It seemed as if all the other nights
of love were concentrated into this one in its perfect joy.
Who can tell of the wild exaltation which filled Paul? He was no longer
just Paul Verdayne, the ordinary young Englishman; he was a god--and this
was Olympus.
"Look, Paul!" she said at last. "Can you not see Desdemona peeping from
the balcony of her house there? And to think she will have no happiness
before her Moor will strangle her to-night! Death without joys. Ah! that
is cruel. Some joys are well worth death, are they not, my lover, as you
and I should know?"
"Worth death and eternity," said Paul. "For one such night as this with
you a man would sell his soul."
It was not until they turned at the opening of the Guidecca to return to
their palazzo that they both became aware of another gondola following
them, always at the same distance behind--a gondola with two solitary
figures in it huddled on the seats.
The lady gave a whispered order in Italian to her gondolier, who came to a
sudden stop, thus forcing the other boat to come much nearer before it,
too, arrested its course. There a moonbeam caught the faces of the men as
they leant forward to see what had occurred. One of them was Dmitry, and
the other a younger man of the pure Kalmuck type whom Paul had never seen.
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