"Yet, we shall have to pass our lives together, Madonna."
"Alas!" she sighed.
"I own that the prospect cannot be very alluring for you--it doth not seem to suggest an interminable vista of happiness...."
"Oh!" she murmured as if involuntarily, "I was not thinking of happiness."
"How strange," he retorted gently, "now, whenever I look at you, Madonna, I invariably think of happiness."
"Happiness? With me?"
"With you, sweetheart, if you will but allow me to work for that object. After all, my dear," he added with that whimsical smile of his, "we are both young, you and I; life lies all before us. I own that we have made a sorry beginning, that the first chapter of our book of life hath been ill-writ and by clumsy hands. But suppose we turn over a few pages, do you not think that we might happen on a more romantic passage?"
He drew nearer still to her, so near that as he bent toward her his knee touched the ground and his arm instinctively stretched out behind her, so that at the least movement on her part it would close around her and hold her--as indeed he longed that it should do. She was so very beautiful, and that air of settled melancholy, of childlike helplessness and pathos in her made an irresistible appeal to him.
"Madonna," he whispered, "an you would let me, I should like to make love to you now."
But she, with a quick, impatient jerk suddenly sat bolt upright and freed herself almost roughly from that arm which was nearly encircling her shoulders.