Teresa, meanwhile, had been facing her problem—how to warn the Englishman of his danger. During the slow hours while Gordon sat gazing into the distorted mirror of his own thought, she had traversed every causeway of risk, sounded every well of possibility. To a young girl of the higher class in Venice, a night trip, uncavaliered, held elements of grave peril. Discovery spelled lasting disgrace perhaps, certainly the anger of her father. All this she was ready to hazard. But beyond was the looming probability that she could not find the object of her search after all. However, it was a chance, and fear, with another sentiment that she did not analyze, impelled her to take it.

It was an easy task to win Tita, for he would have denied her nothing. To him, however, she told only a part of the truth—that she wished once to see the Piazza by night. Only an hour in the music and lights in his care, and then quick and safe return to the Palazzo Albrizzi. The house servants she could answer for. Who would be the wiser?

So, a little while after Gordon had been set down that night at the Molo, another gondola, lampless and with drawn tenda, stole swiftly to a side landing, and Teresa, closely veiled, with Tita by her side, stepped into the square, beneath the flare of its flambeaux, into its currents of eddying maskers where the white fazzioli of the lower orders mingled with the rich costumes of patricians, all alike stung by the tarantula of gaiety: a flashing sea of motion and color surging endlessly beneath a sky alive with winged spots of gray and black—the countless pigeons that circled there undisturbed.

She had chosen the Piazza after much deliberation. It was the last night of the carnival, when all the world of Venice was on the streets. At the new Fenice Theater the latest opera of Rossini’s was playing, and there was the ball of the Cavalchina, the final throb before the dropping of the pall of Lent. The sadness in Gordon’s face and speech, she felt, had no part in these things. She felt instinctively that he would be spectator rather than actor, would choose the open air of the square rather than the indoors. The danger she feared for him would not seek him in a crowd; it would lurk in some silent byway and strike unseen. The thought made her tremble as she peered about her.

The center of the Piazza was a pool, fed and emptied by three streams of people: one flowing under the clock-tower with its blue and gold dial and bronze figures, one through the west entrance under the Bocca di Piazza, and still another rounding the Doges’ Palace and meeting the thronged Riva. It was on the fringe of this second stream that she saw him, when the hour was almost ended. He was standing in the shadow of the pillars, watching, she thought, yet abstracted. With a whispered word to Tita she ran and touched the moveless figure on the arm.

Gordon turned instantly, and turning, spoke her name half-aloud. “Teresa!” The utterance was almost automatic, the lips, startled, voicing the word that was in his mind at the moment.

She thought he recognized her through the veil, and answered with a cry expressing at one time her relief at finding him, and a quick delight that thrilled her at the sound of her name on his lips. Many things had wrought together to produce this new miracle of gladness. The strangeness and romance of their first meeting, the tragedy of loneliness she had guessed in the scene at the shop, her dread and the physical risk entailed in her adventure of this night, all had combined with cunning alchemy. When he spoke she forgot to be surprised that he had called her by name, forgot that she did not know his, forgot everything save his presence and her errand.

He leaned forward, breathing deeply. It was she! She put her veil aside quickly—her eyes were like sapphire stones!—and told him hurriedly of the threat she had heard, of her dread, all in a rush of sentences incoherent and unstudied.

“And so you came to warn me?”

“He would do it, Signore! Ah, I saw his face when he said it. You must be guarded! You must not go abroad alone!”

His mind was busy. How much she had jeopardized to reach him in that fancied danger! She, in Venice, a young girl of noble rank, with no escort save a gondolier! Risk enough for her in any case; what an enduring calamity if she should be seen and recognized there, with him!

He led her back between the pillars, put out his hand and drew the veil again across her face, speaking gravely and gently:

“What you have done is a brave and noble thing; one I shall be glad of always. It was no less courageous, nor am I less grateful, though what you heard was a mistake. Little Pasquale is not dead. I spoke with the surgeon here less than a half-hour ago. He had just come from the piazzetta. The child will recover.”

