they all names? The nuns taught us some names; but they were hard, and I forgot them, We might name them for ourselves, if we lived here. They would be our relations.”
And, “For one year I should lie and look up at the sky, my Alessandro, and do nothing else. It hardly seems as if it would be a sin to do nothing for a year, if one gazed steadily at the sky all the while.”
And, “Now I know what it is I have always seen in your face, Alessandro. It is the look from the sky. One must be always serious and not unhappy, but never too glad, I think, when he lives with nothing between him and the sky, and the saints can see him every minute.”
And, “I cannot believe that it is but two days I have lived in the air, Alessandro. This seems to me the first home I have ever had. Is it because I am Indian, Alessandro, that it gives me such joy?”
It was strange how many more words Ramona spoke than Alessandro, yet how full she felt their intercourse to be. His silence was more than silent; it was taciturn. Yet she always felt herself answered. A monosyllable of Alessandro's, nay, a look, told what other men took long sentences to say, and said less eloquently.
After long thinking over this, she exclaimed, “You speak as the trees speak, and like the rock yonder, and the flowers, without saying anything!”
This delighted Alessandro's very heart. “And you, Majella,” he exclaimed; “when you say that, you speak in the language of our people; you are as we are.”
And Ramona, in her turn, was made happy by his words,—happier than she would have been made by any other praise or fondness.
Alessandro found himself regaining all his strength
