Would she never answer? Would she never lift the eyelids that seemed to droop more and more closely upon the crimson cheeks? Had he frightened her? Was she only so sorry for him? Was Betty mistaken, after all?
But when, with a voice already quivering with apprehension, he again spoke her name, what a revelation!
With head thrown back and with smiling, though quivering, lips, Barbara looked at him, her eyes glowing with the unutterable tenderness he had sometimes dreamed of. She did not utter a word, but there was no need. The whole flood of her love, so long repressed, spoke straight to his heart.
The gondola curtains flapped closer in the breeze. The gondolier hummed a musical love-ditty, while his oars moved in slow rhythm. It was Venice and June.
Chapter XX.
Return from Italy.
To come back from the sweet South, to the North
Where I was born, bred, look to die;
Come back to do my day's work in its day,
Play out my play—
Amen, amen say I.
—Rossetti.