'No. How could we—now?' Her hand tightened a little on his arm.
They stopped before a statue at the end of the walk, full in the light, a statue that had perhaps been a Daphne, injured ages ago, and stone-gray where it was not very white, with flying draperies broken off short in the folds, and a small, frightened face that seemed between laughing and crying. One fingerless hand pointed at the moon.
Orsino leaned back against the pedestal, and lovingly held Vittoria before him, and looked at her, and she smiled, her lips parting again, and just glistening darkly in the light as a dewy rose does in moonlight. The music was very far away now, but the plashing of the fountain was near.
'I love you!' said Orsino once more, as though no other words would do.
A deep sigh of happiness said more than the words could, and the stillness that followed meant most of all, while Vittoria gently took his two hands and nestled closer to him, fearlessly, like a child or a young animal.
'But you will not go away—now?' she asked pleadingly.
Orsino's face changed a little, as he remembered the rest of his life, and all he had undertaken to do. He had dreamily hoped that he might forget it.
'We will not talk of that,' he answered.
'How can I help it, if it is true? You will not go—say you will not go!'
'I have promised. But there is time—or, at least, I shall soon come back. It is not so far to Sicily—'