"Do you see?" Konrad said. "As long as our human language sounds in their ears, they'll take care to have nothing to do with us."
"All the same, we are bewitched here," she said, laughing. "I've never before lain so luxuriously on the moss and had the sun shine on me so; have you?"
"Yes, once," he answered. "I remember it quite well."
"When did you, and where?" she demanded instantly, jealous of any moment of happiness in his life that she had not created for him.
"Oh, there's not much to tell about it," he said. "It was at Ravello, perched like a gull's nest high up on the rocks above the sea, not far from Amalfi--just about there is a fairy-land of magic country. Picture old Moorish palaces half deserted and half lived in; marble courtyards shut in by trellises; ruined fountains, with myrtle and laurel growing in profusion, and little white climbing-roses trailing over every nook and cranny. There was one place I would have given anything to get inside ... It was a small mysterious gallery standing out against the deep blue sky like a web of silver filigree. So once when there was no one about--only a handful of olive-gatherers live in the neighbourhood--I behaved like a schoolboy, and climbed the great iron gate as high as a house, bar by bar, up one side and down on the other."
"Oh, how splendid!" cried Lilly.
"Yes. I got inside. And when I had examined all the gorgeous details with a professional eye, I threw myself full length on the warm stone steps, and let the sun bake me through; just in the same position as we are lying in here now under these Brandenburg pines. And--would you believe it?--the little bluish-green lizards that you are so fond of came and slowly and cautiously crawled all over me."
"Oh, how heavenly!" cried Lilly in rapture.
"And while I lay there, with the old marble fountain making music in my ears, I fell fast asleep. But I had better have left going to sleep alone, because there's a risk of getting sunstroke even in mid-winter. I should in all probability have been a victim, if some tourists hadn't come and thrown sticks and stones at me. Everything looked red and swam before my eyes. To climb back over the gate was out of the question. The key had to be fetched from the Sindaco, and subsequently I had to appear before him and give an account of myself. But, thank goodness, they didn't lock me up for trespassing, because all the witnesses tapped their foreheads and said 'è matto'--'he's mad.'"
"Never mind," she laughed. "You at least got your way, and saw the inside of the forbidden garden. Many people have to be satisfied with standing outside and looking through the railings."