“Give up Italy?   Can you be in earnest?   Your father, himself, told me,
that I.....well, yes....in portrait-painting, he too thinks I am no
blunderer.   Where do the Netherlanders go to learn anything new?   To
Italy, always to Italy!   What do they create in Flanders?   Portraits,
portraits, nothing more.   Moor is great, very great in this department,
but I take a very different view of art; it has higher aims.   My head is
full of plans.   Wait, only wait!   In Italy I shall learn to fly, and when
I have finished my Holy Family and my Temple of Art, with all the skill
I intend to attain....”

“Then, then, what will happen then?”

“Then you will perhaps change your opinion and cease your tutoring, once for all.  This fault-finding, this warning vexes me.  It spoils my pleasure, it clouds my fancy.  You are poisoning my happiness, you—­ you....the croaker’s voice is disagreeable to me.”

Isabella sadly bent her head in silence.  Ulrich approached her, saying: 

“I do not wish to wound you, Belita; indeed, I do not.  You mean well, and you love me, a poor forsaken fellow; do you not, little girl?”

“Yes, Ulrich, and that is just why I have told you what I think.  You are rejoicing now in the thought of Italy....”

“Very, very much, unspeakably!  There, too, I will remember you, and what a dear, faithful, wise little creature you are.  Let us part in friendship, Isabella.  Come with me; that would be the best way!”

The young girl flushed deeply, and made no answer except:  “How gladly I would!”

The words sounded so affectionate and came so tenderly from the inmost depths of the heart, that they entered his soul.  And while she spoke, her eyes gazed so faithfully, lovingly, and yearningly into his, that he saw nothing else.  He read in them love, true, self-sacrificing love; not like pretty Carmen’s or that given by the ladies, who had thrown flowers to him from their balconies.  His heart swelled, and when he saw how the flush on Isabella’s dear face deepened under his answering glance, unspeakable gratitude and joy seized upon him, and he could not help clasping her in his arms and drawing her into his embrace.

She permitted it, and when she looked up at him and her soft scarlet lips, from which gleamed two rows of dazzling white teeth, bloomed temptingly near him, he bent his, he knew not how, towards them.  They kissed each other again and again, and Isabella flung her little hands around his neck, for she could not reach him with her arms, and said she had always loved him; he assured her in an agitated voice that he believed it, and that there was no better, sweeter, brighter creature on earth than she; only he forgot to say that he loved her.  She gave, he received, and it seemed to him natural.

She saw and felt nothing except him and her happiness; he was wholly absorbed by the bliss of being loved and the sweetness of her kiss; so neither noticed that Coello had opened the door and watched them for a minute, with mingled wrath and pleasure, irresolutely shaking his head.