"But you cannot understand her, I believe."
"That is not her fault," she replied, with some vehemence.
"Not that either. It is no one's fault. It is so."
Lucio was immensely struck by her directness of character and generosity. He knew how unhappy Lilian Temple was in her family and how the father, too weak to defend and protect her, preferred to give her plenty of money and a trusty companion in Miss Ford, to let her travel as long as possible.
"You have a very beautiful soul, Lilian," he said, with deep emphasis.
She made no reply; her eyes were veiled with tears.
"I am happy," she said, looking at him and smiling amidst her tears.
He grew pale with love, as their row towards Sils Maria, where the two old maids were waiting for them, ended in a gentle movement, that almost seemed a gliding upon the waters. Both more moved than at any other time, more touched in the deepest essence of their souls, by that beautiful hour, by the landscape of peace and grandeur, by the words they had pronounced, by those they had not said, they experienced in every glance they exchanged, in every rare accent and gesture, an emotion they strove in vain to calm. Seated beside her, his head a little bent towards her, Lucio Sabini said nothing, but everything within him expressed the immense sympathy which bound him to the dear creature, so blond, so rosy, in her white dress beneath the white veil of her white hat: everything within him showed that the fascination of that beauty, of that candour, of that purity had subjugated him. Seated beside him, a figure of indefinable grace, there was in her eyes and smile that abandonment of fresh hearts, that abandonment which is so touching, because it is that of a heart which gives everything blindly for life and death. They pursued their gentle voyage to the green peninsula of Sils, and only a few sentences of the deepest tenderness now and then interrupted it with alternate silences.
"You will always dress in white, Lilian?"
"Yes, twenty. And you are thirty-five, you told me?"
Theirs was a sweetness even too intense, and a languor even more overwhelming; while Lilian's eyes of periwinkle-blue were far-away, and a little trembling Lucio's lips. A dull grating on the ground and a rush of water where the boat had grounded at Sils: rising, they again repeated the grand word, as if in a dream.