ning now shines in
memory as the happiest my life has known. For Rima's sweet secret was
known to me; and her very ignorance of the meaning of the feeling she
experienced, which caused her to fly from me as from an enemy, only
served to make the thought of it more purely delightful.

On this occasion she did not steal away like a timid mouse to her own
apartment, as her custom was, but remained to give that one evening
a special grace, seated well away from the fire in that same shadowy
corner where I had first seen her indoors, when I had marvelled at her
altered appearance. From that corner she could see my face, with the
firelight full upon it, she herself in shadow, her eyes veiled by their
drooping lashes. Sitting there, the vivid consciousness of my happiness
was like draughts of strong, delicious wine, and its effect was like
wine, imparting such freedom to fancy, such fluency, that again and
again old Nuflo applauded, crying out that I was a poet, and begging
me to put it all into rhyme. I could not do that to please him, never
having acquired the art of improvisation--that idle trick of making
words jingle which men of Nuflo's class in my country so greatly admire;
yet it seemed to me on that evening that my feelings could be adequately
expressed only in that sublimated language used by the finest minds in
their inspired moments; and, accordingly, I fell to reciting. But not
from any modern, nor from the poets of the last century, nor even from
the greater seventeenth century. I kept to the more ancient romances
and ballads, the sweet old verse that, whether glad or sorrowful, seems
always natural and spontaneous as the song of a bird, and so simple that
even a child can understand it.

It was late that night before all the romances I remembered or cared
to recite were exhausted, and not until then did Rima come out of her
shaded corner and steal silently away to her sleeping-place.

Although I had resolved to go with them, and had set Nuflo's mind at
rest on the point, I was bent on getting the request from Rima's own
lips; and the next morning the opportunity of seeing her alone presented
itself, after old Nuflo had sneaked off with his dogs. From the moment
of his departure I kept a close watch on the house, as one watches a
bush in which a bird one wishes to see has concealed itself, and out of
which it may dart at any moment and escape unseen.

At length she came forth, and seeing me in the way, would h