Under the numerous bridges pass all sorts of boats-gondolas and the lighter (and swifter) sandolos, or larger boats ("burche") laden with vegetables from the mainland. Passing through a dark archway one may unexpectedly come out on the bright and sunny "Riva," bordering the basin of San Marco. Turning into a side canal, our gondolier gives a peculiar cry of warning as he rounds the sharp corners. After numerous turns, perhaps as the canal widens, we shall see before us the broad expanse of the lagoon, and, if we wish, we can go on out over its calm surface, on past Murano, with its glass factories, and still on for mile after mile to far away. The Lost Story BY CLARKE KNOWLTON ILLUSTRATIONS BY GRACE DRAYTON SET down the facts as he gave them to me the facts that seem infinitely more important than any explanation. If you are a materialist, you will say that it was all imagination, only imagination-the confused dreaming of a little boy; but after all are you sure? And of what are you sure? In our sordid preoccupation with the dull type of earthly experience what do we know of a reality not included between that capital letter termed birth and the strange hieroglyphic which lurks, forever enigmatic, the last of printed symbols? It may have been purely accidental that he told me about it on the eve of his departure; it may have been something more subtle by far. Certainly, if he had been asking for bread, I had given him a stone. But how was I to know? So many young business men from distant cities descend upon one in New York armed with letters of introduction and a desire to see the sights. How was I to sense that this one differed from the others, unless it were that he seemed more presentable and had a rather nicer sense of humor? After he was gone, I cursed my own lack of discernment. There were people I might have had him meet, other things than dancing, theatres, and an occasional studio party. Also, I was to remember again how Margaret Owen had summed him up that first night at the LidoVenice. "I like him," she had said. "Bronze wings." But I had put that down to the fact that Margaret was a woman and hence rather inclined to be influenced by such things as brown eyes, stalwart shoulders, and a certainly very well tailored back. He came around that last evening, so he said, to thank me for having been decent to him during his somewhat protracted stay in the city. He found me ostensibly at work on a story, but in reality—since it wasn't going-hoping that the young sculptor chap with whom I was sharing a studio would return to give me an excuse for stopping work under pretense of arguing about the exact proportions of the open fire and whether it might really be large enough to keep me from actually freezing without irreparable damage to the army of mummified clay figures with which the place was thronged. I explained about the story and said that I welcomed the interruption. I even mixed a drink to prove it. "I'll tell you a story," my guest volunteered when the drink was ready. "Though it really is only the imprint of a story." "The imprint of a story?" I asked as I pushed forward a ponderous armchair. "Sit down." He slumped into the chair, taking care not to spill his drink. "Yes. Like yours, it wouldn't come clear," he said. "How well I know that feeling!" I seated myself on our second-best chair. "Makes suicide seem advisable." He smiled at me, and I noted again that this man smiled with his eyelids; they crinkled up in the most engaging way, and when he opened them suddenly the brown eyes sparkled with little flickering golden lights that seemed to be falling sparks from a previous and private conflagration. "I can only tell you of it," he said, "by telling you of the impression it made on a little boy." "Would it be indiscreet to ask if you |