"Do you mean to say," he resumed, with an emotion that veiled each accent, "do you mean to say, that that angel Lilian Temple is a little fond of Lucio Sabini, who deserves it not?"
"I do mean to say so," she affirmed, simply and loyally.
Nor did Lilian Temple ask Lucio Sabini, in return, if he loved her a little, as if she were unshaken in her conviction that Lucio was fond of her; and to hear so once again were unnecessary. Once again Lilian's high loyalty, her deep faith, her absolute trust, which never having lied could not suppose a lie, moved Lucio to his depths. He felt himself, as in the most impassioned moments of his love, another man, transformed and remade, incapable of deceit, incapable of fraud; he felt himself, like the girl, vibrating with sincerity and worthy of the faith she had in him, since he was, as she was, sustained by an immense certainty. The more tremulous became his sensibility, the more fluid his tenderness, the more impetuous his need of offering his all, of giving himself completely.
"I am yours," he said solemnly in English.
"I am yours," she replied simply.
"Everything is so white here," she said, "ever so much whiter than down below."
She pointed with a vague gesture of the hand to the districts they had left behind, to St. Moritz, Celerina, Pontresina, where the snow of the night was already disappearing, while on the Bernina road they were traversing, rather slowly, ever climbing to the regular pace of the horses and the feeble tinkling of the bells, the night's snow still remained intact. The snow covered in great tracts of whiteness the last solitary meadows which hid the banks of rocks that the winter avalanches had precipitated in the silent valleys; it covered in tracts the first hills that ascended towards the loftier mountains, and united on high the August snow with the many ancient snows of so many winters which the summer's sun had been unable to melt, and, finally, last night's snow had placed a new splendour over the glaciers. As Lilian and Lucio went on their way in the grand Alpine solitude, the whiteness increased around them; in the rarefied air the breath that escaped from the horses' nostrils seemed a light smoke which hovered about them.
"Oh, how everything becomes whiter," Lilian repeated, conquered by the spectacle, "nothing is more beautiful than all this whiteness."
"The snow resembles you rather," murmured Lucio, looking at her and not at the landscape.
She shook her blond head, a shadow of a smile playing on her lips.