'Since you say it is mine,' said the child. 'It would sell well. It is strong and beautiful and bears good fruit. You could take me down where the sun sets and the sea is—where Cecco lies in the grass.'
'Good Lord!' said Fringuello, with a moan.
It seemed to him that the sorrow for her lost sweetheart had turned the child's brain.
'Do, father—do!' she urged, her thin brown lips trembling with anxiety and with the sense of her own powerlessness to move unless he would consent.
Her father hid his face in his hands; he felt helpless before her stronger will. She would force him to do what she desired, he knew; and he trembled, for he had neither knowledge nor means to make such a journey as this would be to the marshlands in the west, where Cecco lay.
'And the tree—the tree!' he muttered.
He had seen the tree so long by that little square window, it was part of his life and hers. The thought of its sale terrified him as if he were going to sell some human friend into bondage.
'There is no other way,' said Lizina sadly.
She, too, was loth to sell the tree, but they had nothing else to sell; and the intense selfishness of a fixed idea possessed her to the exclusion of all other feeling.
Then the cough shook her once more from head to foot, and a little froth of blood came to her lips.