Then there was a momentary pause. Pandolfini, like other men, was absorbed and struck dumb, when the moment he had looked forward to, the moment when he could speak to her and recommend himself, really came. His mind was full of a hundred things, and yet he could not think of one to say. “You have been pleased--with our Pisa,” he said at last, with a sense, which made him hate himself, of the utter imbecility of the words. “What shall I say?” Diana looked up at him with a smile. “I don’t know. Something has happened to me; but I am not sure if you will understand my loss. Italy was a wonder and a mystery when I came here: and now it is a place to live in, just like another. Do you understand? I know, of course, it is nonsense.” “It is not non-sense--it is true-sense,” said the Italian; and the blue in his eyes moistened. “I do know what you would say.” “Yes; everything that was impossible seemed as if it might be here. It was Italy, you know,” said Diana, growing rapid and colloquial. “And now, yes, it is Italy--a place more beautiful than any other, but just a place like any other. It is very absurd, but I am disappointed. You must think me very foolish, I am sure.” “I think,” said Pandolfini--and then he paused. “It is that I know the meaning of it. Did not I say the Signora Diana was _dei Sogni_ too?” CHAPTER VI. NEW ARRIVALS. After this “these two,” as Mr. Hunstanton called them, “got on,” to make use also of his expression, very well. Pandolfini was very modest, and he was not in love as a boy of twenty falls in love. Men take the malady in different ways. His imagination had not rushed instantly to the point of marrying Diana, appropriating her, carrying her off, which is the first impulse of some kinds of love. Her appearance to him was like the appearance of a new great star in the sky, dwindling and dimming all the rest, but at the same time expanding and glorifying the world, making a new world of it, lighting up everything both old and new with its light. Darkness and despondency would have covered the earth had that new glory of light suffered eclipse; but he had not yet realised the idea of transferring it to his own home, and making the serene sweet star into a domestic lamp. He was too humble, in the beginning of the adoration by which he had been seized without any will of his own, to think of anything of the kind. He was so grateful to her for having come, for shining upon him, for not disappointing him or stepping down from her pedestal, but being what he had supposed her to be at the first glance. Women do not always do this, nor men either. Sometimes, very often it must be allowed, they not only come down from the pedestal on which we have placed them, but jump down, with harsh outbursts of laughter, spurning that elevation. But Diana lost no jot of her dignity to the imaginative Italian. Still and always she was _dei Sogni_, one of the dream-ladies, queens of earth and heaven. Sometimes her lavish