"What a happy thing life
will be!"
"Will you live there and be a peasant forever?" asked Bero, leaning
forward. "There are villas by the sea, too, Signorina."
Mae didn't hear these last words. Her heart had stood still on that
"forever." Live there forever, forever, and never see her mother or
Eric, or,--or any one again! "I hadn't thought of that," she said,
"I hadn't thought of that." She stood still with her hands clasped,
thinking. The officer at her side, looking down at her, was thinking
also. He was fighting a slight mental struggle, a sort of combat he was
quite unused to. Should he let the child go on in this wild freak? He
knew the cottage by the sea; the peasant home would be dreadful to her.
He knew that by that same day after to-morrow, life in lower Italy, with
the dirty, coarse people about her would be a burden. Yet he hesitated.
He fought the battle in this way: Should he not stand a better chance
if he let her go? He had his leave of absence for three weeks (this was
true; "ordered to Naples," he had called it to Mae).
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