"Oh, you--I don't believe you!" she murmured at this, looking at me
with her simple solemnity.

"Why don't you believe me?"

"Because I don't understand you."

"That is just the sort of occasion to have faith."
I could not say more, though I should have liked to, as I saw
that I only mystified her; for I had no wish to have it on my
conscience that I might pass for having made love to her.
Nothing less should I have seemed to do had I continued to beg a lady
to "believe in me" in an Italian garden on a midsummer night.
There was some merit in my scruples, for Miss Tita lingered and lingered:
I perceived that she felt that she should not really soon come
down again and wished therefore to protract the present.
She insisted too on making the talk between us personal to ourselves;
and altogether her behavior was such as would have been possible
only to a completely innocent woman.

"I shall like the flowers better now that I know they are also meant for me."

"How could you have doubted it? If you will tell me the kind you
like best I will send a double lot of them."

"Oh, I like them all best!" Then she went on, familiarly: "Shall you study--
shall you read and write--when you go up to your rooms?"

"I don't do that at night, at this season. The lamplight brings