indigenous and inexpugnable."

The Duchessa looked at the sunny landscape, the bright lawns,
the high bending trees, with the light caught in the network of
their million leaves; she looked at the laughing white villas
westward, the pale-green vineyards, the yellow cornfields; she
looked at the rushing river, with the diamonds sparkling on its
surface, at the far-away gleaming snows of Monte Sfiorito, at
the scintillant blue shy overhead.

Then she looked at Peter, a fine admixture of mirth with
something like gravity in her smile.

"The dark backward and abysm of space?" she repeated. "And you
do not wear black spectacles? Then it must be that your eyes
themselves are just a pair of black-seeing pessimists."

"On the contrary," triumphed Peter, "it is because they are
optimists, that they suspect there must be forwarder and more
luminous regions than the Solar System."

The Duchessa laughed.

"I think you have the prettiest mouth, and the most exquisite
little teeth, and the eyes richest in promise, and the sweetest
laughter, of any woman out of Paradise," said Peter, in the
silence of his soul.

"It is clear I shall never be your match in debate," said she.