Between the busts of the Caesars along the walls, lamps with milky globes shaped like lilies shed an even, tempered light.

The profusion of palms and flowering plants gave the whole place the look of a sumptuous conservatory.

The music floated through the warm-scented air under the vaulted roof and over all this mythology like a breeze though an enchanted garden.
'Can you love me ?' he asked: 'tell me if you think you can ever love me.' 'I came only for you,' she returned slowly.
'Tell me that you will love me,' he repeated, while every drop of blood seemed to rush in a tumult of joy to his heart.
'Perhaps----' she answered, and she looked into his face with that same look which, on the preceding evening, had seemed to hold a divine promise, that ineffable gaze which acts like the velvet touch of a loving hand.

Neither of them spoke; they listened to the sweet and fitful strains of the music, now slow and faint as a zephyr, now loud and rushing like a sudden tempest.
'Shall we dance ?' he asked with a secret tremor of delight at the prospect of encircling her with his arm.
She hesitated a moment before replying.

'No; I would rather not.' Then, seeing the Duchess of Bugnare, her aunt, entering the gallery with the Princess Alberoni and the French ambassadress, she added hurriedly, 'Now--be prudent, and leave me.' She held out her gloved hand to him and advanced alone to meet the ladies with a light firm step.