caught sight of it. She set to
wringing her hands, and began a low wailing cry.

"Ah, terrible--ah, terrible! That I should have done it to one who was
always so gentle with me and so patient! Oh, Cino"--and she held out her
hands towards him--"oh, Cino, will you not forgive me? Will you not? I,
only, did it; it was through me that they knew what you had said.
Shameful girl that I am!" She covered her face and stood sobbing before
him. But confronted with this toppled Madonna, Cino was speechless,
wholly unprepared by jurisprudence or the less exact science of love for
such a pass. As he knew himself, he could have written eloquently and
done justice to the piercing theme; but love, as he and his fellows
understood it, had no spoken language. I do not see, however, that
Selvaggia is to be blamed for being ignorant of this.

Yet he had to say something, since there stood the weeping girl, all
abandoned to her trouble. "I beseech you, Madonna," he was beginning,
when she suddenly bared her face, her woe, and her beauty to his
astonished eyes, looking passionately at him in a way which even he
could not misinterpret.

"Cino," she said brokenly, "I am a wilful girl, but not wicked, ah, no!
not hard-hearted. I think I did not understand you; I heard, but would
not hear; it was wantonness, not evil in me, Cino. You have never
wearied of telling me your devotion; is it too late to be thankful? Now
I am come to tell you what I should have said long before, that I am
grateful, proud of such love, that I receive it if still I may,
that--that"--her voice fell to a thrilled whisper--"that I love you,
Cino." Ah, but she had no more courage; she hid her blushes in her hands
and felt that now she should by rights sink into the earth.

Judge you, who know the theory of the matter, if this were terrible
hearing for Messer Cino. Terrible? It was unprecedented hearing; it was
a thing which, so far as he knew, had never happened to a lover before.
That love should go smooth, the lady smile, the lady love, the lady woo?
Monstrous! The lady was never kind. Where was anguish? Where martyrdom?
Where poetry and sore eyes? Yet stay, was not such a thing in itself a
torment, to be cut off your martyrdom?

Cino gasped for breath. "You love me, Madonna?" he said. "You love me?"

Selvaggia nodded her head in her hands; she felt that she was blushing
all over her body.

Cino, at this new stab, struck his forehead a resounding smack. "This is