"I will, if Aunt Francesca will let me."
"She's willing to trust you with me, I think. She's known me ever since I was born and she helped father bring me up. Aunt Francesca has been like a mother to me."
"She says she doesn't care for the theatre," resumed Isabel, who did not care to talk about Aunt Francesca, "but I love it. I believe I could go every night."
"Don't make the mistake of going too often to see what pleases you, for you might tire of it. Perhaps plays 'keep best in a cool, dry atmosphere,' as you say men do."
"You're laughing at me," she said, reproachfully.
"Indeed I'm not. I knew a man once who fell desperately in love with a woman, and, as soon as he found that she cared for him, he started for the uttermost ends of the earth."
"What for?"
"That they might not risk losing their love for each other, through satiety. You know it's said to die more often of indigestion than starvation."
"I don't know anything about it," she murmured with downcast eyes.
"You will, though, before long. Some awkward, half-baked young man about twenty will come to you, bearing the divine fire."