reading 'Rappacini's Daughter.' You know the scene is laid in Padua." And what had I been doing?
Whether I was in a passion of love or not, I was enough in love to be very illogical. I was disappointed, Heaven knows why! that she should have been able to spend her time in this wholesome fashion. "I have been at the Lido, at the Hebrew tombs, where we sat the other day, thinking of what you told me there."
"What I told you?"
"That you liked me immensely."
She smiled; but now that she smiled, I fancied I saw in the movement of her face an undercurrent of pain. Had the peace of her heart been troubled? "You needn't have gone so far away to think of it."
"It's very possible," I said, "that I shall have to think of it, in days to come, farther away still."
"Other places, Mr. Brooke, will bring other thoughts."
"Possibly. This place has brought that one." At what prompting it was that I continued I hardly know; I would tell her that I loved her. "I value it beyond all other thoughts."
"I do like you, Mr. Brooke. Let it rest there."
"It may rest there for you. It can't for me. It begins there! Don't refuse to understand me."
She was silent. Then, bending her eyes on me, "Perhaps," she said, "I understand you too well."
"O, in Heaven's name, don't play at coldness and scepticism!"
She dropped her eyes gravely on a bracelet which she locked and unlocked on her wrist. "I think," she said, without raising them, "you had better leave Venice." I was about to reply, but the door opened and Mr. Evans came in. From his hard, grizzled brow he looked at us in turn; then, greeting me with an extended hand, he spoke to his daughter.
"I have forgotten my cigar-case. Be so good as to fetch it from my dressing-table."
For a moment Miss Evans hesitated and cast upon him a faint protesting glance. Then she lightly left the room.
