''We're sitting on the wrong sides for that.
Change over.''
''Good.
That is a sensible order couched in simple language and easily understood.''
It was fun moving over, trying not to disturb the balance of the gondola, but having to trim again carefully.
''Now,'' she said. ''But hold me tightly with the other arm.''
''You know just what you want?''
''I do indeed.
Is it un-maidenly?
I learned that word too from my governess.''
''No,'' he said. ''It's lovely.
Pull up the blanket good and feel that wind.''
''It's from the high mountains.''
''Yes.
And beyond there it's from somewhere else.''
The Colonel heard the slap of the waves, and he felt the wind come sharply, and the rough familiarity of the blanket, and then he felt the girl cold-warm and lovely and with upraised breasts that his left hand coasted lightly over.
Then he ran his bad hand through her hair once, twice, and three times and then he kissed her, and it was worse than desperation.
''Please,'' she said, from almost underneath the blanket. ''Let me kiss now.''
''No,'' he said. ''Me again.''
The wind was very cold and lashed their faces but under the blanket there was no wind nor nothing; only his ruined hand that searched for the island in the great river with the high steep banks. ''That's it,'' she said. He kissed her then and he searched for the island, finding it and losing it, and then finding it for good. For good and for bad, he thought, and for good and for all. ''My darling,'' he said. ''My well beloved. Please.'' ''No. Just hold me very tight and hold the high ground, too.'' The Colonel said nothing, because he was assisting, or had made an act of presence, at the only mystery that he believed in except the occasional bravery of man. ''Please don't move,'' the girl said. ''Then move a great amount.'' The Colonel, lying under the blanket in the wind, knowing it is only what man does for woman that he retains, except what he does for his fatherland or his motherland, however you get the reading, proceeded.
''Please darling,'' the girl said. ''I don't think I can stand it.''
''Don't think of anything.
Don't think of anything at all.''
''I'm not.''
''Don't think.''
''Oh please let's not talk.''
''Is it right?''
''You know.''
''You're sure.''
''Oh please not talk. Please.'' Yes, he thought. Please and please again.
She said nothing, and neither did he, and when the great bird had flown far out of the closed window of the gondola, and was lost and gone, neither of them said anything.
He held her head lightly with his good arm and the other arm held the high ground now.
''Take a glass of this,'' the Colonel said, reaching accurately and well for the champagne bucket with the ice, and uncorking the bottle the Gran Maestro had uncorked, and then placed a common wine cork in.
''This is good for you, Daughter. It is good for all the ills that all of us have, and for all sadness and indecision.''
''I have none of those,'' she said, speaking grammatically as her governess had taught her. ''I am just a woman, or a girl, or whatever that is, doing whatever it is she should not do. Let's do it again, please, now I am in the lee.''
''Yes,'' the Colonel said. ''Yes, now if you want, or will accept from kindness.'' ''Please, yes.''
She talks like a gentle cat, though the poor cats cannot speak, the Colonel thought.
But then he stopped thinking and he did not think for a long time.
The gondola now was in one of the secondary canals.
When it had turned from the Grand Canal, the wind had swung it so the gondoliere had to shift all his weight as ballast, and the Colonel and the girl had shifted too, under the blanket, with the wind getting under the edge of the blanket; wildly.
They had not spoken for a long time and the Colonel had noted that the gondola had only inches free in passing under the last bridge.
''How are you, Daughter?''
''I'm quite lovely.''
''Do you love me?''
''Please don't ask such silly things.''
''The tide is very high and we only just made that last bridge.''
''I think I know where we are going.
I was born here.''
''I've made mistakes in my home town,'' the Colonel said. ''Being born there isn't everything.''
''It is very much,'' the girl said. ''You know that.