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 exactly what is good for one; but then,—one knows!"

"Did you ever notice the inscription on the pedestal?" he asked, after a moment. "Hardly anybody ever does."

"Yes; Decus et praesidium," Pauline read.

"For grace and protection," Geoffry translated. "Isn't that pretty?"

They went inside the felze again, without giving any directions to the gondolier, and Vittorio, delightedly equal to the occasion, rowed on, through intricate, winding ways, with many a challenging sta-i! and premi-o! and out across the Giudecca Canal. Neither Geoffry nor Pauline was disposed to talk, yet neither of them felt the silence oppressive. After a while they found themselves floating far out on the lagoon beyond San Giorgio. The steady pulse of the oar went on, and the light grew in sky and water.

"See how clear the Euganean hills are," Pauline said, looking out through the little window to those deep-blue pyra-