etherton
and I were left sitting under the outer wall of San Fosca till they
should come back. We had been talking of a hundred things--not of acting
at all; of the pomegranates, of which she had a scarlet mass in her lap,
of the gray slumberous warmth of the day, or the ragged children who
pestered us for coppers--and then suddenly, I asked her whether she would
answer me a personal question: Was there any grudge in her mind towards
me for anything I had said and done in London, or caused others to say
and do for me?

'She was much startled, and coloured a good deal, but she said very
steadily: "I feel no sort of grudge; I never had any cause." "Well,
then," I went on, throwing myself down on the grass before her that I
might really see her expression, "if you bear me no grudge, if you feel
kindly towards me, will you help me to undo a great mistake of mine?"

'She looked at me with parted lips and eyes which seemed to be trying to
find out from my face what I meant. "Will you," I said, hurrying on;
"will you take from me _Elvira_, and do what you like with it?" And then,
do you know what happened? Her lips quivered, and I thought she was on
the point of tears, but suddenly the nervousness of each of us seemed to
strike the other, and we both laughed--she long and helplessly, as if she
could not help herself.

'Presently she looked up, with her great eyes swimming in tears, and
tried to impress on me that I was speaking hastily, that I had an ideal
for that play she could never promise to reach, that it was my friendship
for her that made me change my mind, that there might be practical
difficulties now that so many arrangements had been made, and so on. But
I would not listen to her. I had it all ready; I had an actor to propose
to her for Macias, and even the costumes in my mind, ready to sketch for
her, if need were. Forbes, I suggested, might and would direct the
setting of the piece; no one could do it with more perfect knowledge
or a more exquisite taste; and for her, as we both knew, he would turn
scene-painter, if necessary. And so I rambled on, soothing her shaken
feeling and my own until she had let me beguile her out of her attitude
of reluctance and shrinking into one at least of common interest.

'But by the time the others came back I had not got a direct consent out
of her, and all the way home she was very silent. I, of course, got
anxious, and began to think that my blunder had been irreparable; but