Her eyes, mild, serious, and thoughtful when she looked on me, now brightened with delight, now softened with tears, when she listened to the lute.

As day by day her skill in music increased, so her manner towards me grew more inexplicably indifferent.
At length, weary of the constant disappointments that I experienced, and determined to make a last effort to touch her heart by awakening her gratitude, I presented her with the very lute which she had at first heard, and on which she had now learned to play.

Never have I seen any human being so rapturously delighted as this incomprehensible girl when she received the instrument from my hands.

She alternately wept and laughed over it, she kissed it, fondled it, spoke to it, as if it had been a living thing.

But when I approached to suppress the expressions of thankfulness that she poured on me for the gift, she suddenly hid the lute in her robe, as if afraid that I should deprive her of it, and hurried rapidly from my sight.