"I'll believe it when I see you again. . . . Love to Leila."
He made a mocking grimace at her.
Then he stooped to clasp Maria Angelina's hand. "A rivederci, Signorina," he insisted. "Don't you believe a thing she tells you about me. . . . I'm a poor, misunderstood young man in a world of women. Addio, Signorina—a rivederci."
And then he was gone, so gay and brown and smiling.
Sudden anguish swept down upon Maria Angelina, like the cold mistral upon the southlands.
He was gone. . . . Would she really see him again? . . . Would he come to those mountains?
But why would he not? He had spoken of it, all of himself . . . he had that place he called a shack. That was beautiful good fortune—all of a part of the amazing fairy story of the New World. . . . And he had looked so at her. He had made such jokes. He had pressed her hands . . . ever so lightly but without mistake. . . .
And his eyes, that shining brightness of his eyes. . . .
"Why rub it in about York Harbor?"
Cousin Jim was speaking and Maria Angelina came out of her dream with sudden, painful intensity. Instinctively she divined that here was something vital to her hope, and while her young face held the schooled, unstirred detachment of the jeune fille, her senses were straining nervously for any flicker of enlightenment.