Not until the boat touched the farther shores of Lake Como did it occur to me that Jacqueline would think this promise but a half-hearted one. That there was any connection between the clock and the casket she had, of course, no idea. 128 CHAPTER XII I reached Venice by the midnight express. St. Hilary was waiting for me on the platform. “St. Hilary!” I cried with affected gaiety, “what brings you here at two o’clock in the morning?” “Ah, what!” he grumbled. “Have you no imagination? But wait till we are in my gondola. You are going to your rooms, I suppose?” We were scarcely seated when he turned eagerly toward me. His yellow face was haggard for want of sleep and lined like an old carved ivory, but in the pale light of the lamps of the landing I saw his eyes gleam. “You are in good enough spirits to have good news. Come, no one can hear us now. Tell me of your little trip to Russia.” I recounted to him the story of my fruitless journey. He listened to me in silence. When I had finished, he drew aside the curtains of the gondola and looked out. “I might have known that you would have just such ill luck,” he said bitterly, and did not again speak until we had reached the Giudecca. 129We entered the Grand Canal. One thinks of the Grand Canal as a mise en scène for endless processions of tourists. Your true flaneur shuns it. He keeps, as far as possible, to the cool blue shadows of the little canals. 129 mise en scène flaneur But to-night this majestic waterway laid a fresh spell on me. It awed me. This silent stream, black as death, was full of mystery. A menace lurked in the deep shadows of the great palaces, pallid and ghostlike in the darkness. The steel prow of our gondola, curving upward proudly, dipped and glided through the inky waters. Is there in the whole world anything inanimate so graceful, so almost alive, so light and so cruelly sharp and strong as the prow of a gondola? It is the very incarnation of the spirit of the Venetians of the Renaissance. To-night, as we penetrated the gloom that was
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