“Oh, this—it is rosemary. Smell it,” she said, breaking off a sprig and offering it to me. “Rosemary—that’s for remembrance,” quoted I. “What does that mean? What language is that?” she asked. I tried to translate it to her. And then I taught her to say it in English. “Rrosemérri—tsat is forr rremembrrance.” “Will you write it down for me?” she requested. “It is pretty.” And I wrote it for her on the back of one of my cards. IX After dinner we crossed the garden again, and again stood by the sea-wall. Over us the soft spring night was like a dark sapphire. Points of red, green, and yellow fire burned from the ships in the bay, and seemed of the same company as the stars above them. A rosy aureole in the sky, to the eastward, marked the smouldering crater of Vesuvius. Away in the Chiaja a man was singing comic songs, to an accompaniment of mandolines and guitars; comic songs that sounded pathetic, as they reached us in the distance. I asked Zabetta how she wished to finish the evening. “I don’t care,” said she. “Would you like to go the play?” “If you wish.” “What do you wish?” “I think I should like to stay here a little longer. It is pleasant.” We leaned on the parapet, close to each other. Her face was very pale in the starlight; her eyes were infinitely deep, and dark, and tender. One of her little hands lay on the stone wall, like a white flower. I took it. It was warm and soft. She did not attempt to withdraw it. I bent over it and kissed it. I kissed it many times. Then I kissed her lips. “Zabetta—I love you—I love you,” I murmured fervently.—Don’t imagine that I didn’t mean it. It was April, and I was twenty. “I love you, Zabetta. Dearest little Zabetta! I love you so.” “É vero?” she questioned, scarcely above her breath. “Oh, si; é vero, vero, vero,” I asseverated. “And you? And you?” “Yes, I love you,” she whispered. And then I could say no more. The ecstasy that filled my heart was too poignant. We stood there speechless, hand in hand, and breathed the air of heaven. By-and-by Zabetta drew her bunch of rosemary from her belt, and divided it into two parts. One part she gave to me, the other she kept. “Rosemary—it is for constancy,” she said. I pressed the cool herb to my face for a moment, inhaling its bitter-sweet fragrance; then I fastened it in my buttonhole. On my watch-chain I wore—what everybody in Naples used to wear—a little coral hand, a little clenched coral hand, holding a little golden dagger. I detached it now, and made Zabetta take it. “Coral—that is also for constancy,” I reminded her; “and besides, it protects one from the Evil Eye.” X At last Zabetta asked me what time it was; and when she learned that it was half-past nine, she insisted that she really must go home. “They shut the outer door of the house we live in at ten o’clock, and I have no key.” “You can ring up the porter.” “Oh, there is no porter.” “But if we had gone to the theatre?”