the pleasure of this waltz with you? or
are you promised to another partner?"

I was not engaged, and I at once accepted his proffered arm. Two
gentlemen came hurriedly up to claim Amy and her Austrian friend; and
for one brief moment Signor Cellini and I stood alone in a
comparatively quiet corner of the ballroom, waiting for the music to
begin. I opened my lips to ask him a question, when he stopped me by a
slight gesture of his hand.

"Patience!" he said in a low and earnest tone. "In a few moments you
shall have the opportunity you seek."

The band burst forth just then in the voluptuous strains of a waltz by
Gung'l, and together we floated away to its exquisite gliding measure.
I use the word FLOATED, advisedly, for no other term could express the
delightful sensation I enjoyed. Cellini was a superb dancer. It seemed
to me that our feet scarcely touched the floor, so swiftly, so easily
and lightly we sped along. A few rapid turns, and I noticed we were
nearing the open French windows, and, before I well realized it, we had
stopped dancing and were pacing quietly side by side down the ilex
avenue, where the little lanterns twinkled like red fireflies and green
glow-worms among the dark and leafy branches.

We walked along in silence till we reached the end of the path. There,
before us, lay the open garden, with its broad green lawn, bathed in
the lovely light of the full moon, sailing aloft in a cloudless sky.
The night was very warm, but, regardless of this fact, Cellini wrapped
carefully round me a large fleecy white burnous that he had taken from
a chair where it was lying, on his way through the avenue.

"I am not cold," I said, smiling.

"No; but you will be, perhaps. It is not wise to run any useless risks."

I was again silent. A low breeze rustled in the tree-tops near us; the
music of the ballroom reached us only in faint and far echoes; the
scent of roses and myrtle was wafted delicately on the balmy air; the
radiance of the moon softened the outlines of the landscape into a
dreamy suggestiveness of its reality. Suddenly a sound broke on our
ears--a delicious, long, plaintive trill; then a wonderful shower of
sparkling roulades; and finally, a clear, imploring, passionate note
repeated many times. It was a nightingale, singing as only the
nightingales of the South can sing. I listened entranced.

"'Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;