now_ that I love you!--'

She remained leaning against him, listening, trembling, recognising or
fancying that she recognised in his moving voice the accents of true
passion, the accents that intoxicated her and that she supposed were
inimitable. And he went on speaking, almost in her ear, in the silence
of the room, with his hot breath on her cheek and with pauses that were
almost sweeter than words. '--To have one sole thought, continually,
every hour, every moment--not to be able to conceive of any happiness
but the transcendent one that beams upon me from your mere presence--to
live throughout the day in the anticipation--impatient, restless,
fierce--of the moment when I shall see you again, and, after you have
gone to caress and cherish your image in my heart,----to believe in you
alone, to swear by you alone, in you alone to put my faith, my strength,
my pride, my whole world, all that I dream and all that I hope----'

She lifted her face all bathed in tears. He ceased to speak, and with
his lips arrested the course of the warm drops that flowed over her
cheeks. She wept and smiled, caressing his hair with trembling hands,
shaken with irrepressible sobs.

'My heart, my dearest heart!'

He made her sit down and knelt before her without ceasing to kiss her
lids. Suddenly he started. He had felt her long lashes tremble on his
lips like the flutter of an airy wing. Time was, when Elena had
laughingly given him that caress twenty times in succession. Maria had
learned it from him, and at that caress he had often managed to conjure
up the image of _the other_.

His start made Maria smile; and as a tear still lingered on her
lashes--'This one too,' she said.

He kissed it away, and she laughed softly without a thought of
suspicion.

Her tears had ceased, and, reassured, she turned almost gay and full of
charming graces.

'I am going to make the tea now,' she said.

'No, stay where you are.' The image of Elena had suddenly interposed
between them.

'No, let me get up,' begged Maria, disengaging herself from his
constraining arms. 'I want you to taste my tea. The aroma will penetrate
to your very soul.'

She was alluding to some costly tea she had received from Calcutta which
she had given to Andrea the day before.

She rose and went over to the arm-chair with the dragons in which the
melting shades of the _rosa di gruogo_ of the ancient dalmatic continued
to languish exquisitely. The little cups of fine Ca