'Maria!' he murmured, his heart filling with fond adoration, 'Maria!—Maria—!'
It afforded him untold pleasure to mingle the soft accents of her name with the music of the waters. She did not look at him, but she laid her finger on her lips as a sign to him to be silent.
'Forgive me,' he said, unable to control his emotion—'but I cannot help myself—it is my soul that calls to you.'
A strange nervous exaltation had taken possession of him, all the hill-tops of his soul had caught the lyric glow and flamed up irresistibly; the hour, the place, the sunshine, everything about them suggested love—from the extreme limits of the sea to the humble little ferns of the fountains—all seemed to him part of the same magic circle whose central point was this woman.
'You can never know,' he went on in a subdued voice as if fearful of offending her—'You can never know how absolutely my soul is yours.'
She grew suddenly very pale, as if all the blood in her veins had rushed to her heart. She did not speak, she did not look at him.
'Delfina!' she cried, with a tremor of agitation in her voice.
There was no answer; the little girl had wandered off among the trees at the end of the long avenue.
'Delfina,' she repeated, louder than before, in a sort of terror.
In the pause that followed her cry the songs of the two waters seemed to make the silence deeper.