“No,” she answered, glancing at him with eyes full of love and tenderness. “I should always be happy with you alone, Nino. I should want no other companion.”
“You would soon grow dull, I fear,” he said, taking her hand in his.
“No, never—never,” she declared. “You know well how I love you, Nino.”
“And I adore you, darling,” he answered. Then, after looking at her in hesitation for a moment, he added. “But you speak as though you still fear that we shall not marry. Why is that?” He had not failed to notice her sudden change of manner when he had spoken of marriage.
“I really don’t know,” she answered, with a forced laugh. “I suppose it is but a foolish fancy, yet sometimes I think that this happiness is too complete to be lasting.”
“What causes you to fear this?” he asked earnestly.
“When I reflect upon the unhappiness of the past,” she said with a sigh—“when I remember how bitter was my life, how utterly blank and hopeless was the world prior to our meeting, I cannot rid myself of the apprehension that my plans, like all my others, will be thwarted by the one great secret of my past; that all my castles are merely air-built; that your love for me, Nino, will soon wane, and we shall part.”
“No, no, piccina,” he cried, placing his arm tenderly around her waist, beneath the warm cape she wore. “It is foolish—very foolish to speak like that. You surely have no reason to doubt me?”
“I do not doubt your love, Nino. I doubt, however, whether you have sufficient confidence in me to await the elucidation of the strange mystery which envelops me—a mystery which even I myself cannot penetrate.”
“Have I not already shown myself patient?” he asked with a reproachful look.