“Oh, thank God!” she breathed. She clasped her hands in very abandonment. “The blessed Virgin has heard me!”

His heart seemed suddenly to cease beating. The exclamation was a revelation far deeper than she divined. It was not joy at the life of the child that was deepest in it—it was something else: a great relief for him! He felt the blood tingle to his finger-tips. Only one emotion could speak in such an accent—only one!

With an uncontrollable impulse he leaned to her and clasped both her hands.

“You cared, Teresa,” he said. “You risked so much—for me?”

He had spoken her name again. Again she felt the stab of that quivering spear of gladness. Her fingers fluttered in his.

“Yes—yes!” she whispered. The shouts, the music, the surge and laughter around, faded. She felt herself, unafraid, drifting on a sea of unplummetted depths.

A shock of fright brought her to herself. A man bent and dressed richly, with an affectation of youth, was passing, attended by a servant. As they approached, the keen-eyed servitor had pointed out Gordon. “That is the evil Englishman, Excellence, of whom you have heard,” he had said, and the old noble he led had set his keen eyes on the other with a chuckling relish.

Teresa, in the momentary pause they made, hardly repressed a cry, for that moment discovery seemed to her imminent. The old man was the Count Guiccioli—he who had leaned that afternoon from the palazzo balcony. Her pulses leaped to panic. She felt as if that sharp gaze must go through the veil, and pressed closer to Gordon.

But master and servant passed on, and her fear fainted out.

The man beside her had felt that quick pressure, and instinctively the touch of his arm reassured her, though he had not surmised her alarm. In that instant Gordon had been thinking like lightning. A temptation had sprung full-statured before him. In a flash he had read the dawning secret behind those eyes, the sweet unspoken things beneath those trembling lips crimson-soft as poppy leaves. To possess this heart for his own! Not to tell her who he was—not yet, when her purity would shrink—to nurture this budding regard with meetings like this, stolen from fate—to cherish it till it burst into flower for him, all engrossing, supreme! To make this love, fluttering to him unsought in the purlieus of his soul’s despair, his solace and his sanctuary!

Coincidence grappled with him—a stealthy persuasion. In the crisis of his madness, when at Geneva he had cursed every good thing, her pictured face had sought him out to go with him. Into the nadir of his degradation there in Venice it had dropped like a falling star to call him to himself. Fate had led him to her in the woods of La Mira—had brought them both face to face at the shop in the piazzetta—and now had led her to him again here in the midst of the maskers. It was Kismet!

“I did not think there was more than one in all the world who would have done what you have to-night!” he said; “that would have cared if I lived or died! Why do you care?”

“Ah!” she answered hurriedly. “Is there one who would not? I do not know why. One does not reason of such things. One feels. I know I have cared—ever since that morning in the wood, when you found the book, when I gave you the prayer!”

He started, releasing her hands. “Intercede and obtain for me of thy Son, our Lord, this grace!” It seemed to come to him from the air, a demoniac echo to his desire. His breath choked him. She had prayed for him, purely, unselfishly. How should he requite? To-night, for his sake she had risked reputation. How did he purpose to repay? Would not the doing of this thing sink him a thousand black leagues below the sky she breathed? No matter how much she might come to love, could it recompense for what he would take away? Between those two lay a gulf as deep as that which stretched between cool water and a tortured Dives. What had he, George Gordon, dragging the chain and ball of a life sentence of despair, to do with her in her purity? He yearned for her because she was an immaculate thing; because she reincarnated for him all the white, unspotted ideals that he had thrown away, that he longed to touch again. It was the devil tempting in the plea of an angel!

The mist fell from his eyes.

“Child!” he said. “What you have done to-night I can never repay. I shall remember it until I die. But I am not worthy of your thought—not worthy of a single throb of that heart of yours!”

She shook her head protesting.

“That cannot be true,” she contended. “But if it were, Signore, one cannot say ‘I will,’ or ‘I will not care’ when one chooses.” Her tone was naïve, and arch with a smiling, shy rebellion.

