“You grieve too, dear,” he said, softly.
“Must you go, Rudolph?” she asked, tremulously.
“Shall I go, sweet friend?”
Andromache looked question at her mother.
“Of course he must,” cried Kyria Karapolos. “It would be folly to anger or thwart them in the beginning. Besides, it won’t be for long, and we can be getting things ready for the wedding in the meantime.”
“Am I to go, Andromache?” Rudolph still asked, holding her shy glance boldly with his own.
“Yes,” she whispered.
She took a little roll of embroidery from the pocket of her apron, and applied herself to it eagerly, but the needle pricks marked tiny spots of red along the cambric. Rudolph noted this, and anxiously cried out that she was hurting him. Andromache looked up in amazement.
“Don’t you understand?” asked this youth, suddenly growing subtle. “It is my fingers you are so cruelly pricking with that sharp needle.”