“Gloria!” I said in a very low voice.
“Here I am,” replied the girl’s voice.
At the same instant her graceful bare head bent over toward the grating, and I saw the gleam of her little white teeth with that same bewitching and mocking smile which was so delineated on my heart. I saw her dark velvety eyes shining. As though I were in the presence of a supernatural apparition, I stood motionless with both hands clenching the grating. I found nothing more to say than—
“Còmo sigue V.” “How do you do?”
That ordinary formula of every-day courtesy did not seem to arouse any sad ideas in her, for I saw her put her hand to her mouth to hide a laugh. After a brief silence, she replied—
“Well; and you?”
“How I have longed for this moment to arrive!” I exclaimed, realising that I was not “in situation,” as they say in the theatres. “Can you not imagine the eagerness with which I have been waiting for it, Gloria?...”
“And why should you have been anxious for it?”
“Because my heart was tormented with the desire to tell you how I worship you.”
“That indeed is news! Why, my son, you have repeated it in the nine letters you have written me, forty-one times.... I counted them!”