"Albano, how true! But you had once never more than half a will; how is it?" said Linda. "Neither have I now," said he, without severity. "One is gentlest when one is strongest in a resolution." He endeavored now carefully to spare and avoid his own words,--which were the oil and wind to his fire,--and he did it the more because words, after all, are of no help against anything, but much rather blow up instead of blowing out the feelings of another. He was also mindful, in this connection, of the frequent cases in which he had, by a single word, with all innocence, excited Linda to a flame. They stopped, and he looked out over the divine land, when Linda, after a silent look into his face, in spite of her apparently calm philosophizing, at once passionately grasped his hand and cried, "No, thou canst not!--by my happiness, by all saints, by the holy Virgin, by the Almighty,--thou canst, thou must not!" There is a robbery against which man always protests with an irrepressible fire, and though a goddess committed it out of love, and offered him in compensation a world of paradises; it is the robbery of his freedom and free development. Yes, its being love,--despotic, however, at once exercising and robbing freedom,--only exasperates him the more, and out of the _cloud_ of error grows by and by the _tempest_ of passion. Linda repeated, "Thou canst not." He looked upon her excited, brilliant countenance, whose Southern intensity resembled more, however, an enthusiasm than indignation, and said, firmly, "O Linda, I shall indeed both dare and do!" "No! I say no!" cried she. "Brother!" the sister began. "O sister," cried he, "speak softly; I am a man, and have violent faults." The sublime war of the water with the earth and with rocks, the intermingling storms of the flashing rain-constellations around him, drew him as on wings into the whirl,--the great cascade flung its shower out of high trees, and out of heaven sprinkled incessantly a glimmering world,--and in the east the sea showed itself afar in dark sleep, and the setting sun sank gleaming into the general splendor. "Certainly I will speak softly," said the Princess, who, much more sensitive and resonant than Linda, had some trouble in tuning her tone of speech to her promise; "nothing further is needed than the consideration that our quarrel is premature; I make merely the request to adjourn it till October, and the promise that _then_ the issue will be quite different." "O let it be!" said Albano. Linda nodded softly and slowly, and, contrary to expectation, laid his hand with both hers on her heart, and looked upon him weeping, with her large eyes, to which fire was more usual than water. He was melted at beholding that this powerful nature had only intensity without hate or wrath, and infinitely was he refreshed by his former secret suppression of his passionate flames.