"'She never rose again. I saw her sweet face change, her golden hair
fade--and I did not die! She smiled to hide her sufferings, but I
could read them in her blue eyes, of which I could interpret the
slightest trembling. "Honorino, I love you!" said she, at the very
moment when her lips turned white, and she was clasping my hand still
in hers when death chilled them. So I killed myself that she might not
lie alone in her sepulchral bed, under her marble sheet. Teresa is
above and I am here. I could not bear to leave her, but God has
divided us. Why, then, did He unite us on earth? He is jealous!
Paradise was no doubt so much the fairer on the day when Teresa
entered in.

"'Do you see her? She is sad in her bliss; she is parted from me!
Paradise must be a desert to her.'

"'Master,' said I with tears, for I thought of my love, 'when this
one shall desire Paradise for God's sake alone, shall he not be
delivered?' And the Father of Poets mildly bowed his head in sign of
assent.

"We departed, cleaving the air, and making no more noise than the
birds that pass overhead sometimes when we lie in the shade of a tree.
It would have been vain to try to check the hapless shade in his
blasphemy. It is one of the griefs of the angels of darkness that they
can never see the light even when they are surrounded by it. He would
not have understood us."