It was enough for her to know that my heart was hers.

If I died young, she would follow me.
And now the devout child, who firmly believed in a meeting after death face to face, permitted me a glimpse of the wondrous world in which she hoped to have her portion after the end here.
I listened in astonishment, with sincere emotion.

This was the faith which moved mountains, which brings heaven itself to earth.
Afterwards I again beheld the eyes with which, gazing into vacancy, she tried to conjure up before my soul these visions of hope from the realm of her fairest dreams--they were those of Raphael's Saint Cecilia in Bologna and Munich.

I also saw them long after Nenny's death in one of Murillo's Madonnas in Seville, and even now they rise distinctly before my memory.
To disturb this childish faith or check the imagination winged by this devout enthusiasm would have seemed to me actually criminal.

And I was young.