The time soon came when the signora seemed to be less light and the staircase harder to ascend. It was not because her weight was increasing, but because my strength failed me as soon as I took her in my arms. At first I did not understand it; then I reproached myself bitterly; but my emotion was insurmountable. That willowy and voluptuous figure which abandoned itself to me, that charming face almost touching mine, that alabaster arm around my bare and burning neck, that perfumed hair mingling with mine--it was too much for a lad of seventeen. It was impossible for her not to feel the hurried beating of my heart, and read in my eyes the disturbance that she caused in my senses. "I tire you," she would sometimes say with a languishing air. I could not reply to that sarcasm; my head would begin to whirl, and I was forced to run away as soon as I had placed her in her chair. One day it happened that Salomé was not, as usual, in her cabinet to receive her. I had some difficulty in arranging the cushions so that she could sit comfortably. My arms met around her waist. I found myself at her feet, my dizzy head resting on her knees. She ran her fingers through my hair. The sudden quivering of that hand revealed to me that of which I had had no conception. I was not the only one who was moved; I was not the only one on the point of giving way. We were no longer servant and mistress, gondolier and signora; we were a young man and a young woman who loved each other. A sudden light flashed through my mind and darted from my eyes. She hastily pushed me away, and exclaimed, in a stifled voice: "_Go_!" I obeyed, but as a conqueror. I was no longer the servant receiving an order, but the lover making a sacrifice. Thereupon blind desire took possession of my whole being. I did not reflect; I felt neither fear nor scruple nor doubt. I had but one fixed idea, to be alone with Bianca. But that was more difficult than one might presume from her independent position. It seemed as if Salomé divined the danger, and had taken upon herself the task of protecting her mistress from it. She never left her, except sometimes at night when little Alezia wanted to go to bed at the hour when her mother went out in the gondola. At such times Mandola inevitably accompanied us on the lagoons. I saw plainly enough, by the signora's expression and her uneasiness, that she could not help desiring a tête-à-tête with me; but she was too weak either to seek it or to avoid it. I did not lack boldness or resolution, but not for anything under heaven would I have compromised her; and furthermore, so long as I had not actually won a victory in that delicate condition of affairs, my rôle might well be supremely ridiculous, even contemptible, in the eyes of the signora's other servants.