ntil you have been at least a year in Florence. Do not
think hardly of my godfather. I know he is prejudiced and narrow, but
yet he is very noble. He has often said that it is folly in my father
to want to keep his library apart, that it may bear his name; yet he
would try to get my father's wish carried out. That seems to me very
great and noble--that power of respecting a feeling which he does not
share or understand."

"I have no rancour against Messer Bernardo for thinking you too precious
for me, my Romola," said Tito: and that was true. "But your father,
then, knows of his son's death?"

"Yes, I told him--I could not help it. I told him where I had been, and
that I had seen Dino die; but nothing else; and he has commanded me not
to speak of it again. But he has been very silent this morning, and has
had those restless movements which always go to my heart; they look as
if he were trying to get outside the prison of his blindness. Let us go
to him now. I had persuaded him to try to sleep, because he slept
little in the night. Your voice will soothe him, Tito: it always does."

"And not one kiss? I have not had one," said Tito, in his gentle
reproachful tone, which gave him an air of dependence very charming in a
creature with those rare gifts that seem to excuse presumption.

The sweet pink blush spread itself with the quickness of light over
Romola's face and neck as she bent towards him. It seemed impossible
that their kisses could ever become common things.

"Let us walk once round the loggia," said Romola, "before we go down."

"There is something grim and grave to me always about Florence," said
Tito, as they paused in the front of the house, where they could see
over the opposite roofs to the other side of the river, "and even in its
merriment there is something shrill and hard--biting rather than gay. I
wish we lived in Southern Italy, where thought is broken, not by
weariness, but by delicious languors such as never seem to come over the
`ingenia acerrima Florentina.' I should like to see you under that
southern sun, lying among the flowers, subdued into mere enjoyment,
while I bent over you and touched the lute and sang to you some little
unconscious strain that seemed all one with the light and the warmth.
You have never known that happiness of the nymphs, my Romola."

"No; but I have dreamed of it often since you came. I am very thirsty
for a deep draught of joy--for a life all brigh