"I dare say. I'm a great fool, you know."
"Don't say that. This is perhaps the only chance I shall have of seeing you alone."
"I'm glad," he broke out in a tone that startled her. "Glad for you. I have tried not to be a death's-head at your feast, but it has been a struggle."
"We women see things. Martel, boy that he is, does not suspect, and yet I, who have known you so short a time, have read your secret. It is our happiness which makes you sad."
"No, no. I'm not that sort. I share your happiness. I want it to continue."
"If I had one wish it would be that she might care for you as I care for Martel. And who knows? Perhaps she may. You say it is impossible, yet life is full of blind ways and unseen turnings. Somehow I feel that she will."
"You are very good," he managed to say. Then yielding to a sudden impulse, he took her hand and kissed it. A moment later she left him, but the touch of her cool flesh against his lips remained an unforgetable impression.
Savigno appeared, yawning prodigiously.
"Dio!" he exclaimed with a grimace. "Those cousins of hers are deadly dull; I do not blame you for escaping. And the judge, and the notary's wife, and that village doctor! Colonel Neri is a good chap, notwithstanding his mustache in which he takes so much pride. He nurses it like a child, and yet it is older than I. Poor friend of mine, you are a martyr, thus to endure for me."
"It's tremendously interesting, particularly this part out here," Norvin asserted. "I saw them dancing what I took to be the tarantella a moment ago. Those peasant boys are like leaping fauns."