"Give me the book.

Let us read no more to-day." I was trembling under her touch--trembling, my every nerve a-quiver and my breath shortened--and suddenly there flashed through my mind a line of Dante's in the story of Paolo and Francesca: "Quel giorno piu non vi leggemo avanti." Giuliana's words: "Let us read no more to-day"-- had seemed an echo of that line, and the echo made me of a sudden conscious of an unsuspected parallel.

All at once our position seemed to me strangely similar to that of the ill-starred lovers of Rimini.
But the next moment I was sane again.

She had withdrawn her hand, and had taken the volume to restore it to its shelf.
Ah, no! At Rimini there had been two fools.

Here there was but one.