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"How simple you are: who believes a woman promising nonsense, impossibilities? Friendship, foolish boy, who ever built that temple on red ashes? Nay Gerardo," she added gloomily, "between thee and me it must be love or hate." "Which you will, signora," said Gerard firmly. "But for me I will neither love nor hate you; but with your permission I will leave you." And he rose abruptly.
Pestilence seize him! why writeth he not first? then I could say nay to this, and ay to that, withouten headache. Also is it a lady's part to say the first word?" "No, signora: the last." "It is well spoken, Gerardo. Ha! ha! Shalt have a gold piece for thy wit. Give me my purse!" And she paid him for the article on the nail a la moyen age. Money never yet chilled zeal.
Elena, meanwhile, who had watched Gerardo lying still and pale in swoon beneath her on the pavement of the palace, felt the stirring of a new unknown emotion in her soul. When Sunday came, she devised excuses for keeping her four friends away, bethinking her that she might see him once again alone, and not betray the agitation which she dreaded.
Yet it was regal beauty, and wooing with a grace and tenderness he had never even figured in imagination. How to check her without wounding her? He blushed and trembled. The siren saw, and encouraged him. "Poor Gerardo," she murmured, "fear not; none shall ever harm thee under my wing. Wilt not speak to me, Gerar-do mio?" "Signora!" muttered Gerard deprecatingly.
Therefore she bade Elena wait on fortune, and hinted to her that, if the worst came to the worst, no one need know she had been wedded with the ring to Gerardo. Such weddings, you must know, were binding; but till they had been blessed by the Church, they had not taken the force of a religious sacrament.
Therefore speak what is in your heart, and I will empaper it before your eyes." "But there is nothing in my heart. And sometimes I think I have got no heart." "What is in your mind, then?" "But there is nothing in my mind; nor my head neither." "Then why write at all?" "Why, indeed? That is the first word of sense either you or I have spoken, Gerardo.
Gerardo, as is the wont of gallants, was paying his addresses to a certain lady; and nearly every day he had to cross the Grand Canal in his gondola, and to pass beneath the house of Elena on his way to visit his Dulcinea; for this lady lived some distance up a little canal on which the western side of Messer Pietro's palace looked.
There was no reason, as she knew, why Messer Paolo's son should not mate with Messer Pietro's daughter. But being a romantic creature, as many women are, she resolved to bring the match about in secret. Elena took little time to reflect, but told her nurse that she was willing, if Gerardo willed it too, to have him for her husband.
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