"Oh, but there are such a lot of them," she exclaimed, sorting them out with her lifted nose. "There's the smell of roses, and the smell of lake, and the smell of frying, and there's more roses, and then there's garlic, and then there's a quite dim one, and then there's a little puff of something else--I don't know what--sheer Italy, I expect. _I_ never smelt so many smells," she ended, with a gesture of astonishment. He tried to get her away from them. He led her to a bench beneath a plane-tree. "Come and sit by me and I will tell you things," he said, luring her. "Look, there's the moon got free from the clouds--and do you see how the coloured lights of the steamer that's coming shine right down a ladder of light into the water? And what do you think of the feel of the air, little sister? Isn't it soft and gentle? Doesn't it remind you of all kind and tender things?" "But much the most wonderful of anything are these smells," she said, absorbed in them. "There are at least twelve different ones." "Never mind them. I want to talk." "But they're so amusing," she said. "There are interesting ones, and exciting ones, and beautiful ones, and disquieting ones, and awful ones, and too-perfect-for-anything ones, and they're all chasing each other up and down and round and round us." He lit a cigarette. "There," he said, "that will blot the whole lot of them into only one, and you'll talk to me reasonably. Let us talk while we can, my dear. In a little time we shall be dead to all feeling for ever and ever." "Yes, we shall be little shreds of rottenness," she said placidly. "God, who wastes a sunset every night--" he said, getting up to stamp on the match he had thrown away-- "If they were mine," she interrupted, "I'd keep them all in a gallery or a portfolio." "--understands, I suppose," he went on, sitting down again, "why such dear things as this evening here, this time of being alone together here, should end and be forgotten." "As long as I live," she said with earnestness, "it will not be forgotten. All my other memories will be like a string of--oh, just beads and nuts and fir-cones, till I get to this one, and then on the string there'll be suddenly a shining jewel." "Really? Really?" he murmured, stopping to look into her eyes, revived by this speech. "Little flame in my heart, really?" "Oh," said Ingeborg dreamily, in her husky, soft voice, "but the wonderfullest thing, the wonderfullest jewel. My first Italian town--Cannobio...."