“What is it?”
“You are seventeen.”
“No—ever so much older.”
“Eighteen then.”
“I shall be nineteen in July.”
VIII
Before the brilliant shop-windows of the Toledo we dallied for an hour or more, Zabetta’s eyes sparkling with delight as they rested on the bright-hued silks, the tortoiseshell and coral, the gold and silver filagree-work, that were there displayed. But when she admired some one particular object above another, and I besought her to let me buy it for her, she refused austerely. “But no, no, no! It is impossible.” Then we went on to the Villa, and strolled by the sea-wall, between the blue-green water and the multicoloured procession of people in carriages. And by-and-by Zabetta confessed that she was tired, and proposed that we should sit down on one of the benches. “A café would be better fun,” submitted her companion. And we placed ourselves at one of the out-of-door tables of the café in the garden, where, after some urging, I prevailed upon Zabetta to drink a cup of chocolate. Meanwhile, with the ready confidence of youth, we had each been desultorily autobiographical; and if our actual acquaintance was only the affair of an afternoon, I doubt if in a year we could have felt that we knew each other better.
“I must go home,” Zabetta said at last.
“Oh, not yet, not yet,” cried I.
“It will be dinner-time. I must go home to dinner.”