er things of me."

There was a look of such fine kindness on Beatrice's face while he spoke
thus as made even me, that am a man of common clay, and like love as I
like wine and victuals, thrill in my hiding-place. "I hope as much," she
said, softly--"almost believe as much. But I linger too long, and my
comrades wonder. Farewell."

She gave him an enchanting salutation, and Dante bowed his head.
"Farewell, most fair lady," he murmured.

Then Beatrice moved away from him, and ascended the steps where the two
girls stood and waited for her, and she laid her white finger on the
ring of brass that governed the lock of the little door, and the little
door opened and she passed into the gray palace, she and her maids, and
to me too, as I am very sure to Dante, the world seemed in a twinkling
robbed of its sweetness. For though, as I have said, Madonna Beatrice
was never a woman for me to love, I could well believe that to the man
who loved her there could be no woman else on the whole wide earth,
which, as I think, is an uncomfortable form of loving.

When she had gone Dante stood there very silent for a while, and it may
be that I, tired of watching him, drifted into a doze, and leaned there
for a while against my sheltering pillar with closed lids, as sometimes
happens to men that are weary of waiting. If this were so, it would
explain why I did not see what seems to have happened then--or perhaps
it was because I was of a temper and composition less fine than my
friend's that I was not permitted to see such sights. But it appears, as
I learned from his lips later, that as he stood there in all the ecstacy
of his sweet intercourse with the well-beloved, the painted image of the
God of Love that stood beside the bridge, above the fountain, came to
life again, and moved and came in front of Dante and looked upon him
very searchingly. The God of Love lifted the hand that carried his
fateful arrow and pointed with the dart toward the gray palace, and it
spoke to Dante in a voice of command, and said, "Behold thy heart." Then
Dante felt no fear such as he had felt at the first appearance of the
God of Love, but only an almost intolerable sense of joy at the glory
and the beauty and the divinity of true and noble love. And he said to
himself, as if he whispered a prayer, "O Blessed Beatrice," and
therewith the figure of the God of Love departed back to its familiar
place.

If I had, indeed, been dozing, my sleep lasted no lo