ul as this amulet of spring-time, whose charm
commanded all that hour of freshness, fragrance, and dew, when the
burdened heart of the dawn bubbles over with music? Yet the enticement
was brief. Eve looked and longed, and then hurriedly turned her back
upon the tempting treasure, her two hands thrusting it off. "Behind me,
Satan!" cried she, tossing a laugh at her mother; and Paula, the stately
servant who had followed her down, signified to Luigi that the door
awaited his movements.

Then the hand quietly withdrew, and his footstep was heard upon the
threshold. It was arrested by a sound: Eve stood in the doorway,
gathering her locks in one hand, and blushing and smiling upon him like
sunshine, whether she would or no.

"You are very kind," said she, hesitating, and fluttering out the broad,
snowy love-ribbon that was to ornament her lute, "but, if you
please,--indeed"--

"Indeed, the Signorina cares not for such bawbles," said Luigi, sadly,
covering her with his gaze. Then he turned, mounted his tray again, and
went slowly down the street, forgetting to cry his wares.

Perhaps, after this, Luigi felt that his situation was desperate;
perhaps despair made him bold,--for, having already spoiled Eve's
pleasure for the day, that same evening found him in her mother's
garden, half hidden in the grape-vines, and watching the movements in
the lighted room opposite, through the long window, whose curtain was
seldom dropped.

It was a gay old town in those days, kind to its lads and lasses, and if
the streets were grass-grown, it seemed only that so they might give
softer footing to the young feet that trod them. Almost every night
there was a festival at one house or another, and this evening the
rendezvous was with Eve. The guests gathered and dallied, the dancers
floated round the room, the lovers uttered their weighty trifles in such
seclusion or shadow as they could secure, the voices melted in happy
unison. Eve, with snowy shoulders and faultless arms escaping from the
ruffle of her rosy gauzes, where skirt over skirt, like clinging petals,
made her seem the dryad of a wild rose-tree just rising and looking from
her blushing cup, Eve flitted to and fro among them, and, all the time,
Luigi's gaze brooded over the scene. Sometimes her shadow fell in the
lighted space of turf, and then Luigi went and laid his cheek upon it;
it passed, and he returned once more to his hiding-place, and the dark,
motionless countenance,