Homer looked at the great domed church affectionately as the taxi streaked past it, neatly maneuvering between a pair of vaporettione going, one comingand dodging a gondola floating like gossamer.
The gondola was carrying the party of English visitors who had been on holiday in Venice at the same time as the Kellys, visiting the same tourist sites under the same pellucid sky, poising their umbrellas against the same rain, splashing through the same high-rising tides. They too were ready to go home (all but the wife of the bishop, who had not finished collecting colorful observations for her Venetian novel).
"So long, good old Salute!" cried Homer, leaning far out over the spray to wave good-bye.
"Who is that man?" said Elizabeth Cluff-Luffter, staring. "He's waving. Do we know those people?"
"Surely not," said Tertius Alderney, member of Parliament from the Channel Isles.
"Americans, I think," sniffed Louise Alderney.
"I never saw them before in my life," said the bishop of Seven Oaks.
But the great church of the Salute seemed to know them. It turned on its hexagonal bottom as though keeping them in sight. Greedily they watched it float away behind them, relishing its Venetian double naturebecause Santa Maria della Salute was not only an architectural marvel, it was a piece of fantasy, a fat round temple rising from the sea, its dome alive with springy spirals, its broad steps dropping down into the water as though Neptune himself might ascend, his long hair streaming with seaweed, his whiskers clotted with shells.