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152 ascribe to magic what hearts more experienced would have resolved to love.

"And then, why has this great Prince di been so terrified by him? Why has he ceased to persecute us ? Why has he been so quiet and still? Is there no sorcery in all that?"

"Think you, then," said Viola, with sweet inconsistency, "that I owe that happiness and safety to his protection? Oh, let me so believe! Be silent, Gionetta! Why have I only thee and my own terrors to consult beautiful sun!" and the girl pressed her hand to her heart with wild energy; "thou lightest every spot but this. Go, Gionetta! leave me alone — leave me!"

"And indeed it is time I should leave you; for the polenta will be spoiled, and you have eat nothing all day. If you don't eat you will lose your beauty, my darling, and then nobody will care for you. Nobody cares for us when we grow ugly — I know that; and then you must, like old Gionetta, get some Viola of your own to spoil. I'll go and see to the polenta."

"Since I have known this man," said the girl, half aloud, "since his dark eyes have haunted me, l am no longer the same. I long to escape from myself — to glide with the sunbeam over the hill-tops — to become something that is not of earth. Phantoms float before me at night; and a fluttering, like the wing of a bird, within my heart, seems as if the spirit were terrified, and would break its cage."

While murmuring these incoherent rhapsodies, a