son why I try to be with you as much as possible."

"You say that is one reason. Have you many others?" Beatrice tried to
laugh a little, but she felt somehow that laughter was out of place and
that a serious moment in her life had come at last, in which it would be
wiser to be grave and to think well of what she was doing.

"One chief one, and many little ones," answered San Miniato. "You are
good to me, you are young, you are fresh--you are gifted and unlike the
others, and you have a rare charm such as I never met in any woman. Are
those not all good reasons? Are they not enough?"

"If they were all true, they would be more than enough. Is the chief
reason the last?"

"It is the last of all. I have not given it to you yet. Some things are
better not said at all."

"They must be bad things," answered Beatrice, with an air of innocence.

She was beginning to understand, at last, that he really intended to
make her a declaration of love. It was unheard of, almost inconceivable.
But there he was at her feet, looking very handsome in the moonlight,
his face turned up to hers with an unmistakable look of devotion in its
rather grave lines. His voice, too, had a new sound in it. Indifferent
as he might be by daylight and in ordinary life, the magic of the place
and scene affected him a little at the present moment. Perhaps a memory
of other years, when his pulse had quickened and his voice had trembled
oddly, just touched his heart now and it responded with a faint thrill.
For a moment at least he forgot his sordid plan, and Beatrice's own
personal attraction was upon him.

And she was very lovely as she sat there, looking down at him, with
white folded hands, hatless in the warm night, her eyes full of the
dancing rays that trembled upon the softly rippling water.

"If they are not bad things," she said, speaking again, "why do you not
tell them to me?"

"You would laugh."

"I have laughed enough to-night. Tell me!"

"Tell you! Yes--that is easy to do. But it would be so hard to make you
understand! It is the difference between a word and a thought, between
belief and mere show, between truth and hearsay--more than that--much
more than I can tell you. It means so much to me--it may mean so little
to you, when I have said it!"

"But if you do not say it, how can I guess it, or try to understand it?"

"Would you try? Would you?"

"Yes."

Her voice was soft, gentle, persuasive. She felt something she had nev