Virginia and I celebrated a union which, I say with my hand on my heart,
was intended by both of us to be as mystical as possible, and was so
until, long afterwards, it was deliberately ended. At the end of her
observances she took my hands in each of hers, crosswise, and looking
earnestly at me, said, "We are now indissolubly bound together--by the
communion of bread and salt--my pure intention to your pure desire.
Together we will live until we find Aurelia--you as master, I as
servant--you vowed to preserve my soul, I to succour your body. Let
nothing henceforward separate us--but one thing."

"Amen to that, Virginia," I said, "and that one thing shall be a
prosperous marriage for you."

So the bargain was struck; and now again I looked at the girl. The hard
and bitter fires had burned themselves out of her eyes; nothing remained
there but a clear radiancy. She was like a new creature, earnest, frosty
cold, like a spirit set free. I have said she was handsome in a thin,
fine way. She was very pale, black-browed, with firm, pure lips, a sharp
chin, grey, judging eyes. She was lithe and spare like a boy, and very
strong. Her hair, which was abundant and loosely coiled upon the nape of
her neck, was nearly black; not of that soft, cloudy dark which made
Aurelia's so glorious, but as if burnt, with a hot, rusty tinge here and
there about it. Though not now in the rags in which I saw her first, she
was still poorly dressed, in the habit of the peasantry of that country,
in a green petticoat and red bodice, which, like that of all unmarried
girls here, was cut to display the bosom. Her feet were bare, and her
arms also to the arm-pits.

Such was Virginia Strozzi, for whom I had not then any symptom of what
the world calls love. I do not deny that she interested me extremely,