Why did I sit the whole long dreary day out on the bank by the roadside there?
To watch?
I could not describe to you one traveller out of them all who passed.

Why, then?
Ask yourself! It was not that I might stand by your side afterwards in the glamour of an Italian night with the stars pulsing overhead like a smile upon your lips, and all the world whispering! You must not stay here!" His eyes burnt upon her; his hands shook; from head to foot he was hot and fierce with passion, and in spite of herself she kindled to it.

That he loved she knew before, but his description of his city of dreams had given to him in her thoughts a touch of fancifulness, had led her to conceive of his love as something dreamlike, had somehow spiritualised him to the hindrance of her grasp of him as flesh and blood.

Thus, she understood, she might well have seemed to be trifling with him, though nothing was further from her thoughts.

But now he was dangerous; love had made him dangerous, and to her.