n
spite of myself--for I hadn't meant to speak. I wanted to tell you here,
dearest one, _cara_, _carissima_, how I love you--how my love for you is
'eternal at my heart' and my soul--all there is of me."

He took both her hands, and when his eyes had said again to her eyes
what his lips had just spoken, they both looked up at the words on the
marble tablet.

"If those two who loved each other return in spirit sometimes together,"
Vanno said, "I think they must have been here the day when we first met
at this spot, and that they are here again now. If they see us they know
why we have come, and they are glad and pleased with us, like two lovers
who 'make a match' between dear friends."

"It is a beautiful thought of yours," Mary answered; "and it seems so
real that I can almost see those lovers. But remember the story--how
they were parted forever on this earth. Do you know, I feel almost--just
a tiny bit--superstitious. I mean about our coming here especially to
make a vow of eternal love to each other. What if we, too, should be
parted?"

"Darling, nothing can part us," Vanno assured her, "because love has
made our hearts one, now and forever. You and I have belonged to each
other since time began, through hundreds of earth-lives perhaps, and
thousands of vicissitudes: always finding one another again. A little
while ago, a cloud came between us, and it seemed as if we might be
swept away from one another; but it passed, and we found each other and
ourselves, in the light, far above cloudline. That's why I say, nothing
can part us now, not even death. And as for this tablet of two parted
lovers, it wasn't put up to commemorate their sorrows, but their
happiness; and so it can bring us only happiness."

"Look!" Mary exclaimed, standing back a little from the mule path which
descended there, and pressing closer under the rock of the tablet.
Winding down the path came a little procession, a few peasants
bareheaded, dressed in black, clean and piteous in their neatness. The
women were silently crying, tears wet on their brown cheeks, their eyes
red. The men, two who were old and two who were young, carried a very
small, roughly made bier, on which was a tiny coffin almost covered with
flowers, and wild, scented herbs of the mountains. Their thick boots
clattered on the cobblestones, but they made no other sound, and none
raised their eyes as they went by. It was as if the lovers were
invisible to them, as though they