ne or
nearly so, and then and there addressed her earnestly with a request for
some private speech. In such a season of merry-making the request did
not come so strangely from a masked youth as to seem either insolent or
unfitting. But Beatrice knew at once that the voice was a woman's, and
so said, smilingly, as she drew a little apart with her challenger. Then
it appears that Vittoria unmasked and named herself, and that Beatrice
looked at her very steadily and gravely, and said no more than this: "I
have heard of you. You are very beautiful," the which words, as Vittoria
told me later, gave her a greater pleasure than any she had ever tasted
from the praises of men's lips.

Vittoria said, "If you have heard of me, perhaps you will think that I
should not be here and seeking speech with you."

To which Beatrice answered, very sweetly, that it was no part of the law
of her life to deny hearing to one that wished for speech with her, and
while she spoke she was still smiling kindly, and there was no anger in
her eyes and no scorn, but only a kind of sad wonder. Then Vittoria
said that she had made bold to do what she did for the sake of a friend
and for the sake of Beatrice herself. Thereat the manner of Beatrice,
albeit still courteous, grew colder, and she answered that she did not
know how the doings of any friend of Vittoria's could concern her, and
Vittoria knew that she guessed who the friend was.

Vittoria said, "The friend of whom I speak, the friend whom I would
serve with you, is not and never has been more than my friend."

At this Beatrice made a gesture as if to silence her and a movement as
if to leave her.

But Vittoria barred her way and delayed her entreatingly, saying, "Do
not scorn me because I am what I am."

Whom, thus entreated, Madonna Beatrice answered, very gently: "Indeed, I
do not scorn you for being what your are. I will not even say that I do
not understand you, for I have it in my heart that a woman must always
understand a woman, however different the way of the one may be from the
way of the other. And it might very well have happened, if our
upbringings had been other, that you were as I am and I as you."

Vittoria answered: "I think not so, for God has so made you that you
would never care for the things I care for, and God has so made me that
I should always care for them."

Beatrice replied: "Very well, then; let us leave the matter with God,
who made us, and say to me what y