"Yes, we do. That is quite true. And that is because a certain sympathy exists between us. I feel that very much when I am with you, and that is one reason why I try to be with you as much as possible."
"You say that is one reason. Have you many others?" Beatrice tried to laugh a little, but she felt somehow that laughter was out of place and that a serious moment in her life had come at last, in which it would be wiser to be grave and to think well of what she was doing.
"One chief one, and many little ones," answered San Miniato. "You are good to me, you are young, you are fresh—you are gifted and unlike the others, and you have a rare charm such as I never met in any woman. Are those not all good reasons? Are they not enough?"
"If they were all true, they would be more than enough. Is the chief reason the last?"
"It is the last of all. I have not given it to you yet. Some things are better not said at all."
"They must be bad things," answered Beatrice, with an air of innocence.
She was beginning to understand, at last, that he really intended to make her a declaration of love. It was unheard of, almost inconceivable. But there he was at her feet, looking very handsome in the moonlight, his face turned up to hers with an unmistakable look of devotion in its rather grave lines. His voice, too, had a new sound in it. Indifferent as he might be by daylight and in ordinary life, the magic of the place and scene affected him a little at the present moment. Perhaps a memory of other years, when his pulse had quickened and his voice had trembled oddly, just touched his heart now and it responded with a faint thrill. For a moment at least he forgot his sordid plan, and Beatrice's own personal attraction was upon him.
And she was very lovely as she sat there, looking down at him, with white folded hands, hatless in the warm night, her eyes full of the dancing rays that trembled upon the softly rippling water.
"If they are not bad things," she said, speaking again, "why do you not tell them to me?"
"You would laugh."