Page:A Venetian June (1896).pdf/259

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

It was but a passing compunction, however, and the roses themselves were not destined to receive the attention which their beauty fairly entitled them to. It did not seem quite feasible to take them to San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, and even had they gone, they would soon have been forgotten in the delights which that modest little sanctuary offers. The sunshine of four hundred years ago that glows in mellow warmth upon Carpaccio's canvases, the vigor and the piety and the fun of that "wayward patchwork," are more vital and more absorbing than any mortal roses.

And if, in the morning, Kenwick's interests had been subordinated to Art, Nature proved no less exacting in the afternoon. For then it was that the red banner and the blue pursued together yet unexplored paths of the northern lagoon, returning whence, the city was seen in a new perspective, the great campanile in particular, taking up a position so contrary to all precedent, that May