maidenhood, and I was filled with pleasant interest and desirous of more
acquaintance with this phenomenon. Beyond that I did not go.

I told her frankly that she was very beautiful. Whereupon she looked at me
with suddenly startled eyes that were full of fearful questionings, and
made to draw her hand from mine. Unable to understand her fears, and
seeking to reassure her, to convince her that in me she had a friend, one
who would ever protect her from the brutalities of all the Rinolfos in the
world, I put an arm about her shoulders and drew her closer to me, gently
and protectingly.

She suffered it very stonily, like a poor fascinated thing that is robbed
by fear of its power to resist the evil that it feels enfolding it.

"0 Madonnino!" she whispered fearfully, and sighed. "Nay, you must not.
It...it is not good."

"Not good?" quoth I, and it was just so that that fool of a son of
Balducci's must have protested in the story when he was told by his father
that it was not good to look on women. "Nay, now, but it is good to me."

"And they say you are to be a priest," she added, which seemed to me a very
foolish and inconsequent thing to add.

"Well, then? And what of that?" I asked.

She looked at me again with those timid eyes of hers. "You should be at
your studies," said she.

"I am," said I, and smiled. "I am studying a new subject."