"Oh, Mr. Raymond, what nonsense I'm talking! That life's over and done with, and I've all these letters to copy!"
"All right—I won't interrupt!" He took up some papers. "But just tell me this. Do you ever want to go back to Italy?"
She hesitated, considering.
"No, I think not," she said at last. "You see, it would all be different. My father wouldn't be there, nor the Padre—and even old Fiammetta may be dead by now."
"But the place would be the same—the sea as blue!"
"Ah, I should like to see the sea!" She spoke softly. "Do you know I've only seen the sea once since I came to England—when we went to Southend for the day. And there it was all cold and grey—and the sands were mud ... it wasn't a bit like my sea, and I wished I'd never seen it."
There were actually tears in her eyes, and Barry cursed himself for a fool, as he went rather absently into his own room, leaving her to her work—which work was done none the less carefully because of the vague longings which the conversation had aroused in the worker's breast.
Punctually at two-thirty Owen returned, and Toni ran down the steps with a smiling face from which all traces of tears had long since vanished.
The car was waiting in the dingy street, and Toni's foot was actually on the step when she turned and looked at Owen with a kind of desperate appeal in her eyes.
"Mr. Rose, do you drive the car yourself?"