higher. She absolved herself because of her disinterestedness. She
counted on nothing, having calculated nothing.

Doubtless, she had been wrong to yield, since she was not free; but she
had exacted nothing. Perhaps she was for him only a violent caprice.
She did not know him. She had not one of those vivid imaginations that
surpass immensely, in good as in evil, common mediocrity. If he went
away from her and disappeared she would not reproach him for it;
at least, she thought not. She would keep the reminiscence and the
imprint of the rarest and most precious thing one may find in the world.
Perhaps he was incapable of real attachment. He thought he loved her.
He had loved her for an hour. She dared not wish for more, in the
embarrassment of the false situation which irritated her frankness and
her pride, and which troubled the lucidity of her intelligence. While
the carriage was carrying her to San Marco, she persuaded herself that he
would say nothing to her of the day before, and that the room from which
one could see the pines rise to the sky would leave to them only the
dream of a dream.

He extended his hand to her. Before he had spoken she saw in his look
that he loved her as much now as before, and she perceived at the same
time that she wished him to be thus.

"You--" he said, "I have been here since noon. I was waiting, knowing
that you would not come so soon, but able to live only at the place where
I was to see you. It is you! Talk; let me see and hear you."

"Then you still love me?"

"It is now that I love you. I thought I loved you when you were only a