"But your name, the lily, is the name of an Italian flower—one of our flowers, dear."
"I know that," she added thoughtfully, "it is the emblem of Florence, your Florence."
"If it is mine, it is also your Florence," he exclaimed, enamoured.
"Is everything you love and prefer also mine, dear?" she asked, fixing him with her large eyes, so blue and loyal.
"Everything," he exclaimed, with a burning glance.
She paled, and the little hand that was in Lucio's shook convulsively. A short, intense giddiness overwhelmed them, and they looked at each other, frightened and lost. The carriage still proceeded slowly; it had skirted the whole of the glacier of Morteratsch, afterwards leaving it on the right, still ascending among the lofty, fearful peaks of the Tschierva, the Bellavista, Crast' Agüzza, and lording it in their midst in an indescribable purity, was the sovereign of the mountains, the virgin of the mountains, the lofty and tremendous Bernina. On the left, instead, valleys opened, surrounded by mountains less lofty, with broad meadows still full green; at a gap in one of these, all flourishing with vegetation, like an oasis confronting the terrible chain of the Bernina, a country girl came towards them, offering flowers. To conquer the agitation that kept dominating him, Lucio made the carriage stop. Buxom and blond and rosy, the country girl offered bunches of fresh flowers which she had gathered an hour ago, bunches of dark blue and purple gentians, masses of Alpine orchids of a tender pink with dark markings, and fresh edelweiss, still almost bathed in snow.
"Here, Lilian," he resumed in a still agitated voice, "is a valley full of flowers, the Valley of Fieno, but it is too far-away; here are its flowers."
And he took them all from the hands and arms of the peasant girl and emptied them in Lilian's hands; the rug and the whole carriage were covered with flowers, and smiling, the peasant girl bade them adieu as she jingled the money in her rough hand. Lilian pressed the flowers to her, smelt them, and buried her face in them in her usual gentle way, while the carriage resumed, more quickly, its way towards the lofty Bernina Pass.
"You have been on other occasions to the Bernina?" she asked, in a low voice.
"Yes, several times: I have been everywhere."