It was there in their soft _Buon giorno_ in the way they did not, as the gondola drew beside them, cover their fruitful breasts from her tender eyes, in the way most fall, they grasped in the high mood of the _forestieri_ a sublimity untouched by the niceties of bargaining.

A man in the state of mind to which the girl's visible shine confessed, could hardly be expected to stickle at the price of the few figs and roses which served as an easy passage from the wonder of their meeting to the ground of their accustomed gay pretences.

They made of Peter's purchases of fruit and flowers a market garden of their own from which they had but just come on hopeful errands.

They made believe again as boats thickened like winged things in a summer garden, to be bent upon discovery, and slid with pretended caution under the great ships stationed by the Giudecca, from which they heard sailors singing.

They shot with exaggerated shivers past a slim cruiser and suddenly Miss Dassonville clutched Peter by the arm.
"Oh!" she cried: "Do you see it?
That little dark, impudent-looking one, and _the_ flag ?" Peter saw; he was not quite, he reminded her, even in the intoxication of a morning on the lagoons with her, quite in that state where he couldn't see his country's flag when it was pointed out to him.