I tell you he will surely come back before long." "I hope so." But Marcello did not come back, and after Aurora had returned to the cottage and was seated in her chair again, with her book, she grew restless, and went over in her memory what had passed in the morning.

It was not possible that Marcello should really mean to carry out his threat, to go away without a word, to leave her, to leave his mother; and yet, he was gone.

A settled conviction came over her that he was really gone, just as he was, most probably back to Rome.

She had teased him, and he had been very angry, absurdly angry; and yet she was perhaps responsible, in a way, for his disappearance.

Presently his mother would grow anxious and would ask questions, and then it would all come out.