“Have you known her very long?”
“All my life, more or less.”
“She says she knows the girl you’re engaged to.”
“Yes, of course. We all know each other in our little set. Now, if you’re ready, I’ll begin to read.”
“‘But you will have to pay me also,’ said the witch; ‘and it is not a little that I ask. Yours is the loveliest voice in the world, and you trust to that, I dare say, 248 to charm your love. But you must give it to me. For my costly drink I claim the best thing you possess. I shall give you my own blood, so that my draught may be as sharp as a two-edged sword.’ ‘But if you take my voice from me, what have I left?’ asked the little mermaid, piteously. ‘Your loveliness, your graceful movements, your speaking eyes. Those are enough to win a man’s heart. Well, is your courage gone? Stretch out your little tongue, that I may cut it off, and you shall have my magic potion.’ ‘I consent,’ said the little mermaid.”
Letty cried out: “So that when she’d be with him she’d understand everything, and not be able to tell him anything.”
“I’m afraid,” he smiled, “that that’s what’s ahead of her, poor thing.”
“Oh, but that—” she could hardly utter her distress—“Oh, but that’s worse than anything in the world.”
He looked up at her curiously. “Would you rather I didn’t go on?”
“No, no; please. I—I want to hear it all.”