er's instinct he saw that he was winning
and his hesitation disappeared. His voice trembled passionately now with
excitement, if not with love--but it was the same to Beatrice, who heard
the quick-spoken words that followed, and drank them in as a thirsty man
swallows the first draught of wine he can lay hands on, be it ever so
acid.

At the first moment she had been startled and had almost uttered a short
cry, half of delight and half of fear. But she had no wish to alarm her
mother and the quick thought stifled her voice. She tried to withdraw
her hand, but he held it tightly in his own which were cold as ice, and
she sat still listening to all he said.

"Ah, Beatrice!" he was saying, "you have given me back life itself! Can
you guess what I have lived through in these days? Can you imagine how I
have thought of you and suffered day and night, and said to myself that
I should never have your love? Can you dream what it must be to a man
like me, lonely, friendless, half heart-broken, to find the one jewel
worth living for, the one light worth seeking, the one woman worth
loving--and then to long for her almost without hope, and so long? It is
long, too. Who counts the days or the weeks when he loves? It is as
though we had loved from the beginning of our lives! Can you or I
imagine what it all was like before we met? I cannot remember that past
time. I had no life before it--it is all forgotten, all gone, all buried
and for ever. You have made everything new to me, new and beautiful and
full of light--ah, Beatrice! How I love you!"

Rather a long speech at such a moment, an older woman would have
thought, and not over original in choice of similes and epithets, but
fluent enough and good enough to serve the purpose and to turn the
current of Beatrice's girlish life. Yet not much of a love-speech.
Ruggiero's had been better, as a little true steel is better than much
iron at certain moments in life. It succeeded very well at the moment,
but its ultimate success would have been surer if it had reached no ears
but Beatrice's. Neither she nor San Miniato were aware that a few feet
below them a man was lying on his back, with white face and clenched
hands, staring at the pale moonlit sky above him, and listening in stony
despair to every word that was spoken.

The sight would have disturbed them, had they seen it, though they both
were fearless by nature and not easily startled. Had Beatrice seen
Ruggiero at that moment