"What makes your heart beat so?" I say.
"Come on the right side;" he changes me quickly to the other arm, and I laugh at my acuteness, little dreaming what the Baron's well-disguised excitement foreboded. We turn down a narrow, ill-lighted street.
"What a lovely night! It makes one feel strangely, doesn't it, to be out after dark in a foreign city that no one you know has ever visited, and that seemed in geography days as far off as the moon?" I get no answer to my small observations, and we walk on. "The gallery isn't as near as I thought."
"It ees not far, Blanca; you air fery lofely in dthe moonlight."
"I'm glad to know what is required to make me lovely."
"You air alvays 'wonderschön' to me—but you look too clevair zometimes in dthe day. In dthis moonlight you look so gentle—like a leedle child. Blanca, zay again you loaf me."
He holds my hand close and bends down until I feel his hot breath on my cheek.
"I can't say again what I never said once."
"Ve air not abord du San Miguel; no von see, no von hear. I know in my heart you loaf me; tell me so vonce! Blanca!" The music and entreaty in the deep voice thrill me strangely. "Oh, Blanca darling, keess me!" My puny resistance is nothing to those athlete's arms; he holds me close one instant and I, breathless, struggle to free my hands, and push his hot cheek away from mine.