"Has my silence offended you?" asked the young man, quickly. "I dared add nothing. What--" his eyes sank to the ground--"what should I have said to you?"
The first question was indeed unnecessary; as the devotion of the song seemed to have been understood, and Signora Biancona looked the reverse of offended as she answered--
"You appear to like the wordless form, Signor, and always to wish to speak to me in notes of music. Well, I bowed to your taste, and have determined to answer also only in our language."
She laid a slight but still marked emphasis upon the word. Reinhold raised his head in astonishment.
"In our language?" he repeated slowly.
CHAPTER IV.
Beatrice drew a paper out of the roll of music which she held in her hand. "I have waited in vain for the author of this song to come to me, in order to hear it from my lips and receive my thanks for it. He has left to strangers that which was his duty. I am accustomed to be sought, Signor. You seem to expect the same."
There certainly lay some reproach in her voice, but it was not very harsh, and it would have been hardly possible, as Reinhold's eye betrayed only too plainly what this staying away had cost him. He made no reply to the reproach, did not defend himself against it, but his glance, which seemed magnetically bound by the brilliantly beautiful apparition, told her that his self-restraint was caused by anything rather than indifference.
"Do you think I have sent for you to hear the air which is put down in the programme?" continued the Italian, playfully. "The audience always desires this air da capo; it is too trying for a repetition; I propose, therefore, instead of this, to sing--something else."
A deep glow covered the young man's features, and he stretched out his hand, as if with an unconscious movement, towards the paper.