Page:The Saint (1906, G. P. Putnam's Sons).djvu/76

42 had heard. Then the girl had gone to her room smiling, but pale with fatigue, and with aching head. Giovanni went out again to wander among the level gardens and orchards of Hergyswyl, breathing hard like a man exhausted by excess of feeling, blessing every stone and every leaf of this verdant corner of a foreign land, the lake, sleeping in its bosom, the crowd of great religious mountains; blessing God, who at his time of life had sent him such a love. And he had returned soon, too soon, to the hotel. The only other guests there on that May day, an old German professor and his daughter, had gone up Mount Pilatus. There was no one in the little reading-room. In that reading-room Maria and Giovanni had spent two happy hours, hand in hand, talking with hushed voices, often trembling in fear lest some one should come in.

"Do you remember," said Maria, "that there was a fireplace in the room, near the sofa where we sat?"

"Yes, dear."

"And that it was cold, although it was May; so cold that the waiter came in to light the fire?"

"Yes, and it was then I made you cry."

"Could you repeat those same words to-day?"

"Oh, no!"

So saying, Giovanni kissed his wife's white forehead reverently, as if it were a holy thing. When the waiter came in to light the fire in the little salon at Hergyswyl, Giovanni had dropped