"I hope we don't see a single soul we know as long as I'm here," he declared.
His hope was gratified, not completely, but enough to remove grounds for lover's fretfulness.

He passed idyllic days in halcyon weather.
Often she would send her gondola to fetch him from the Grand Hotel, where he was staying.

Now and then, most graciously audacious of princesses, she would come herself.

On such occasions he would sit awaiting her with beating heart, juvenis fortunatus nimium, on the narrow veranda of the hotel, regardless of the domed white pile of Santa Maria della Salute opposite, or the ceaseless life on the water, or the sunshine, or anything else in Venice, his gaze fixed on the bend of the canal; and then at last would appear the tall curved prow, and then the white-clad, red-sashed Giacomo bending to his oar, and then the white tenda with the dear form beneath, vaguely visible, and then Felipe, clad like Giacomo and bending, too, rhythmically with the foremost figure.

Slowly, all too slowly, the gondola would near the steps, and beneath the tenda would smile the dearest face in the world, and the cheeks would be delicately flushed and the eyes tender and somewhat shy.