Of course all this ought to be taught, and is taught to all respectably educated young persons in more regular and didactic fashion.  But to poor little unschooled Paolina it was taught not less authoritatively by the greatness and the purity of her own love.

CHAPTER VIII

A Change in the Situation

“Neither of us can any more doubt the love of the other, Ludovico mio!” Paolina had said in reply, to his pleading, “but—­

“But what, tesoro mio?  What `but’ can come between us, if there is no such doubt to come between us?” urged Ludovico, gently drawing her towards him by the hand he still held locked in his own.

Again Paolina paused some minutes before replying, less apparently from hesitation to speak what was in her mind, than because she was applying her whole mind to the better understanding of her own meaning.

“It is not, that I doubt whether you love me, Ludovico mio!” she said at length, but still without turning towards him; “I know you love me truly and well.  But I sometimes think, that you do not love me in the same way that I love you.  I never knew before that there could be different ways of loving.  But now it seems to me,—­and I have thought so much, oh, so much of it,—­that somehow you look less to the whole, of everything,—­how can I say what I mean?—­less to all our lives, and all our selves, in your love, than I do.”

“What can you mean, Paolina?  A different way of loving!  I know but of one way!” said Ludovico with a somewhat banal flourish.

“What would become of me, Ludovico mio,” she said, now looking round into his face, with a look in her deep true eyes, that made him feel for the moment as though all the world were truly as nothing to him, in comparison with her love;—­“what would become of me, if you were to cease to love me?  I should wither away, and die.  It is probably what will happen to me!”

“Paolina!” he exclaimed, in a voice of strong reproach.

She put her hand upon his shoulder, as if to beg him to let her complete what she wished to say, and continued,—­

“But what would happen to you, if I were—­it is impossible, but if I were—­to cease to love you? would not that show you, that there is a difference between ways of loving?”

“No, cara mia, it would shew no such thing.  Look now, Paolina!  They tell of lovers’ perjuries.  But I never said one word to you that I did not believe to be true.  Nor will I ever do so.  Were you to be taken from me, by your own heart, and your own act, or in any other way, I do not believe that I should wither and die.  But it does not follow, that I should suffer less.  I should live on, not because my love is weaker, but because my body is stronger than yours.  God grant that such a lot may never befall me.”

“It never can befall you, amor mio! but, Ludovico, you could not only live, but you could love—­some other woman;” she uttered the words with a little gulp of emotion, and continued:  “Do you imagine, that if I lived to a thousand years, I could ever love any other than you?”