"But may I not tell you that I adore you?" he asked piteously. "You have never been loved as you should be loved, most Beautiful. Let me show you."
Lily's sense of her own invulnerability was strong, even if it was also unconsciously wistful. She let Giulio della Torre "show her" in the words that came to him so readily and so eloquently, but when he took her hand, or rather, snatched at it with his own slender, olive fingers, she had a sudden and purely instinctive movement of recoil.
"Oh, don't!"
He flushed angrily. "What is the matter? Why may I not touch your hand?"
"I don't like it," said Lily simply.
He stared at her for a moment, amazement and mortified vanity struggling together in his face. Suddenly, a true Latin, he burst into a rueful laugh at his own discomfiture.
"I believe you mean it! But then you really are as cold—as white—as your own name-flower! You don't know what it is—to care?"
"But," said Lily, herself confused, "you always said that I didn't—that I never——"
"One says these things! But I did not know it was so literally true——"
"Forgive me," he added very gently. "You are still only a child, after all."