"How you look at me!" he said, with a happy smile.
"I have often wanted to look at you like this," she answered gravely.
"But until you had told me, how could I?"
He bent down rather timidly, but drawn to her by a power he could not
resist. His first kiss touched her forehead lightly, with a sort of
boyish reverence, while a thrill ran through every nerve and fibre of
his body. But she turned in his arms and threw her own suddenly round
his neck, and in an instant their lips met.
Zorzi was in a dream, where Marietta alone was real. All thought and
recollection of danger vanished, the very room was not the laboratory
where he had so long lived and worked, and thought and suffered. The
walls were gold, the stone pavement was a silken carpet, the shadowy
smoke-stained beams were the carved ceiling of a palace, he was himself
the king and master of the whole world, and he held all his kingdom in
his arms.
"You understand now," Marietta said at last, holding his face before her
with her hands.
"No," he answered lovingly. "I do not understand, I will not even try.
If I do, I shall open my eyes, and it will suddenly be daylight, and I
shall put out my hands and find nothing! I shall be alone, in my room,
just awake and aching with a horrible longing for the impossible.
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