“Listen,” he went on. “Do not think me jesting. What I say now I say because I must. I want you to promise me you will do something—something only for your good, I swear that!”

The smile faded from her lips, chilled by his earnestness.

“When you go from here you must forget that day at La Mira, forget that you came to-night—that we have ever met! Will you promise this?”

Her whole mind was a puzzled question now. Did he mean she should see him no more? Was he quitting Venice? The thought came like a pang. But to forget! Could she if she would? Why did he say it was for her good? A fear, formless and vague, ran through her.

“Why do you ask that, Signore?”

He turned his face away. It was so much harder than he thought. Must he tell her who he was? Could he not carry with him this one memory? Must he drink this cup of abnegation to its last dregs? The very kindness of silence would be cruelty for her! The seed fate had sown, watered by mystery, would germinate in thorns! He must tell her—tell her now!

The press of maskers flooding the square, circled nearer, and she drew close. Her hand from under her cloak, found his own, suddenly fearful, feeling bold looks upon them.

“Bravo la Fornarina!” rose a jeering cry. An exclamation broke from Gordon’s lips. A woman had burst from the throng like a beautiful embodied storm. Teresa shrank with a sob of dismay at the vision of flashing black eyes and dark hair streaming across jealous brows.

The crowd laughed.

“It is l’Inglese maligno!” said a voice.

Evading Gordon’s arm, with a spring like a tiger’s, the infuriate figure reached the girl, snatching at the veil.

“So he prefers you for his donna!” she sneered savagely. “Let us see, white face!”

The rent gauze dropped to the ground.

Sudden stillness fell. The jests and jeers hushed. Teresa stood motionless, her features frozen to sculpture; a passing cloud had slipped from the moon, and the silvery light above and behind her caught and tangled to a glistening aureole in her amber hair that fell in a mist about her shoulders. The illusion of a halo was instant and awe-inspiring. More than one, gazing, made the sign of the cross.

There was a cry—the Fornarina had flung herself on her knees on the flagging. A stir came from the crowd.

L’Inglese maligno! For the girl who stood so moveless, the exclamation had blotted joy from the universe. It was as though all terrors gripped her bodily in a molten midnight. Dreams, faiths, prayer, and tender things unguessed, seemed to be shrivelling in her. She shivered, put out her hands and wavered on her feet.

“Dio!” she said in a low voice. “You, the wicked milord!”

Gordon, in aching misery, stretched out his arms toward her, though he saw her eyes were closed, with a broken word that was lost in a tumult, as a gigantic form plowed through the circle, a form from whose rush maskers fell away like tenpins.

It was Tita, enraged, bull-like. He gathered the crumpling, veilless figure in his arms, thrust his burly shoulder against the crowd and bore her quickly to the water-stairs where lay the dark gondola.

He set her on the cushions and plied the oar till it smoked in its socket.

The bright canals fled by—she had not moved. By darker passages he went now and very slowly, threading stagnant unlighted alleys. The way opened out, a swish of trailing tendrils swept across the oar—they were under a vine-trellised bridge. The lampless gondola crept along the wall, stole with sudden swiftness across a patch of moonbeams and darted into the shadowy water-gate.

Tita had thought the canal quite deserted. But beyond the moonlight another craft had been drowsing by. The old man under its tenda had been musing on the loveliness of a girl within those walls whom he should soon possess, and with her a dowry, set aside at her birth, which the waning fortunes of her family had preserved intact. He saw the dark bulk shoot into the gilded water-gate and peered out.

“What was that?” he demanded.

“A gondola, surely, Excellence.”

Garden water-gates seldom swung in Venice at night. For a moment he watched. “Some servant’s errand,” he reflected, and leaned back on the cushions.

In the orchid-scented garden, Tita’s brawny arms lifted Teresa out and set her upon the marble steps. He was thinking of the Englishman.

“Illustrissima!” he whispered. “Shall I kill him?”

Then something broke in Teresa’s breast. She clasped the broad neck, sobbing:

“No, no, Tita! Dear Tita! Not that! I would rather die myself!”