Their eyes met, and hers were wide with fear for him, and earnestness, and they were not quite dry.
"Do you care so much?" asked Zorzi, hardly knowing what he said. "Does it matter so much to you what becomes of me?"
He moved nearer on the bench. Leaning towards her, where he sat, he could rest his elbow on the broad arm of the low chair, and so look into her face. She covered her eyes, and shook a little, and her mantle slipped from her shoulders and trembled as it settled down into the chair. He leaned farther, till he was close to her, and he tried to uncover her eyes, very gently, but she resisted. His heart beat slowly and hard, like strokes of a hammer, and his hands were shaking, when he drew her nearer. Presently he himself sat upon the arm of the chair, holding her close to him, and she let him press her head to his breast, for she could not think any more; and all at once her hands slipped down and she was resting in the hollow of his arm, looking up to his face.
It seemed a long time, as long as whole years, since she had meant to drop another rose in his path, or even since she had suffered him to press her hand for a moment. The whole tale was told now, in one touch, in one look, with little resistance and less fear.
"I love you," he said slowly and earnestly, and the words were strange to his own ears.
For he had never said them before, nor had she ever heard them, and when they are spoken in that way they are the most wonderful words in the world, both to speak and to hear.
The look he had so rarely seen was there now, and there was no care to hide what was in her eyes, for she had told him all, without a word, as women can.
"I have loved you very long," he said again, and with one hand he pressed back her hair and smoothed it.
"I know it," she answered, gazing at him with lips just parted. "But I have loved you longer still."
"How could I guess it?" he asked. "It seems so wonderful, so very strange!"