Complete and unabridged, with 1 full-page plates by William Orpen. A struggling London writer takes a girl to Venice for three days that neither can afford, having spent a year building her a city out of talk. Thurston wrote some fifty books and a dozen plays; this 1909 novel was the one that sold, and its trick is that the reader knows exactly how thin the money is under the fantasy, and reads on anyway. Its 59 original illustrations have been carefully restored and coloured for this edition.