San Miniato watched
her narrowly.
"How beautiful! How beautiful!" she exclaimed twice, after a long
silence.
"It will be more beautiful still when the moon rises," said San Miniato.
"I am glad you are pleased."
She liked the simple words better, perhaps, than some of his rather
artificial speeches.
"Thank you," she said. "Thank you for bringing us here."
He had certainly taken a great deal of trouble, she thought, and it was
the least she could do, to thank him as she did. But she was really
grateful and for a moment she felt a sort of sympathy for him which she
had not felt before. He, at least, understood that one could like
something better in the world than the eternal terrace of a hotel with
its stiff orange trees, its ugly lanterns and its everlasting gossip and
chatter. He, at least, was a little unlike all those other people,
beginning with her own mother, who think of self first, comfort second,
and of others once a month or so, in the most favourable cases. Yet she
wondered a little about his past life, and whether he had ever spoken to
any woman with that ringing passion she had heard in Ruggiero's voice,
with that flashing look she had seen in the sailor's bright blue eyes.
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