“Then why do you not come and stand by me?” he asked. “If you love me and will not show it, I am to be very unhappy always.”
Rosina laughed; but she stood up and went close to him at once.
“I do love you,” she said, “and I am not at all afraid to show it. You see!”
He took her face between his hands and gazed down fondly upon her.
“Love is good, is it not?” he said. “There is a great joy to me to hold you so, and reflect upon those stairs at Munich.”
He paused—perhaps in consideration of the Munichian stairs—for a moment, and then said:
“I have heard that there is love so strong that it crushes; if I ever take hold of you so that your bones break, it is only that I think of the stairs in Munich.”
She laughed again.
“I will remember,” she said, not at all frightened.
He took her two hands tightly within his own.