ir of earnest
consideration, she asked, "Do you object to suggestions?"

"Not at all," said I; "when they are to the point, they help me."

"Well, then," she said, "I wouldn't have her eyes blue. Italian girls
nearly always have black or brown eyes. It is hard to think of this girl
as a blonde."

"Oh, but her eyes are blue," I said; "it would not do at all to have
them anything else. Some Italian girls are that way. At any rate, I
couldn't alter her in my mind."

"Perhaps not," she replied, "but in thinking about her she always seems
to me to have black eyes; however, that is a matter of no importance,
and I am ready to go on."

Thus, on matters strictly connected with business, my nun and I
conversed, and then we went on with our work. I think that from the very
beginnings of literature there could have been no author who derived
from his labors more absolute pleasure than I derived from mine: never
was a story more interesting to tell than the story of Tomaso and
Lucilla. It proved to be a very long one, much longer than I had
supposed I could make it, and sometimes I felt that it was due to the
general character of my book that I should occasionally insert some
description of scenery or instances of travel.

My secretary wrote as fast as I could dictate, and sometimes wished, I
think, that I would dictate faster. She seldom made comments unless she
thought it absolutely necessary to do so, but there were certain
twitches and movements of her head and shoulders which might indicate
emotions, such as pleasant excitement at the sudden development of the
situation, or impatience at my delay in the delivery of interesting
passages; and I imagined that during the interpolation of descriptive
matter she appeared to be anxious to get through with it as quickly as
possible, and to go on with the story.

It was my wish to make my book a very large one; it was therefore
desirable to be economical with the material I had left, and to eke it
out as much as I could with fiction; but upon considering the matter I
became convinced that it could not be very long before the material
which in any way could be connected with the story must give out, and
that therefore it would have to come to an end. How I wished I had spent
more time in Sicily! I would have liked to write a whole book about
Sicily.

Of course I might take the lovers to other countries; but I had not
planned anything of this kind, and it would require some tim