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 what it was they pulled out of their pockets. A ten-franc piece seemed cheap as a copper. And all the time, Polly, standing there, singing her heart out! It was an ovation, I tell you,—an ovation!"

And as Polly sang on and on, light opera airs, rhythmical barcarolles, songs of the people, with their naïve, swinging cadence, a new, exultant sense of power seemed lifting her above her own level.

And presently an inspiration seized her, and, leaning forward, she said to Canti: "Make them row out on the lagoon, toward the Lido; I can sing better there."

Then the barge loosed itself from the clinging gondolas, and slowly glided out and away. And all the gondolas followed, with the soft plash of many oars, on and on, after the swinging lanterns and the syren voice.

To the young girl, borne out of herself into a strange, unimagined experience of beauty and harmony and power, into a newly awakened sympathy, too, with