“And to what purpose do you confess all this to me, poveretta?” “I have been seven years getting my courage together. Oh! if I had only confessed to you then, it would not have caused me so much sorrow, this cowardly heart. But I knew that you must come back, Filippo; only that it would last for such a long time, that I did not know--that made me sad. I am a child to speak so. Why trouble myself about what is past? Filippo, you are there, and I am here and yours always, always!” “Dear child,” he began softly, and then silenced what was on the tip of his tongue. But she did not perceive how quietly and thoughtfully he was standing before her, staring vacantly beyond her toward the wall. She continued speaking calmly; it was as if the words had long become familiar to her, as if she had imagined them a thousand times in her loneliness: He will come and thus and so will you speak to him. “I had many an opportunity to marry up here, and while I was at Florence. I wanted you only. When they implored me and spoke honeyed words to me, your voice sounded out of that far-away night, your speeches that were sweeter than all other words in the world. For several years now they have been leaving me in peace, although I am not old yet, and am still as--fair as ever I was. It was as if they all knew you were coming back soon.” Then again: “Where are you going to take me now? Will you remain up here? No, for you, that will never do. Since I was in Florence I have learned that life in the mountains is dreary. We will sell the house and the herds, then I shall be rich. I am tired of the wild life of these people up here. In Florence they had to teach me all a young city woman should know, and they were astonished how quickly I learned everything. Truly I had little time to spare, and all my dreams kept telling me that it would be up here where you would seek me again. I inquired, too, of a fortune-teller, and it has all turned out just as she said.” “And if I already have a wife?” She looked straight at him from her full height. “You are only wishing to prove me, Filippo! You have no wife. That, too, the fortune-teller told me. But where you lived, that she did not know.” “You are right, Fenice, I have no wife. But whence does she know, or you, that I shall ever be willing to take one?” “How could you _not_ wish for me?” said she with unshaken confidence. “Sit down here by me, Fenice! I have much to tell you. Give me your hand; promise that you will hear me patiently to the end, my poor little friend!” As she did none of all these things, he continued with a quickening pulse, standing in front of her, his eyes resting sadly upon her, while her own, as if foreboding something that would threaten her very life, now closed and now strayed to the ground.