id tensely, "if you ever love any other woman----"

"I love you," he said, against her lips; "let there be no doubt of
that." And there was a long silence between them.

Giovanni was not one of those who can withstand a woman of beauty. He
loved La Favorita passionately; she perhaps more than any one else could
hold him--a Griselda one day, a fury the next, but always alive and
always beautiful.

Yet he might have indulged his curiosity as to what she would do if
seriously aroused to jealousy, had it not been for his innate hatred of
all exhibitions of feeling, which seemed to him _bourgeois_. He knew
that if the dancer had an idea that he might be falling in love with
Nina, she would be capable of any scandal. On the other hand, he could
not imagine Favorita's being jealous of the American girl. He had often
congratulated himself that she was not jealous of her only real rival,
the Contessa Potensi, his devotion to whom, however, he had managed to
keep so quiet that very few persons in Rome had a suspicion of it.

The contessa, on the other hand, looked upon Giovanni's attention to the
dancer as an artifice practised solely on her account, so that the world
would the less suspect his attachment to herself. Neither woman had
until now felt any jealousy of Nina. To their Italian temperament she
had seemed too cold a type, too antipathetic, to be a danger. The
contessa was quite willing to have Giovanni marry the heiress, for she
never doubted that the end of the honeymoon would find him tied more
securely than ever to her own footstool.

Giovanni, at present, with his arms about the dancer, was raining a
succession of kisses upon her lips, her eyes, her hair. He could feel
that she was all on edge about something, but, man-like, he preferred to
keep things on the surface and not stir depths that might be turbulent.
His efforts, however, were of small avail.

"Swear to me by the Madonna, and by your ancestors, that you will not
marry!"

With sudden coldness Giovanni drew away from her. He let both arms hang
limp at his sides. "Why let this thought come always between us!" Then,
exasperated into taking up the discussion, he crossed his arms and faced
her: "We might as well have this out. I am not engaged--I swear that;
but whether I ever shall be or not, you have no cause for jealousy.
Marriage in my world, you know very well, is not a matter of
inclination, but of advantageous arrangement. There is every reason why