She answered, smiling also: "I have my full share of superstition, but not about things like that. Are you really afraid of peacock's feathers?"
"No; but my mother wouldn't have one near her for worlds. She says that she has added all the Italian superstitions to the American ones."
"Is your mother an American?" said Sophy, surprised and pleased at this idea. If Amaldi's mother was an American, that would account in a great measure, she thought, for her feeling towards him—that odd feeling of having known him before.
"Yes," Amaldi was saying. "I am half American through my mother. She was a Miss Brainton."
"I am an American," said Sophy; "a Virginian. My name was Sophy Taliaferro. And that's odd"—she broke off, realising that her maiden name was probably of Italian origin—"because, though it's pronounced 'Tolliver,' it's spelt 'Taliaferro.' I never really thought of it before—but the first Taliaferro must have been an Italian!"
"Why, yes," said Amaldi eagerly, "There is a Tagliaferro family in Italy."
"So you're half American and I'm half Italian," she went on, looking at him pleasedly out of her candid eyes. "Such coincidences are strange, aren't they?"
"They're very delightful," said Amaldi, in a voice as frank as her look. He was thinking: "You are the woman I have imagined all my life. It seems very wonderful that you should have Italian blood."
Sophy liked this frank voice of his and the clear look in his eyes so much that she gave way to impulse.
"It seems to me," she said with the smile that he was beginning to watch for, "that Fate means us to become friends."