"You terrify me!" she faltered,--and as the moonlight fell upon her I could see that she was very pale--"Such promises are incredible--impossible! You speak as if you were more than human! I do not understand you, Prince Rimânez,--you are different to anyone I ever met, and ... and ... something in me stronger than myself warns me against you. What are you?--why do you talk to me so strangely? Pardon me if I seem ungrateful ..., oh, let us go in--it is getting quite late I am sure, and I am cold ..." She trembled violently, and caught at the branch of a tree to steady herself,--Rimânez stood immovably still, regarding her with a fixed and almost mournful gaze. "You say my life is lonely,"--she went on reluctantly and with a note of pathos in her sweet voice--"and you suggest love and marriage as the only joys that can make a woman happy. You may be right. I do not presume to assert that you are wrong. I have many married women-friends--but I would not change my lot with any one of them. I have dreamed of love,--but because I have not realized my dream I am not the less content. If it is God's will that I should be alone all my days, I shall not murmur, for _my_ solitude is not actual loneliness. Work is a good comrade,--then I have books, and flowers and birds--I am never really lonely. And that I shall fully realize my dream of love one day I am sure,--if not here, then hereafter. I can wait!" As she spoke, she looked up to the placid heavens where one or two stars twinkled through the arching boughs,--her face expressed angelic confidence and perfect peace,--and Rimânez advancing a step or two, fully confronted her with a strange light of exultation in his eyes.