"Ah! now you are as I knew you at Milan; as you were when you invited me to dance, the first time we met at the Balestrino. How gladly I accepted! How happy I felt even then to be dancing with you! for, you know, I fell in love with you on the spot. That sentiment which was destined to bind me to you struck me to the heart like thought, like lightning. It is always like that when love is genuine, when it is destined to last forever. Isn't it so, my beloved? And you loved me at once, too, did you not?" As Giovanni listened to Miretta, his eyes assumed an expression of tender melancholy. He had thrown himself on a sofa; he drew the young girl to a seat by his side, took one of her hands, which he put to his lips from time to time, and said in an undertone: "Speak, speak on; you recall a very happy time!" "Very happy, do you say? But in that case, my love, why not have prolonged it? I was free, my own mistress, and, listening only to my heart, I gave myself to you; Giovanni was my idol, my god! How impatiently I awaited your coming at night, under the shade of the orange trees where you used to meet me! I asked nothing of you but to love me and to tell me so. Ah! you know, Giovanni, how little I envied the jewels and fine dresses of other girls! I had no desire for those costly pleasures which one enjoys in cities! I wanted only you--only your love! But after a few short months of that happiness, which I believed was to last forever, you grew sad and anxious, you began to fail frequently to keep our appointments. When I reproached you, you lost your temper instead of apologizing. At last, one evening you told me that you were going to start for Paris. 'With me?' I instantly asked. But you turned your head away. All my entreaties were useless. I wept a long while at your feet; you said to me simply: 'I will return!'" "Yes," Giovanni replied, looking the girl in the face; "and I forbade you to follow me." "And so I did not follow you." "But why have you come to Paris, then?" "And why have you not returned? It is six months since you went away--six months! Cannot you understand that that is a fearfully long time when one loves, when one is waiting, when one lives only on hope?" "I would have returned." "Oh! don't tell me that, Giovanni! No, you would not have returned--or else you would have come too late and would have found me dead! Clearly, you do not understand how much I love you; you know not that to me this love is above and beyond the whole world, that it makes me capable of defying everything, of undertaking any enterprise.--But why do I disturb the happiness that is mine now that I have found you?--Why these clouds on your brow? I will not utter one word of reproach--I will not ask a question. Let me live in the same city with you, let me see you, speak to you sometimes, and I shall be happy; and I will not even ask you what you are doing in Paris, or why you are afraid to have me mention your name!"