She tried to withdraw her hand, but he held it tightly in his own which were cold as ice, and she sat still listening to all he said.
"Ah, Beatrice!" he was saying, "you have given me back life itself! Can you guess what I have lived through in these days?
Can you imagine how I have thought of you and suffered day and night, and said to myself that I should never have your love?
Can you dream what it must be to a man like me, lonely, friendless, half heart-broken, to find the one jewel worth living for, the one light worth seeking, the one woman worth loving--and then to long for her almost without hope, and so long?
It is long, too.

Who counts the days or the weeks when he loves?
It is as though we had loved from the beginning of our lives! Can you or I imagine what it all was like before we met?
I cannot remember that past time.

I had no life before it--it is all forgotten, all gone, all buried and for ever.

You have made everything new to me, new and beautiful and full of light--ah, Beatrice! How I love you!" Rather a long speech at such a moment, an older woman would have thought, and not over original in choice of similes and epithets, but fluent enough and good enough to serve the purpose and to turn the current of Beatrice's girlish life.

Yet not much of a love-speech.
Ruggiero's had been better, as a little true steel is better than much iron at certain moments in life.