"Yet if you only know her a little, how can you love her?" she asked, in
a musing voice.

"Did I say I only know her a little?" asked John. "I know her a great
deal. I know her through and through. I know that she is pure gold, pure
crystal; that she is made of all music, all light, all sweetness, and of
all shadow and silence and mystery too, as women should be. I know that
earth holds naught above her. I do not care to employ superlatives, so,
to put it in the form of an understatement, I know that she is simply
and absolutely perfect. If you could see her! If you could see her eyes,
her deep-glowing, witty, humorous, mischievous, innocent eyes, with the
soul that burns in them, the passion that sleeps. If you could see the
black soft masses of her hair, and her white brow, and the pale-rose of
her cheeks, and the red-rose of her lovely smiling mouth. If you could
see her figure, slender and strong, and the grace and pride of her
carriage,--the carriage of an imperial princess. If you could see her
hands,--they lie in her lap like languid lilies. And her voice,--'tis
the colour of her mouth and the glow of her eyes made audible. And if
you could whisper to yourself her melodious and thrice adorable name. I
know her a great deal. When I said that I only knew her a little, I
meant it in the sense that she only knows me a little,--which after all,
alas, for practical purposes comes to the same thing."

He had spoken with emphasis, with fervour, his pink face animated and
full of intention. Maria Dolores kept her soft-glowing eyes resolutely
away from him, but I think the soul that burned in them (if not the
passion that slept) was vaguely troubled. _Qui pane d'amour_--how does
the French proverb run? Did she vaguely feel perhaps that the seas they
were sailing were perilous? Anyhow, as John saw with sinking heart, she