Page:Maurice Hewlett--Little novels of Italy.djvu/260

248 covered her face and stood sobbing before him. But confronted with this toppled Madonna, Cino was speechless, wholly unprepared by jurisprudence or the less exact science of love for such a pass. As he knew himself, he could have written eloquently and done justice to the piercing theme; but love, as he and his fellows understood it, had no spoken language. I do not see, however, that Selvaggia is to be blamed for being ignorant of this.

Yet he had to say something, since there stood the weeping girl, all abandoned to her trouble. "I beseech you, Madonna," he was beginning, when she suddenly bared her face, her woe, and her beauty to his astonished eyes, looking passionately at him in a way which even he could not misinterpret.

"Cino," she said brokenly, "I am a wilful girl, but not wicked, ah, no! not hard-hearted. I think I did not understand you; I heard, but would not hear; it was wantonness, not evil in me, Cino. You have never wearied of telling me your devotion; is it too late to be thankful? Now I am come to tell you what I should have said long before, that I am grateful, proud of such love, that I receive it if still I may, that—that"—her voice fell to a thrilled whisper—"that I love you, Cino." Ah, but she had no more courage; she hid her blushes in her hands and felt that now she should by rights sink into the earth.

Judge you, who know the theory of the matter, if this were terrible hearing for Messer Cino. Terrible? It was unprecedented hearing; it was a thing which, so far as he knew, had never hap-