"I was going to say something very pretty," remarked Julius.
"Oh, I would not have interrupted you if I had known. What was it?"
"I was going to say that I must be richer than you—since I have got you, and you have only got me."
"You always say things like that," said Leonora, laughing lightly. "Be sure that you always do—I like them very much."
"Ah," said Julius, gravely, "I will sit up all night and make them for you."
"They ought to be spontaneous," said Leonora.
"Everything that is pretty in the world is spontaneous to you, my dear. But I have to work hard to make pretty things, because I am only a man."
"That is really not bad," said she, laughing again.
She wondered vaguely whether he would always be the same. Her husband used to talk much like that at first. But he grew so dull, and when he said things he never looked as if he quite meant them. Julius said sometimes a few words—just what any one might have said; but there was a tone in his voice, and his eyes were so fiery. She loved the fire; it used to frighten her at first.
"We cannot stay here," said Julius, when they sat over their dinner at the hotel on the Chiaja. "It is altogether too ridiculously hot; it is a perfect caricature of a summer, with all its worst points exaggerated."