Yet Gianluca breathed, and was a human man, and loved her, and he would
have been strangely surprised had he suddenly seen into her heart and
understood that she looked upon him as though he were a being out of
another world. The moment when she had first laid her hand upon his had
been the supremest of his life yet lived, and all the moments since had
been as supremely happy. It was something which he had not dared to
hope--to hear her speaking as though there had never been that veil
between them, against which he had so often struggled, to feel her warm
touch, to see the happy light in her young eyes as she sat there looking
at him, to be sure at last, beyond the half assurance of uncertain
written words.
But he was wise, and he bridled back the words that most readily of all
others would have come to his lips. Perhaps even in the midst of his new
happiness, there was the unacknowledged fear of evil chance if he should
speak too soon and put the beautiful gold to the touch while the magic
transmutation was still so dazzlingly fresh. The present was so
immeasurably better than the past, so near a perfection of its own, that
he could wait in it a while before he opened wide his arms to take in
the very whole of happiness itself, wherewith the beautiful future stood
full laden before him.
As they talked, they went over and over much that they had written to
each other during the long months of their correspondence, and at last
Veronica came back to the question she had at first asked him.
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