"
She could not understand me, nor did she. We were not as ordinary lovers.
We were not as man and maid who, meeting and being drawn each to the other,
fence and trifle in a pretty game of dalliance until the maid opines that
the appearances are safe, and that, her resistance having been of a seemly
length, she may now make the ardently desired surrender with all war's
honours. Nothing of that was in our wooing, a wooing which seemed to us,
now that we spoke of it, to have been done when we had scarcely met, done
in the vision that I had of her, and the vision that she had of me.
With averted eyes she set me now a question.
"Madonna Giuliana used you with a certain freedom on her arrival, and I
have since heard your name coupled with her own by the Duke's ladies. But
I have asked no questions of them. I know how false can be the tongues of
courtly folk. I ask it now of you. What is or was this Madonna Giuliana
to you?"
"She was," I answered bitterly, "and God pity me that I must say it to
you--she was to me what Circe was to the followers of Ulysses."
She made a little moan, and I saw her clasp her hands in her lap; and the
sound and sight filled me with sorrow and despair. She must know. Better
that the knowledge should stand between us as a barrier which both could
see than that it should remain visible only to the eyes of my own soul, to
daunt me.
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