"I'm only afraid," said Mae, "that after I had been down there a week,
I should forget English, buy a contadina costume, marry a child of the
sun, and run away from this big world with its puzzles and lessons,
and rights and wrongs. Imagine me in my doorway as you passed in your
travelling carriage, hot and tired on your way--say to Sorrento. I would
dress my beautiful Italian all up in scarlet flowers and wreathe his big
hat and kiss his brown eyes and take his brown hand, and then we would
run along by the bay and laugh at you stiff, grand world's folks as we
skipped past you."

"We shall know where to look for you, if ever you do disappear," said
Norman Mann.

"But, my dear Mae," added Albert, "though this is amusing, it is utterly
useless."

"Amusing things always are," said Mae.

"The question is, shall we or shall we not go to Rome for the winter?"

"Certainly, by all means, and if I don't like it, I'll run away to
Sorrento," and Mae shook her sunny head and twinkled her eyes in a
fascinating sort of way, that made Eric feel a proud brotherly pleasure
in this saucy young woman, and that gave Norman Mann a sort of feeling
he had had a good deal of late, a feeling hard to define, though we have
all known it, a delicious concoction of pleasure and pain. His eyes were
fixed on Mae, now. "What is it?" she asked. "You will like Rome, I am
sure." "No, I never like what I think I shall not."