As life was far from monotonous at the Mediterranean watering-place, where in beautiful striped tights of white and blue he took glorious swims twice a day, one might suppose that bits of news, information, anecdote, a little fun, would have found their way into his letters. Not at all. They were love-letters neat. He would write:
How, O my adored fidanzata, can I live through the days and months and years that must pass before the blessing of the sacerdote will have given me the right to call you mine, wholly, wholly, and forever, mine! When I think that at the end of summer I must, as my parents have decided, go to Zurich to complete my studies, and be divided from you by mountains as well as months, I feel that, in view of the anguish of that distance and waiting, it had almost been better had I never met the beam of your beauteous eye. But courage! Let us take courage, thinking of our future happiness.
She would write:
In the night, in dreams, you are always with me. I cannot sleep but you are there; and so I find myself, when I am not ardently wishing for a letter, sighing for the night and dreams. Caro mio bene, should you ever love me less, how could I endure it? If ever your heart should change toward me, if ever another should have the place with you which it is my joy and honor to hold, keep it a secret from me, I conjure you! I might kill myself, or perhaps you!
A day earlier than she had expected, he stood at the Heller entrance, in time to slip in with her. He folded her to his breast, both of them breathless and throbbing. But again with a brusk instinctive movement she got her lips out of the way, and he controlled his impulse. A man who respects himself respects his own affianced. He pressed a long, silent kiss upon her brow.
Raising a warning finger, she listened a second, then sang out to Italia, “I am going to rest a minute before doing the stairs. Let the door stand open for me.”
They seated themselves on the bottom steps for a good long scene in whispers.
Never were there such facilities, for Italia would not again think of the door, save to suppose that Camilla had come in by it and shut it behind her. Any one descending could be heard long before seen. Giulio had time to tiptoe out, Camilla would appear to be just arriving. When the danger was past, she could let Giulio in again.
The facilities were, in fact, too great! These young things had leisure to say everything a thousand times over.
Both of them knew a great deal about lovers, from general rumor and private confidence, from drama, book, and song. Their wide-awake Latin minds had early incorporated all that lore, and they acted now in as grown-up a manner as they knew. Camilla developed an umbrageous mood one day, during which she questioned him about his past. Oh, nothing of the smallest consequence, he said, with regard to a certain francese. He had had the opportunity to render her a service, once, when she was caught in the rain with her little charge. He had chanced to be carrying an umbrella, that was all. After that, he had continued the acquaintance, just a little, from courtesy.