pped down from the bench. Before he was aware of it, he found
himself kneeling at her feet, clutching her hands, and thrusting his
face upward without daring to reach her lips.

She drew weakly back, protesting feebly, with a girlish plaint:

"No, no; it would hurt me.... I feel that I'm dying."

"You belong to me," the youth continued with an exaltation
ill-suppressed. "You belong to me forever; to gaze into your dear eyes,
and to murmur in your ear, your sweet, beautiful, name, and die, if need
be, here. What do we care for the world and its opinions?"

And Leonora with weakening resistance, continued to refuse:

"No, no.... I must not. It's a feeling I can't explain."

And that was so. The gentle quiver of Nature under the kiss of
Springtime, the intense perfume of the flower that is the emblem of
virginity, had transfigured that madcap singer, that adventuress of a
career so checkered, who had been violently thrust into her first
experience of passion, and now for the first time felt the blush of
modesty in the arms of a man. Nature, intoxicating her, shattering her
will, seemed to have created a strange virginity in that body so
familiar with the call of passion.

"Oh, Rafael, what is happening to me?... What's happening to me? It must
be love; a new love that I did not think I should ever know.... Rafael ...
Rafael, my own boy!"

And weeping softly, she took his head in her hands, pressed her lips to
his, and then fell back in her seat with eyes distended, maddened with
the joy of that kiss.

"I belong to you, Rafael! Yours ... but forever. I have always loved you
from the first, but now ... I adore you.... For the first time in my
life I say that with all my soul."

Hardly able to realize his good fortune, Rafael was thrilled by a deeply
generous sentiment. There was nothing he would not give to that
woman....

"Yes; you belong to me forever.... I will marry you."

But in his dreamy, wild intoxication he saw the artiste's eyes open wide
in surprise, as a sad smile flitted across her lips.

"Marry me And why?... That's well enough for other women; but me you
must love, my darling child, ever so much, as much as you can.... Just
love me!... I believe only in Love!"

V

"But my dear child, when are we getting to this island of yours?... It
bores me to be here sitting on this seat, so far away from my little
boy, watching his arms get tired from all that rowing. I must kiss him..
even if he