I am only saying that this girl was as yet entirely given over
to her genius, and happy in it; and I loved her too well to weaken
an impulse towards art which she could gratify, and create an
impulse towards love which I could not for so long satisfy. So with
all this in my brain, and with a guard upon myself that had never
been relaxed since, I released her hand, with my ring upon it, as
gently as I had taken it, and the quiver of nervous, painful
excitement, that had shot through me as she laid it on my knee
confirmed my resolution. Why teach her also, one moment before she
need know it, the pain of self-repression?
"Is it not pretty," she had said.
"Which, the hand or the ring?"
"Why, the ring, of course," she had said, laughing. "You are too
bad, Victor!"
"I don't know. I think the hand is decidedly the lovelier. But the
ring is useful as a sign that now there is but one man in the world
for you, as, Lucia, there is for me henceforth but one woman."
She had looked up suddenly, and her eyes had met mine with the
passion kept out of them, and only reverence for her there. And even
at that the fugitive scarlet had stained the pale skin, and the eyes
had widened and darkened upon me, asking, Tell me, explain what this
mysterious feeling is that seems stirring faintly in me? And I had
looked back at her in silence, with a word unuttered, but still
perhaps divined by her, on my lips.
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