"Where would your Heaven be?" asked the Piedmontese, falling quickly,
with ready southern sympathy, into her mood. Mae seated herself on the
bench and made room for him at her side.

"Where should it be?" she repeated. "Down among the children of the sun,
all out in the rich orange fields, by the blue Bay of Naples, I think,
with Vesuvius near by, and Capri; yes, it would be in Sorrento that I
should find my heaven."

The officer smiled under his long moustaches. "For three days,--at a
hotel, Signorina."

"No, no; with the peasants. I am tired and sick of books, and people,
and reasons. Shall I give you a day of my Heaven?"

Bero smiled and bent slightly forward and rested his hand lightly on the
stick of her parasol, which lay between them. "Go on," he said.

"I would fill my apron with sweet flowers and golden fruit--great
oranges, and those fragrant, delicious tiny mandarins--and I would get
a crowd of little Italians about me, all a-babbling their pretty, pretty
tongue, and I would go down to the bay and get in an anchored boat, and
lie there all the morning, catching the sunlight in my eyes, trimming
the brown babies and the boat with flowers, looking off at the water
and the clouds, tossing the pretty fruit, and laughing, and playing, and
enjoying. Later, there'd be a run on the beach, and a ride on a donkey,
and a dance, with delirious music and frolic. And then the moon and
quiet,--and I would steal away from the crowd, and take a little boat,
and float and drift--"