"Why should you?" she murmured, looking up to him. "Why should he go, after all? This has been such a silly affair. I wonder if that woman thought that anything could ever come between you and me? That was what made me think she was really mad."
"And an excellent reason," he answered. "Anybody must be insane who dreams of parting us two. It seems as though a year ago I had not loved you at all."
"I am so glad," said Corona. "Do you remember, last summer, on the tower at Saracinesca, I told you that you did not know what love was?"
"It was true, Corona—I did not know. But I thought I did. I never imagined what the happiness of love was, nor how great it was, nor how it could enter into every thought."
"Into every thought? Into your great thoughts too?"
"If any thoughts of mine are great, they are so because you are the mainspring of them," he answered.
"Will it always be so?" she asked. "You will be a very great man some day, Giovanni; will you always feel that I am something to you?"
"Always—more than anything to me, more than all of me together."
"I sometimes wonder," said Corona. "I think I understand you better than I used to do. I like to think that you feel how I understand you when you tell me anything. Of course I am not clever like you, but I love you so much that just while you are talking I seem to understand everything. It is like a flash of light in a dark room."
Giovanni kissed her again.