madness. And Dante
spoke as all lovers speak when they wish to touch the hearts of their
ladies, only making me who was listening not a little jealous, seeing
that he spoke better than most that I knew of.

"Madonna," he said, "Madonna, the lover-poets of our city are very
prodigal of protestations--what will they not do for their lady? They
offer her the sun, moon, and stars for her playthings--and in the end
she is fortunate if she gets so much as a farthing rushlight to burn at
her shrine."

Beatrice was listening to him with the bright smile upon her face which
for me was the best part of a beauty that, if I had been in Dante's
place, I should have found a thought too seraphic and unearthly for my
fancy.

"My heart," she assured him, "would never be touched by such sounding
phrases."

Now Dante's face glowed with the fire that was in him, and his words
seemed to glow as he spoke like gold coins dropping new-moulded from the
mint. "I am no god to give you a god's gifts," he protested. "But of
what a plain man may proffer from the heart of his heart and the soul of
his soul, say, is there any gift I can give you in sign of my service?"

The bright smile on the face of Beatrice changed to a gracious air of
thoughtfulness, and I think I should have been glad had I been wooing a
woman in such fashion to have seen such a look on the face of my fair.
"Messer Dante," she said, "you have some right to be familiar with me,
for you risked your life for my rose. So I will answer your frankness
frankly. Men have tried to please me and failed, for I think I am not
easy to please greatly."

Dante stretched out both his hands to her. "Let me try to please you!"
he cried.

The girl answered him, speaking very slowly, as if she were carefully
turning her thoughts into words and weighing her words while she uttered
them. "That is in your own hands. I do not cry for the sun and stars and
the shining impossibilities. But I am a woman, and if a man did brave
deeds (and by brave deeds I do not mean risking two souls for the sake
of a rose) or good deeds (and by good deeds I do not mean the rhyming of
pretty rhymes in my honor), and did them for love of me, why, I have so
much of my grandmother Eve in me that I believe I should be pleased."

I saw Dante draw himself up as a soldier might in the ranks when he saw
his general riding by and thought that the rider's eye was upon him.
"With God's help," he vowed, "you shall hear bett