He had anticipated some veiled rebuke for his own strange conduct, anything,—not this.
He breathed hard, then he replied:
"Until I came to Rome, I never gazed on beauty that won from me more than the applause of the eye, which a statue or a painting, equally beautiful, might have claimed."
She nodded dreamily.
"I have heard it said that the blue-eyed, sunny-haired maidens of your native North make us Romans appear poor in your sight!"
"Not so! The red rose is not discarded for the white. The contrast only heightens the beauty."
"I have heard it said," Stephania continued, choosing a circuitous path instead of the direct one her guests had taken, "that you Teutons have ideals even, while you starve on bread and water. And I have been told that, were you permitted to choose for your life's companion the most beautiful woman on earth, you would hie yourselves into the gray ages of the world's dawn for the realization of your dreams. Has your ideal been realized, since you have established your residence in Rome, King Otto?"
There was a brief pause, then he replied, looking straight ahead:
"Love comes more stealthily than light, of which even the dark cypresses are enamoured in your Italian noondays."
"You evade my question."