"For women to love in!" he said, with a sudden warmth in his dark
eyes.

She looked at him, laughing.

"You poor Marchese!"--she said--"Still you think of love! I really
believe Italians keep all the sentiment of le moyen age in their
hearts,--other peoples are gradually letting it go. You are like a
child believing in childish things! You imagine I could be happy
with a lover--or several lovers! To moon all day and embrace all
night! Oh fie! What a waste of time! And in the end nothing is so
fatiguing!" She broke off a spray of flowering laurel and hit him
with it playfully on the hand. "Don't moon or spoon, caro amico!
What is it all about? Do I leave you nothing on which to write
poetry? I find you out in Sicily--a delightful poor nobleman with a
family history going back to the Caesars!--handsome, clever, with
beautiful ideas--and I choose and commission you to restore and
rebuild for me a fairy palace out of a half-ruined ancient one,
because you have taste and skill, and I know you can do everything
when money is no object--and you have done, and are doing it all
perfectly. Why then spoil it by falling in love with me? Fie, fie!"

She laughed again and rising, gave him her hand.

"Hold that!" she said--"And while you hold it, tell me of my other
palace--the one with wings!"

He clasped her small white fingers in his own sun-browned palm and
walked beside her bare-headed.