Beatrice spoke no more, and they rode on in silence. About evening they came into a pleasant dell, where there was a level sward among rocks; and a little stream, running down a stairway of stones, dropped laughing, like a child going to bed, into the quiet of a rushy pool. Great chestnuts clothed the slopes, and made a mantle, powdered with stars, to the setting sun. It was a very nest for love. Messer Lanti, halting, commanded the green tents to be pitched on the grass. Then, with a stormy scowl and a mockery of courtesy, he came to dismount his lady. ’Now,’ says he, as he got her aside, ’if I do not show thy saint to be a petticoat, my hug of thee is like to prove a bear’s.’ ’What!’ she said, amazed: ’Bernardo?’ He ground his teeth. ’I do not mark his pink cheeks for nothing.’ ’Well, an he be,’ she retorted coldly, ’I am liker, than if he be not, to lose my gallant.’ ’That depends,’ he growled, ’upon whom your fickleship honours with that title’; and he strode away, calling roughly to Bembo, ’Art for a bath, saint, before supper?’ ’Why, gladly, Carlo,’ said the boy, ’so we may be private.’ They went down to the pool together, and stripped and entered. Lanti saw a Ganymede, and was not pleased thereat. He came to supper in a very bad humour, which no innocent artifice of his guest could allay. The kill that day of their falcons—partridges, served in their own feathers, and stuffed with artichokes and truffles—was tough; the pears and peaches were sour; the confetti savourless and of stale design. He rated his cook, cursed his servitors, and drank more than he ate. When the disagreeable meal was ended, he strode ruffling away, saying he desired his own sole company, which it were well that all should respect. Bembo saw him go, with a sigh and a smile. ’Good, honest soul,’ quoth he, ’that already wakes to the reckoning!’ Madam misunderstood him, and pressed a little closer, with a happy echo of his sigh. Her eyes were soft with wine and passion. She had no precedent for doubting her influence on the moment she chose to make her own. ’The reckoning!’ she murmured. ’But I am wax in thy hands, pretty saint. Shalt confess me, and take what toll thou wilt of my sins?’ Her hand settled light as a bird on his. ’Sing to me, Bernardino,’ she whispered wooingly, ’sith the cloud is gone from our moon, and I am in the will to love.’ He shot one little startled glance her way; then slowly slung round his lute, and, touching the strings pensively, melted into the following reproach:— ’Speak low! What do you ask, false love? Speak low! Sin cannot speak too low. The night-wind stealing to thy bosom, The dead star, dropping like a blossom, Less voiceless be than thou! Low, lower yet, false love, if to confess What guilt, what shameful need? God, who can hear the budding grass, And flake kiss flake in the snowy pass, Your secret else will heed.