hat would her eyes say when, at last, she looked at him?

'Here it is!' cried the little girl.

The laurels had grown thinner, affording a freer view of the sea, and
the next moment the mass of arbutus flushed rosy-red before them like a
forest of coral with large tassels of blossom at the end of their
branches.

'What a glory!' murmured Maria.

The marvellous wilderness bloomed and bore fruit in a deep and sunny
space curved like an amphitheatre, in which all the delicious sweetness
of that aromatic shore seemed gathered up and concentrated. The stems,
tall and slender, crimson for the most part, but here and there yellow,
bore great shining green leaves, all motionless in the calm air.
Innumerable tassels of blossom, like sprays of lily-of-the-valley, white
and dewy, hung from the young boughs, while the maturer ones were loaded
with red or orange-yellow fruit. And all this wondrous pomp of blossom
and fruit, of green leaves and rosy stems displayed against the
brilliant blue of the sea, like a garden in a fairy tale, intense and
fantastic as a dream.

'What a marvel!'

Donna Maria advanced slowly, no longer led by Delfina, who, wild with
delight, rushed about with no thought but for stripping the whole wood.

Andrea plucked up his courage.

'Can you forgive me?' he asked anxiously. 'I did not mean to offend you.
Indeed, seeing you so far above me, so pure, so unapproachable, I
thought that never in this world could I reveal my secret to you, never
ask anything of you, never put myself in your way. Since ever I saw you,
I have thought of you night and day, but without hope, without any
definite end in view. I know that you do not love me, that you never can
love me. And yet, believe me, I would renounce every promise that life
may have in store for me, just for the hope of living in a little corner
of your heart----'

She continued to advance slowly under the sun-flecked trees, while the
delicate tassels of pink and white blossom swayed gently above her head.

'Believe me, Maria--only believe me! If I were bidden at this moment to
give up every desire and every ambition, the dearest memories of the
past and the most flattering promises of the future, and to live solely
in the thought of and for you--without a to-morrow, without a yesterday,
without other ties or attachments, far from the world, lost to
everything but you, till death--to all eternity--I would not hesitate
for one instant. You have looked at