Page:A Venetian June (1896).pdf/53

 was drowned in a moist blur, that only seemed intensified where it focused about the electric lights. Over there again, across the Canal, stood the great Salute, showing ghostly and unreal in its massive whiteness, half obliterated by the driving rain. It would have seemed that the most perfunctory letter-writing might have been an improvement upon such a prospect as that. Yet the Colonel sat on, puffing in a desultory manner at his excellent cigar, and reflecting that another five years had gone by.

A curious thing, he was thinking to himself, how inevitably he found himself in Venice once in five years. It was not in his plan to do so. He would have been just as ready to return after an interval of two years, or of three; but, for one reason or another, he never seemed able to arrange his affairs to that end until the fifth year had come round. Somebody was sure to die and leave him executor of his will; or this or that charity of which he was treasurer