walk till twelve–to the garden, perhaps–oh, you can walk miles in Venice, though most tourists think not. At twelve, breakfast at Florian’s on the Piazza. A long smoke, perhaps a row to the Lido and a swim, if it is summer. At five another long smoke and incidentally a long drink on the Piazza again, and the band. At seven, dinner at the Grundewald, a momentous affair, when one hesitates ten minutes over the menu. Then another long smoke out in the lagoon, under the stars, with the lights of Venice in the distance, and in the distance, too, 5the herd of tourists, splitting their gloves in 

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