She uttered these words in a tone of bitter indignation, and I saw that she was really angry. Thereupon, suddenly assuming a serious expression, I asked her forgiveness for my unintentional offence, and told her that I would not for anything in the world cause her one moment's unhappiness. She looked at me with an uncertain expression, as if she dared not believe me. But I began to speak to her with such evident sincerity and warmth of my devotion and affection, that she soon allowed herself to be convinced. "So much the better!" she exclaimed, "so much the better! for, if you did not love me, you would be very ungrateful, and I should be very unhappy."--And as I gazed at her, utterly confounded by her words, she continued: "O Lelio! Lelio! I have loved you ever since the evening that I first saw you at Naples, playing Romeo, when I looked at you with that cold and contemptuous expression which disturbed you so. Ah! you were very eloquent and very impassioned in your singing that evening! The moon shone upon you as it does now, but less lovely than it does now, and Juliet was dressed in white as I am. And yet you say nothing to me, Lelio!" That extraordinary girl exerted a constant fascination over me which led me on, always and everywhere, at the pleasure of her caprice. When we were apart, my mind threw off her domination, and I could analyze freely her words and her acts; but when I was once with her, I speedily and unconsciously ceased to have any other will than hers. That outburst of affection reawoke my slumbering passion. All my fine resolutions to be prudent vanished in smoke, and I found naught but words of love on my lips. At every instant, it is true, I felt a sharp pang of remorse; but it made no difference--all my fatherly counsels ended in loving phrases. A strange fatality--or rather that cowardice of the human heart which makes us always yield to the allurement of present joys--impelled me to say just the opposite of what my conscience directed. I gave myself the most convincing reasons you can imagine to prove that I was not doing wrong: it would have been useless cruelty to talk to that child in language which would have torn her heart asunder; there was still time enough to tell her the truth--and a thousand other things of the same sort. One circumstance which seemed to lessen the danger actually contributed to increase it: I mean Lila's presence. If she had not been there, my natural uprightness would have led me to watch myself all the more carefully, for the reason that anything would be possible in a moment of excitement, and I probably should not have gone forward a single step for fear of going too far. But, being sure that I had nothing to fear from my senses, I was much less careful of my words. So that it was not long before I reached the pitch of the most intense, albeit the purest passion; and, spurred on by an irresistible impulse, I seized a lock of the girl's floating hair and kissed it twice.