"But you're too young yet; and you're going to Italy, to learn in the
schools. You wouldn't take a husband there with you, would you? What
would the poor devil do?"

"But you are not too young," said she.

Wilfrid supposed not.

"Could you not go to my Italy with me?"

"Impossible! What! as a dangling husband?" Wilfrid laughed scornfully.

"They would love you too," she said. "They are such loving people. Oh,
come! Consent to come, my lover! I must learn. If I do not, you will
despise me. How can I bring anything to lay at your feet, my dear! my
dear! if I do not?"

"Impossible!" Wilfrid reiterated, as one who had found moorings in the
word.

"Then I will give up Italy!"

He had not previously acted hypocrite with this amazing girl.
Nevertheless, it became difficult not to do so. He could scarcely believe
that he had on a sudden, and by strange agency, slipped into an earnest
situation. Emilia's attitude and tone awakened him to see it. Her hands
were clenched straight down from the shoulders: all that she conceived
herself to be renouncing for his sake was expressed in her face.

"Would you, really?" he murmured.

"I will!"

"And be English altogether?"

"Be yours!"

"Mine?"

"Yes; from this time."

Now stirred his better nature: though not before had he sceptically
touched her lips and found them cold, as if the fire had been taken out
of them by what they had uttered. He felt that it was no animal love, but
the force of a soul drawn to him; and, forgetting the hypocritical
foundation he had laid, he said: "How proud I shall be of you!"

"I shall go with you to battle," returned Emilia.

"My little darling! You won't care to see those black fellows killed,
will you?"

Emilia shuddered. "No; poor things! Why do you hurt them? Kill wicked
people, tyrant white-coats! And we will not talk of killing now. Proud of
me? If I can make you!"

"You sigh so heavily!"

"Something makes me feel like a little beggar."

"When I tell you I love you?"

"Yes; but I only feel rich when I am giving; and I seem to have nothing
to give now:--now that I have lost Italy!"

"But you give me your love, don't you?"

"All of it. But I seem to give it to you in tatters it's like a beggar;
like a day without any sun."

"Do you think I shall have that idea when I hear you sing to me, and know
that this little leaping fountain of music here is mine?"

Dim rays of a thought led Emilia to remark, "Must not men keel