Hers were still on the prospect.

“Yet if you only know her a little, how can you love her?” she asked, in a musing voice.

“Did I say I only know her a little?” asked John.  “I know her a great deal.  I know her through and through.  I know that she is pure gold, pure crystal; that she is made of all music, all light, all sweetness, and of all shadow and silence and mystery too, as women should be.  I know that earth holds naught above her.  I do not care to employ superlatives, so, to put it in the form of an understatement, I know that she is simply and absolutely perfect.  If you could see her!  If you could see her eyes, her deep-glowing, witty, humorous, mischievous, innocent eyes, with the soul that burns in them, the passion that sleeps.  If you could see the black soft masses of her hair, and her white brow, and the pale-rose of her cheeks, and the red-rose of her lovely smiling mouth.  If you could see her figure, slender and strong, and the grace and pride of her carriage,—­the carriage of an imperial princess.  If you could see her hands,—­they lie in her lap like languid lilies.  And her voice,—­’tis the colour of her mouth and the glow of her eyes made audible.  And if you could whisper to yourself her melodious and thrice adorable name.  I know her a great deal.  When I said that I only knew her a little, I meant it in the sense that she only knows me a little,—­which after all, alas, for practical purposes comes to the same thing.”

He had spoken with emphasis, with fervour, his pink face animated and full of intention.  Maria Dolores kept her soft-glowing eyes resolutely away from him, but I think the soul that burned in them (if not the passion that slept) was vaguely troubled. Qui pane d’amour—­how does the French proverb run?  Did she vaguely feel perhaps that the seas they were sailing were perilous?  Anyhow, as John saw with sinking heart, she was at the point of putting an end to their present conjunction,—­she was preparing to rise.  He would have given worlds to offer a helping hand, but (however rich in worlds) he was, for the occasion, poor in courage.  When love comes in at the door, assurance as like as not will fly out of the window.  So she rose unaided.

“Let us hope,” she said, giving him a glance in which he perceived an under-gleam as of not unfriendly mockery, “that she will soon come to know you better.”

“Heaven forbid!” cried he, with a fine simulation of alarm.  “It is upon her ignorance of my true character that I base such faint hopes as I possess of some day winning her esteem.”

Maria Dolores laughed, nodded, and lightly moved away.

“My son,” said John to himself, “you steered precious close to the wind.  You had best be careful.”

And then he was conscious of a sudden change in things.  The garden smiled about him, the valley below laughed in the breeze, the blackcaps sang, the many windows of the Castle glistened in the sun; but their beauty and their pleasantness had departed, had retired with her into the long, low, white-walled, red-roofed pavilion.  He was conscious of a sudden change in things, and of a sudden acute and bitter depression within himself.