and Bastianello would be sitting at the door of his brother’s prison waiting to see what happened and ready to do what he could.  Truly all this would have been much better!  But the moment had passed and he must lie on his rock in silence, bound hand and foot by the necessity of hiding himself, and giving his heart to be torn to pieces by San Miniato’s aristocratic fine gentleman’s hands, and burned through and through by Beatrice’s gentle words.

“And so you really love me?” said San Miniato, sure at last of his victory.

“Do you doubt it, after what I have done?” asked Beatrice in a very soft voice.  “Did I not leave my hand in yours when you took it so roughly and—­you know—–­”

“When I kissed it—­but I want the words, too—­only once, from your beautiful lips—–­”

“The words—–­” Beatrice hesitated.  They were too new to her lips, and a soft blush rose in her cheeks, visible even in the moonlight.

Ruggiero’s heart stood still—­not for the first time that day.  Would she speak the three syllables or not?

As for San Miniato, his excitement had cooled, and he threw all the tenderness he could muster into, his last request, with instinctive tact returning to the more quiet tone he had used at the beginning of the conversation.

“I ask you, Beatrice mia, to say—­” he paused, to give the proper effect in the right place—­“I love you,” he said, completing the sentence very musically and looking up most tenderly into her eyes.

She sighed, blushed again, and turned her head away.  Then quite suddenly she looked at him once more, pressed his hand nervously and spoke.

“I love you, carissimo,” she said, and rose at the same moment from her seat.  “Come—­it is time.  Mamma will be tired,” she added, while he held her hand and pressed it to his lips.

Her confusion had made it easy for him.  He would have had difficulty in ending the scene artistically if she had not unconsciously helped him.

Ruggiero clenched his hands a little tighter and tried not to breathe.

“It is a lie,” he said in his heart, but his lips never moved, nor did he stir a limb as he listened to the departing footsteps on the ledge above.

Then with the ease of great strength he drew himself along through cranny and hollow till he was far from where they sat, and had reached the place where the boats were made fast.  It would seem natural to every one that he should suddenly be standing there to see that all was right, and that none of the moorings had slipped or chafed against the jagged rocks.  There he stood, gazing at the rippling water, at the tall yards as they slowly crossed and recrossed the face of the moon, with the rocking of the boats, at the cliffs to the right and left, at the dim headland of the Campanella, at all the sights long familiar to him—­seeing none of them and yet feeling that they at least were his own people, that they understood him and knew what he felt—­what he had no words with which to tell any one, if he had wished to tell it.