"Oh! And do you always like to talk so that you can get out of things afterward?"
"No. I didn't say that, did I?"
"Very nearly, I should think."
"Then I'm glad I didn't quite."
"I like people to be outspoken—to say everything they think," said the girl, regarding him with a puzzled look.
"Then I foresee that I shall become a favourite," answered Colville. "I say a great deal more than I think."
She looked at him again with envy, with admiration, qualifying her perplexity. They had come to a point where some moss-grown, weather-beaten statues stood at the corners of the road that traversed the bosky stretch between the avenues of the Cascine. "Ah, how beautiful they are!" he said, halting, and giving himself to the rapture that a blackened garden statue imparts to one who beholds it from the vantage-ground of sufficient years and experience.
"Do you remember that story of Heine's," he resumed, after a moment, "of the boy who steals out of the old castle by moonlight, and kisses the lips of the garden statue, fallen among the rank grass of the ruinous parterres? And long afterward, when he looks down on the sleep of the dying girl where she lies on the green sofa, it seems to him that she and that statue are the same?"
"Oh!" deeply sighed the young girl. "No, I never read it. Tell me what it is. I must read it."
"The rest is all talk—very good talk; but I doubt whether it would interest you. He goes on to talk of a great many things—-of the way Bellini spoke French, for example. He says it was bloodcurdling, horrible, cataclysmal. He brought out the poor French words and broke them upon the wheel, till you thought the whole world must give way with a thunder-crash. A dead hush reigned in the room; the women did not know whether to faint or fly; the men looked down at their pantaloons, and tried to realise what they had on."