the curtains of the tenda which she had washed and
ironed with her own hands.

In truth it was a very happy little nest that was
tucked away in one corner of that old abandoned
garden with its outlook on the broad water and its
connecting link with the row of neighbors' houses
flanking the side canal,--and no birds in or out of
any nest in all Venice ever sang so long and so
continuously nor were there any others so genuinely
happy the livelong day and night as these
two.

Did I not know something of the curious mixture
of love, jealousy, and suspicion which goes into the
making-up of an Italian, it would be hard for me to
believe that so lovely a structure as this dovecote, one
built with so much hope and alight with so much real
happiness, could ever come tumbling to the ground.
We Anglo-Saxons flame up indignantly when those
we love are attacked, and we demand proofs. "Critica,"
that bane of Venetian life--what this, that, or
the other neighbor tattles to this, that, and the other
listener, we dismiss with a wave of the hand, or with
fingers tight clenched close to the offender's lips, or
by a blow in the face. Not so the Italian. He
also blazes, but he will stop and wonder when his
anger has cooled; think of this and that; put two
and two together, and make ten of what is really
only four. This is what happened to the nest under