Oddly it provoked in him the wish to protect, when the practical situation had left him dry and bare.
It was the evening of the _Serenata_.

They were all there in the gondola, Mrs.Merrithew and the girl, with Luigi squatting by Giuseppe, not too far from the music float that sprang mysteriously from the black water in arching boughs of red and gold and pearly Aladdin's fruit.
Behind them the lurking prows rustled and rocked drunkenly with the swell to which they seemed at times attentively to lean.

They could make out heads crowded in the gondolas, and silver gleams of the prows as they drifted past palaces lit intermittently by a red flare that wiped out for the moment, the seastain and disfiguring patches of restoration.
They had passed the palace of Camerleigh.

The jewel-fruited arbour folded and furled upon itself to pass the slow curve of the Rialto, and suddenly, Peter's attention, drawn momentarily from the music, was caught by that other bright company leaning from deserted balconies, swarming like the summer drift between the pillars of dark loggias.

They were all there, knights and saints and ladies, out of print and paint and marble, and presently he made out the Princess.