"Let me speak!" rejoined the Piccinino, with renewed animation, his face lighting up with the beauty which was his when he was really moved. "At first I dared not ask you for anything more than your friendship, and it was your childish fright that forced the word love from my lips. Very good! what more can a man say to a woman to restore her courage? I love you, therefore you should not tremble when I take your hand. I respect you, as you see, for we are alone, and I am in perfect control of my passions; but I cannot control my thoughts and the outbursts of my love. I have not my whole life in which to prove it to you. I have but this instant in which to tell you of it, so listen. If I could pass six hours of every day at your feet, like the marquis, I might perhaps be satisfied with the feeling that you have for him; but, as I have only this hour which is passing before me like a vision, I must have your love, or else a despair which I dare not imagine. So let me speak of love; listen to me and do not be afraid. If you say no, it shall be no, but if you would listen to me without thinking of protecting yourself, if you would deign to understand me once for all, if you would forget the world you live in, and the pride which is out of place here, and which has no existence in the sphere in which I live, you would be touched because you would be convinced. Oh! yes. If you were a simple soul, and if you did not put prejudices in the place of the pure inspirations of nature and of truth, you would feel that there is one heart more youthful and more ardent than all those you have spurned, the heart of a lion or tiger with men, but a man's heart with women, a child's heart with you! You would pity me at least. You would see my life as it is: constantly tormented and threatened, a never-ending nightmare! And solitude! Ah! it is solitude of the heart above all else which is killing me, because my heart is even harder to please than my senses. You know how I bore myself with Mila this morning, do you not? She is beautiful, surely, and neither in character nor in mind is she one of the common herd. If I had chosen to love her, and if I had felt for a single moment that I did love her, she would have loved me, she would have been mine all her life. But with her I thought only of you. You are the one whom I love, and you are the only woman I have ever loved, although I have been the lover of many women! Love me then, though it be but for a moment, just long enough to tell me so, or else, when I return to-night by a certain spot called the _Destatore's_ Cross, I shall go mad! I shall dig into the earth with my nails, to insult and cast to the winds the ashes of the man who gave me life." At these last words Agatha lost all her strength; she turned pale; a shudder ran through her every limb, and she threw herself back in her chair as if a blood-stained spectre had passed before her eyes.