shone with a
splendour of its own, as if the sources of magic rays lay in its depths;
the whole landscape was steeped in sunshine.

He stood still from time to time. The thought that Donna Maria was
perhaps watching him from the loggia disturbed him curiously, made his
heart beat fast and flutter timidly, as if he were a boy in love for
the first time. It was unspeakable bliss merely to breathe the same warm
and limpid air that she did. An immense wave of tenderness flooded his
heart and communicated itself to the trees, the rocks, the sea, as if to
beings who were his friends and confidants. He was filled with a desire
to worship humbly and purely; to bend his knee and clasp his hands and
offer up to some one this vague mute adoration which he would have been
at a loss to explain. He felt as if the goodness of all created things
was being poured out upon him and mingling with all he possessed of
goodness into one jubilant stream.

'Can it be that I love her?' he asked himself. But he dared not look
closely into his soul, lest the delicate enchantment should disperse and
vanish like a dream at break of day.

'Do I love her? And what does she think? And if she comes alone, shall I
tell her that I love her?' He took pleasure in thus asking himself
questions which he did not answer, intercepting the reply of his heart
by another question, prolonging his uncertainty--at once so tormenting
and so sweet. 'No, no--I shall not tell her that I love her. She is far
above all the others.'

Arrived at the lowest terrace, he turned round and looked up, and there
in the loggia, in the full blaze of the sun, he could just make out the
indistinct outline of a woman's form. Had she followed him with her eyes
and her thoughts down the long flights of steps? A childish impulse made
him suddenly pronounce her name aloud on the deserted terrace. 'Maria!
Maria!' he repeated, listening to his own voice. No word, no name had
ever seemed to him so sweet, so melodious so caressing. How happy he
would be if she would only allow him to call her Maria, like a sister.

This woman--so spiritual, so soulful--inspired him with the highest
sentiment of devotion and humility. If he had been asked what he
considered the sweetest possible task, he would have answered in all
sincerity--'To obey her.' Nothing in the world would have mortified him
so much as to be accounted by her a commonplace man. By no other woman
had he so ardently desired to be prai