Kitty sprang softly
out of bed, flung on a dressing-gown and fur cloak, and slipped through
the open window to the balcony.
A strange sight! Beneath, livid waves, lashing the marble walls; above,
a pale moonlight, obscured by scudding clouds. Not a sign of life on
the water or in the dark palaces opposite. Venice looked precisely as
she might have looked on some wild sixteenth-century night in the years
of her glorious decay, when her palaces were still building and her
state tottering. Opposite, at the Traghetto of the Accademia, there were
lamps, and a few lights in the gondolas; and through the storm-noises
one could hear the tossed boats grinding on their posts.
The riot of the air was not cold; there was still a recollection of
summer in the gusts that beat on Kitty's fair hair and wrestled with her
cloak. As she clung to the balcony she pictured to herself the tumbling
waves on the Lido; the piled storm-clouds parting like a curtain above a
dead Venice; and behind, the gleaming eternal Alps, sending their
challenge to the sea--the forces that make the land, to the forces that
engulf it.
Her wild fancy went out to meet the tumult of blast and wave.
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