c. By-and-by, when
the full warmth of summer fills the city, the white streets will be
almost deserted in the middle of the day, and men who have to be abroad
will drag themselves along where the walls cast a narrow shade, and
everything will grow lazy and sleepy and silently hot. But the first
good sunshine in June is to the southern people the elixir of life, the
magic gold-mist that floats before the coming gods, the breath of the
gods themselves breathed into mortals.

Within the girl's room the light was very soft on the pale blue damask
hangings, and a gentle air blew now and then from window to window, as
if a sweet spirit passed by, bringing a message and taking one away. It
stirred Cecilia's golden hair, and fanned her forehead, and somehow,
just then, it brought intuitions of beautiful unknown things with it,
and inspiration with peace, and clear sight.

Maidenhood is blessed with such moments, beyond all other states. In all
times and in all countries it has been half divine, and ever
mysteriously linked with divine things. The maid was ever the priestess,
the prophetess, and the seer, whose eyes looked beyond the veil and
whose ears heard the voices of the immortals; and she of Orleans was not
the only maiden, though she was the last, that lifted her fallen country
up out of despair and led men to fight and victory who would follow no
man-leader where all had failed.

Maidenhood meets evil, and passes by on the other side, not seeing;
maidenhood is whole and perfect in itself and sweetly careless of what
it need not know; maidenhood dreams of a world that is not, nor was, nor
shall be, hitherwards of heaven; maidenhood is angelhood. In its
unconsciousness of evil lies its strength, in its ignorance of itself
lies its danger.

Cecilia was not trying to call up visions now; she was thinking of her
life, and wondering what was to happen, and now and then she was asking
herself what she ought to do. Should she marry Guido d'Este, or not?
That was the sum of her thoughts and her wonderings and her questions.

She knew she was perfectly free, and that her mother would never try to
make her marry against her will. But if she married Guido, would she be
acting against her will?

In her own mind she was well aware that he would speak whenever she
chose to let him do so. The most maidenly girl of eighteen knows when a
man is waiting for an opportunity to ask her to be his wife, whereas
most young men who are mu