“Should I unite myself to the gentlemen, then? But neither does Miss Trelawny—it is not that one does not love music.”
“I cannot answer for myself,” said Diana, gladly plunging into an abstract subject. “I am fanciful—I think I like music only when it goes to my heart.”
“What a pretty idiom is that!” said Pandolfini. “One loves everything most when it touches there.” He had placed himself just a step behind her, enough to make it difficult for her to see him, while he could see her perfectly. It was an unfair advantage to take. “But music,” he added, “it has other aims—the ear first, and the mind and the imagination.”
“There is my deficiency,” said Diana. “I only understand it in this way. Other arts may instruct, or may inspire; but if music does not touch me, move my feelings, I do not make anything of it. I do not understand it. This is my deficiency.”
“I acknowledge no deficiency,” said the Italian in a low tone. The excitement in his blood was subsiding a little, but still he wanted some perfume to reach her from the myrtle-bow crushed on her path. And the tone was one which answered her musical requirements, and went right to her heart. Where had she heard that tone before? It was not the first time in her life, as may be supposed; but it seemed a long time since, and the thrill of recognition was also a thrill of alarm.
“We will not quarrel on this point,” she said, “especially as the present performance is not one to call forth much feeling; but it makes people happy, which is always something.”
“Happy?” said Pandolfini; “is it this then which in your English calls itself happiness? Ah! pardon—the Italian is more rich. This is (perhaps) to be amused—to be diverted—but happy—no. We keep that name for better things. I, for instance,” he added once more, in so low a voice that she had to stoop forward to hear him, “I might say so much—and, alas! it is for a moment, for a breath, no more. But they, these gentlemen and ladies—they divert themselves: the difference is great.”
“You must say ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Pandolfini,” said Diana, glad to be able to escape from too grave an argument; “in English it is more courteous to put us first.”
“Pardon,” he said, with the flush of ready shame, which every one feels who has made a slip in a new language. “I thought it was used so. But in all languages heaven goes before the earth. I ought to have known.”
Diana laughed, but he did not laugh. He was not without humour; but at present he was in deadly earnest, incapable of seeing the lighter side. “At all events, that is pure Italian,” she said. “Your compliments are delightful, Mr. Pandolfini—so general that one ventures to accept them on account of all the other women in the world. I wish one could believe it,” she added, shaking her head.