ing sunlight, sending their thoughts to the fairest woman in the land of snow. He was a good-natured young fellow, in spite of his strange excitability and self-conceit; and he stood there now gratifying her eagerness to hear his story.
His one picture after the other increased her longing, and, thoroughly transported into that wondrous land, she began to hum a Spanish song she had recently heard, and gradually to move her feet in time to it.
“What? you can dance Spanish dances?” cried he.
“Yes,” she hummed, in dancing rhythm, snapping her fingers to imitate the castanets; for she had seen the Spanish sailors dance.
“To you belongs the gift of the Spanish cavaliers,” he burst forth, as though illumined by a radiant thought. “You are the most beautiful woman I have met!”
He had raised the gold chain from his neck, and, with a light hand, flung it several times around hers before she understood him. But when she understood, that deep blush of shame that was peculiarly her own, suffused her face, and the tears filled her eyes, so that he, who had fallen from surprise to surprise, was now for the first time abashed at what he had done,
