Page:A Venetian June (1896).pdf/132

 not yet strongly, and they were avoiding the current by keeping in toward the shore of the Lido.

Geof was rowing, with power and precision, as his habit was. It struck Pauline that he would have been a capital gondolier; and then she remembered that when he got her Uncle Dan talking about the war the other day,—a feat, by the way, which few succeeded in accomplishing,—she had thought to herself, what a superb soldier he would have made. Presently her eye wandered from the rhythmically swaying figure at the oar to the wide reaches of the seaward path, where the yellow sail showed, clear and remote as a golden bugle-note, its reflection dropping like an echo, far, far down into the depths. The other gondola had fallen back a few lengths, as was apt to be the case.

"Did you ever wonder why your men give us the right of way?" Mrs. Daymond asked. Her voice fell in so naturally with the dip of the oars and the