BOOK FIVE (continued 3)

"Wilhelm is right! The day itself and all the ardours of the sun are in your playing—and yet here we are encompassed by night."

Kyril looked at her, and in his heart he told himself that what she said was true, for through the medium of music every hesitancy of the spirit was revealed to him who, in theory, denied that any such insight existed. He began playing Chopin's nocturne in E-flat major, and Wilhelm accompanied him throughout, while Diana stood leaning upon the rail of the balcony gazing down on the darkened water.

"All this is good," thought she. "So is this town, and my father, and the prince, and Wilhelm. So, too, maybe is the Russian at times. And even if things are to be otherwise in the future, yet for tonight I will that they be as they are!"

Soon after this the party broke up, for the yacht was to put to sea at peep of day. Wassilko stopped Diana when she reached the middle of the great room, and, taking her face between his hands, he kissed his daughter on the top of her head. The four men watched him in silence: Scherer and Wilhelm as if they were assisting at a ceremony which they would, undoubtedly, have performed better than any of those who were present; Kyril with vague recollections of the Russian parental blessing; Eduard once again with the feeling that his own father was before him, his father, kissing Diana.

Their farewells were more genial than their greetings had been, and yet there was something aloof in the manner of the four men as they bade their host good-night. They divided forces as they approached the two gondolas, the prince pairing off with Diana while Scherer and Kyril took their places in the other boat. Wilhelm stood hesitant on the landing-stage, pondering the alternatives: should he please Scherer by stepping into the foremost boat and thus preventing the prince and Diana from being alone, or should he please Eduard by leaving the field free? Scherer, guessing his dilemma, was determined to bring no pressure to bear upon the young man's decision. Finally Diana signalled to him her wish to have the prince all to herself, and so it was that Wilhelm sprang in beside Scherer. He instantly struck up one of those light-hearted ditties that are the rage in Venice, and make one feel they must have been composed in Vicenza, so gay and debonair is their lilt. Old Mary, in company with one of the yacht's crew, followed in a third gondola.

"Shall I tell him to stop?" asked Eduard softly.

"Oh no! It is sweet to hear his lute over the water...."

"Is Herr von Wassilko a good player?"

"His heart plays well, but his fingers are clumsy and out of practice."

"And yet they were dextrous enough when it was a question of bringing ancient statues out of the earth...."

"Yes, and glass-ware too; that's a far more delicate business."

"He seems more vigorous than my father, and yet is much the same age."

"Is the prince still ailing? Have you any news of his health?"

She was never the one to start a conversation about his relatives, always waiting for him to begin.

"He has been in a precarious condition ever since my mother died. I have not much confidence either in the bulletins or in his doctor," said Eduard softly, turning away.

"I, too, love my father," murmured Diana.

Eduard, profoundly moved by her unuttered thought, again reminded of the scenes he had witnessed on the steps of the museum and in the room at the moment of farewell, seized her hand as it lay in her lap. She made no protest, and he whispered her name: "Diana..."

He had never yet called her by name, and now, very slowly, he bent his head and kissed her hand, pressing his lips to it long and tenderly.

"How gentle are this young man's kisses," she mused. "I would like to kiss him... Yet he is silent, and seems to be enclosing me in a great circle ... slowly... Behind us, in our wake, Wilhelm trills his song of love, as if life were nothing but an Eden of amoretti, short-kilted in pale blue raiment... Have I dreamed all this before?..."

And, as if the prince had drunk in her reverie through the pores of her bronzed skin, he raised his head, still holding her hand in his, and leaned back once more among the black cushions, saying dreamily, as if musing on things long past:

"One night we were in a gondola together, and, for the first time, I called you by your name ... Diana... Do you remember? It was the same evening that your father had entertained us at his rooms. The Russian had tried to draw him into a discussion on Swedenborg ... that fair-haired Russian who was born on the same day as I ... He plays Bach as only a man can play... Is he still alive? ... Has he been hanged? ... Scherer, too, was one of the party, young still, and hospitable and active ... Wilhelm played and sang in a gondola that followed us, a song about a Venetian woman and her lout of a husband and her handsome cousin... It was amid this queer medley of voyaging, do you recollect? ... The 'Excelsior' ... and the journey was not yet at an end..."

"And as we passed by the Piazzetta," Diana took up the tale in the same key, as she, too, leaned back among the cushions, "the two giants were just striking the clock in the tower to the leftward, for it was midnight... But the journey was not yet at an end... Do you remember, Prince?"

They were very still, hand lay in hand, but they did not turn to look at one another. Then, close in the rear of San Marco, the gondola swung round a bend, and the lights of the "Excelsior" shone through the darkness.

The prince sprang on to the gangway and helped her up. At the top, he kissed her hand. Diana turned, and bade good-night to the others who had followed close on her heels.