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 line told herself, severely, that Geof was being very hardly used, and that she, by her supineness, was as much to blame as Kenwick for the artist's unwarrantable behavior. To be sure, Geof betrayed no dissatisfaction with the existing arrangement; he was far too well-bred for that,—and really, how fine he was, in this as in everything! One would have thought that he was deeply interested in telling her about the great sea-wall in which nature and man have gone into partnership, and upon the preservation of which depends the very existence of Venice. There it stretched for miles, the long, narrow strip of sand and masonry, and as the steamer plied the waters of the lagoon, hour after hour, in the bright June morning, they could hear the tread of the breakers on the beach outside, and realize something of the mighty forces that must be resisted in time of winter storms.

"That thing almost made an engineer of me," Geof observed.

"I don't wonder," said Pauline, with