d through and
through by Beatrice's gentle words.

"And so you really love me?" said San Miniato, sure at last of his
victory.

"Do you doubt it, after what I have done?" asked Beatrice in a very soft
voice. "Did I not leave my hand in yours when you took it so roughly
and--you know---"

"When I kissed it--but I want the words, too--only once, from your
beautiful lips---"

"The words---" Beatrice hesitated. They were too new to her lips, and a
soft blush rose in her cheeks, visible even in the moonlight.

Ruggiero's heart stood still--not for the first time that day. Would she
speak the three syllables or not?

As for San Miniato, his excitement had cooled, and he threw all the
tenderness he could muster into, his last request, with instinctive tact
returning to the more quiet tone he had used at the beginning of the
conversation.

"I ask you, Beatrice mia, to say--" he paused, to give the proper effect
in the right place--"I love you," he said, completing the sentence very
musically and looking up most tenderly into her eyes.

She sighed, blushed again, and turned her head away. Then quite suddenly
she looked at him once more, pressed his hand nervously and spoke.

"I love you, carissimo," she said, and rose at the same moment from her
seat. "Come--it is time. Mamma will be tired," she added, while he held
her hand and pressed it to his lips.

Her confusion had made it easy for him. He would have had difficulty in
ending the scene artistically if she had not unconsciously helped him.

Ruggiero clenched his hands a little tighter and tried not to breathe.

"It is a lie," he said in his heart, but his lips never moved, nor did
he stir a limb as he listened to the departing footsteps on the ledge
above.

Then with the ease of great strength he drew himself along through
cranny and hollow till he was far from where they sat, and had reached
the place where the boats were made fast. It would seem natural to every
one that he should suddenly be standing there to see that all was right,
and that none of the moorings had slipped or chafed against the jagged
rocks. There he stood, gazing at the rippling water, at the tall yards
as they slowly crossed and recrossed the face of the moon, with the
rocking of the boats, at the cliffs to the right and left, at the dim
headland of the Campanella, at all the sights long familiar to
him--seeing none of them and yet feeling that they at least were his own
people, that t