"Yes," she answered, without further remark.
"And I believe you are very fond of her."
"Yes," she replied.
He restrained a little movement of impatience. The imperturbability, the silence, and the sober replies of Lilian Temple at certain moments irritated him; the composure of the beautiful face seemed indifference to him; the scarcity and the moderation of her words seemed to him coldness and her silence lack of feeling. Then he would speak to her in a sharp voice and say violent and sarcastic things as if to startle her. An expression of wonderment and pain on Lilian's face would calm him and make him realise the truth, that he was in the presence of a different soul, a creature of another race and another land, and a profoundly different heart.
"At any rate you will like to sail on the beautiful lake? Or does nothing matter to you, Lilian?" he said to her, with a mocking smile and in an irritated tone.
"Of course it matters to me," she murmured, looking at him with her dear, blue eyes, rather sorrowfully.
"Forgive me," he said at once, softening again. "I am very exacting, I know, but sometimes you are so English, dear child."
"I thought," she said, with a mischievous little smile, "that English women were not displeasing to you."
"I adore them!" he exclaimed, in a sudden transport.
They sat in the stern of the rather large boat, which was rowed by two men. The boats were Italian and came from the Lake of Como, being transported up there every year to the lakes of Sils and St. Moritz, climbing from Chiavenna on the large carts that ascend there every day at the beginning of the season, and are re-transported below in the middle of September. The rowers were Italians—Comaschi. A white awning protected the boat from the sun. For some time while the Comaschi rowed, cleaving the quiet waters, Lilian and Lucio were silent, letting themselves go to the train of their slow passage across the lake and the sequence of their intimate thoughts. Lucio especially liked to be quiet beside Lilian. When he was with her—and in the week after the ball at the "Kulm" he had seen her every day for two or three hours—a profound sense of sweetness kept him silent: the Italian words which should have told of his flame remained suspended on his lips; the impetuousness of his love became placated in the presence of that pure young beauty and in the complete sentimental dedication which he recognised in Lilian. He was gladly silent. Moreover, an intimate terror of saying too much consumed him, of expressing too much, of showing too much, what manner of thing was the sudden transport of love that agitated him. He feared by pronouncing definite words to make Lilian understand and himself understand, alas, how he was seized and conquered beyond caprice, beyond flirting and love-making: he feared lest she should be deeply discouraged, and he himself feared to be discouraged by a revelation that he preferred to leave latent and concealed. Instead an infinite sweetness came upon him in Lilian's company, in solitude and in silence. Her presence filled him with a tenderness that surpassed every other feeling: he understood in those moments how he would have liked to have invoked the passing of life thus beside her, and how she carried in her hands and heart and eyes, in every act of her person, the truest and most lovable gifts of existence. The boat proceeded quietly across the limpid waters shining in the sun, and both continued to dream their soft and quiet dream. Lilian gently clasped a bunch of Alpine flowers which she placed upon her knees, on her white cambric dress.