"Am I alone to blame?
Can the iron withstand the lodestone?
Can the rain help falling upon the earth?
Can the stream flow other than downhill ?" She sighed.

"Woe me! It is I who should be angered that you have made free of my lips.

And yet I am here, wooing you to forgive me for the sin that is your own." I cried out at that and turned to her again, and I was very white, I know.
"You tempted me!" was my coward's cry.
"So said Adam once.

Yet God thought otherwise, for Adam was as fully punished as was Eve." She smiled wistfully into my eyes, and my senses reeled again.

And then old Busio, the servant, came suddenly forth from the house upon some domestic errand to Giuliana, and thus was that situation mercifully brought to an end.
For the rest of the day I lived upon the memory of that morning, reciting to myself each word that she had uttered, conjuring up in memory the vision of her every look.