We leaned on the parapet, close to each other. Her face was very pale in the starlight; her eyes were infinitely deep, and dark, and tender. One of her little hands lay on the stone wall, like a white flower. I took it. It was warm and soft. She did not attempt to withdraw it. I bent over it and kissed it. I kissed it many times. Then I kissed her lips. “Zabetta—I love you—I love you,” I murmured fervently.—Don’t imagine that I didn’t mean it. It was April, and I was twenty.
“I love you, Zabetta. Dearest little Zabetta! I love you so.”
“É vero?” she questioned, scarcely above her breath.
“Oh, si; é vero, vero, vero,” I asseverated. “And you? And you?”
“Yes, I love you,” she whispered.
And then I could say no more. The ecstasy that filled my heart was too poignant. We stood there speechless, hand in hand, and breathed the air of heaven.
By-and-by Zabetta drew her bunch of rosemary from her belt, and divided it into two parts. One part she gave to me, the other she kept. “Rosemary—it is for constancy,” she said. I pressed the cool herb to my face for a moment, inhaling its bitter-sweet fragrance; then I fastened it in my buttonhole. On my watch-chain I wore—what everybody in Naples used to wear—a little coral hand, a little clenched coral hand, holding a little golden dagger. I detached it now, and made Zabetta take it. “Coral—that is also for constancy,” I reminded her; “and besides, it protects one from the Evil Eye.”
X
At last Zabetta asked me what time it was; and when she learned that it was half-past nine, she insisted that she really must go home. “They shut the outer door of the house we live in at ten o’clock, and I have no key.”
“You can ring up the porter.”