ause there is nothing so contagious as kindness and so
stimulating as a good example, the other girls were now ripe and ready
to do as she did, and Jacintha cried, "I will be generous, too!" and set
her red lips where Brigitta's kiss had rested, and then one kissed me
and another, and at the end of it all, Barbara herself, that had been so
ready with her fingers, surrendered and kissed me too. And it was while
she was kissing me, and I was making rather a long business of it,
seeing how she was the last to be kissed, and how she had provoked me,
that there came unobserved into our group another youth whose coming I
had not noticed, being so busy on pleasant business.

But I heard a very sweet and tunable voice speak, and the voice asked,
"When the air is so brisk with kisses, is there never a kiss for me?"
And I looked up from the lips of Barbara and saw that my very dear
friend, Messer Guido Cavalcanti, was newly of our company.

It is many a long year since my dear friend Messer Guido dei Cavalcanti
died of that disastrous exile to which, by the cynical irony of fate, my
other dear friend, Messer Dante dei Alighieri, was foredestined to doom
him. That sadness has nothing to do with this sadness, and I here give
it the go-by. But at nights when I lie awake in my cell--a thing which,
I thank my stars happens but rarely--or in the silence of some more than
usually quiet dawn, I seem to see him again as I saw him that morning,
so blithe, so bright, so delightful. Never was so fine a gentleman. It
is to be regretted, perhaps, that his was not a spirit that believes. I
that am a sinner have no qualms and uncertainties, but credit what I am
told to credit, and no more said. After all, why say more? But Messer
Guido was of a restless, discontented, fretting spirit, that chafed at
command and convention, and would yield nothing of doubt for the sake of
an easy life. Well, he was the handsomest man I have ever known, and he
never seemed fairer than on that May morning--Lord, Lord, how many
centuries ago it seems!--when he came upon me in the sunlit Place of the
Holy Felicity, and thereafter, for the first time, made the acquaintance
of Messer Dante.

When the girls heard that complaint of Messer Guido's, they gathered
about him noisily, crying, "Surely, Messer Guido, surely!" and pushing
their impudent faces close to his, and catching him with their hands,
for indeed Messer Guido was a very comely personage, and one that was