“Never mind, mother mine,” said she, turning in elfish mood to brush her lips across the frustrated fingers.  “Art is long, if time is fleeting,” she sang to the measure of her Non piu mesta, beginning again to shower its diamonds about till all the air seemed bright with her young and sparkling voice.

* * * * *

Summer days are never too long for the fortunes of health and happiness, and at the sunset following this same morning Eve leaned from the casement, watching the retiring rays as if she fain would pursue.  A tender after-glow impurpled all the heaven like a remembered passion, and bathed field and fallow in its bloom.  It gave to her a kind of aureole, as if her beauty shed a lustre round her.  The window where she leaned was separated from the street only by a narrow inclosure, where grew a single sumach, whose stem went straight and bare to the eaves, and there branched out, like the picture of a palm-tree, in tossing plumes.  Blossoming honeysuckles wreathed this stem and sweetened every breath.

A figure came sauntering down the street, an upright and pliant form, laden with green boughs.  It was Luigi, with whom it had been a holiday, and who, roaming in the woods, had come across a wild stock on whose rude flavor the kindly freak of some wayfarer had grafted that of pulpy wax-heart cherries, tart ruddiness and sugared snow.  Pausing before Eve, he gazed at her lingeringly, then sprang half-way up the adjacent door-steps, and proffered her his fragrant freight.  Eve deliberated for a moment, but the fruit was tempting, the act would be kind.  As he stood there, he wore a certain humility, and yet a certain assurance,—­the lover’s complicate timidity, that seems to say he will defend her against all the world, for there is nothing in the world he fears except herself.  Eve bent and broke a little spray of the nearest branch.

“They are all for you,” pleaded he,—­“all.”

“I have enough,” said Eve.

“I brought them for the Signorina from the wood.  Behold! the tints are hers.  The cream upon Madonna’s shoulder,—­here; the soft red flame upon her cheek is there.”

“Ah!  I thank you,” said Eve.  “Good night.”

“Scusi,—­I beg that the Signorina take them.”

“No, no,” answered Eve, obliged to speak, and, hanging on her foot, half turned away, a moment before flight; “why should I rob you so?”

“It is not take,—­but give!  Why?  Only that to me you are so kind. O quanta bonta!  You speak the speech I love.  You sing its songs.  I was a wanderer. Io era solo.  Alone and sad.  But since I heard your voice, I am at home again, and life is sweet!”

And suddenly and dexterously he flung the boughs past her in at the open window, laughed at his success till the teeth flashed again in his dusky face, kissed both his hands and ran down the steps, singing in a ringing recitative something where the bella bellas echoed and reechoed each other through the evening as far as they could be heard at all.