“And I refuse, Leonora, do you understand?  I refuse!” continued her lover with unaffected resolution.  “I belong to you, you are the only woman I love.  I shall follow you all over the world, even against your wishes, to be your servant, see you, speak to you, and there are not millions enough in the world to stop me!”

“Oh, my darling!  My darling!  You love me, you love me—­as I love you!”

And in a frenzy of passion she fell impetuously, madly upon him, clutching him in her arms like a fury.  In her caresses Rafael felt an intensity that almost frightened him.  The room seemed to be whirling about him.  Trembling, limp and weak, he sank to the divan, overwhelmed, pounded to pieces, it seemed, by that vehement adoration, that caught him up and carried him away like a tumultuous avalanche.  His senses left him in that trembling confusion, and he closed his eyes.

When he opened them, the room was dark.  Around his neck he could feel a gentle arm that was tenderly sustaining him, and Leonora was whispering in his ear.

Agreed!  They would go together:  to continue their love duct in some charming place, where nobody knew them, where envy and vulgarity would not disturb.  Leonora knew every nook in the world.  She would have none of Nice and the other cities of the Blue Coast, pretty places, coquettish, bepowdered and rouged like women fresh from their dressing tables!  Besides there would be too many people there.  Venice was better.  They would thread the narrow, solitary silent canals there, stretched out in a gondola, kissing each other between smiles, pitying the poor unfortunate mortals crossing the bridges over them, unaware of how great a love was gliding beneath their feet!

But no, Venice is a sad place after all:  when it rains, it rains and rains!  Naples rather; Naples! Viva Napoli!  And Leonora clapped her hands in glee!  Live in perpetual sunshine, freedom, freedom, freedom to love openly, as nakedly as the lazzaroni walk about the streets!  She owned a house in Naples,—­at Posilipo, that is—­a villino, in pink stucco, a dainty little place with fig trees, nopals and parasol pines, that ran in a grove down a steep promontory to the sea I They would fish in the bay there—­it was as smooth and blue as a looking-glass!  And afternoons he would row her out to sea, and she would sing, looking at the waters ablaze with the sunset, at the plume of smoke curling up from Vesuvius, at the immense white city with its endless rows of windows flaming like plaques of gold in the afterglow.  Like gipsies they would wander through the countless towns dotting the shores of the miraculous Bay; kissing on the open sea among the fisherboats, to the accompaniment of passionate Neapolitan boat-songs; spending whole nights in the open air, lying in each other’s arms on the sands, hearing the pearly laughter of mandolins in the distance, just as that night on the island, they had heard the nightingale!  “Oh, Rafael, my god, my king!  How wonderful!”