“Oh, we’ll pray the saints to rain it back on him some day,” cried Don Ippolito with willful levity, and the stream leaped into the moonlight and seemed to hang there like a tangled skein of silver. “But how shall I shut it off when you are gone?” asked the young girl, looking ruefully at the floating threads of splendor.
“Oh, I will shut it off before I go,” answered Don Ippolito. “Let it play a moment,” he continued, gazing rapturously upon it, while the moon painted his lifted face with a pallor that his black robes heightened. He fetched a long, sighing breath, as if he inhaled with that respiration all the rich odors of the flowers, blanched like his own visage in the white lustre; as if he absorbed into his heart at once the wide glory of the summer night, and the beauty of the young girl at his side. It seemed a supreme moment with him; he looked as a man might look who has climbed out of lifelong defeat into a single instant of release and triumph.
Florida sank upon the bench before the fountain, indulging his caprice with that sacred, motherly tolerance, some touch of which is in all womanly yielding to men’s will, and which was perhaps present in greater degree in her feeling towards a man more than ordinarily orphaned and unfriended.
“Is Providence your native city?” asked Don Ippolito, abruptly, after a little silence.
“Oh no; I was born at St. Augustine in Florida.”
“Ah yes, I forgot; madama has told me about it; Providence is her city. But the two are near together?”
“No,” said Florida, compassionately, “they are a thousand miles apart.”
“A thousand miles? What a vast country!”
“Yes, it’s a whole world.”
“Ah, a world, indeed!” cried the priest, softly. “I shall never comprehend it.”