When Teresa entered the room in a mist-white gown, his face was bent close to the paper, the candles yet unlighted. Coming close to him, she seated herself at his feet. He bent and kissed her in silence; the trooping visions the writing had recalled made his kiss lingeringly tender.
She pointed out of the window, through the million-tinted twilight.
“Do you remember, dear,” she asked, her voice thrilling him strangely, “when we rode to those mountains, you and I, from Ravenna?”
“Yes,” he replied, smiling.
She had turned toward him, kneeling, her hands caressing his clustering brown-gray curls.
“You have never regretted that ride?”
“Regretted it? Ah, Teresa!”
Her face was looking up into his, a wistful questioning in it—almost like pain, he thought wonderingly.
“You know all you said that night,” she went on hurriedly; “what I was to you? Is it as true now?”
“It is more true,” he answered. “All I have dreamed, all I have written here in Pisa—and some of it will live, Teresa—has had its source in you. All that I shall ever write will spring from your love! That began to be true the day you first kissed me.”