Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/511

 faintest idea what an impossible life that would be. You mustn't consider it for a moment. Crittenden, you mustn't let her consider it. An American country village. Good God! you don't know what it is, what the people are!"

"Yes, I do, too," she told him gaily, giving the effect, though she stood quite still, of executing a twirling pirouette of high spirits. "I've lived there. It's really going back home for both of us."

"Home! Why, Crittenden certainly told me he'd never been there in his life!"

"Oh, pshaw, Livingstone, don't be so heavy-handed and literal. Why wet-blanket every imaginative fancy?" said Crittenden, laughing loudly as though some one had made a joke. He might, for the impression he made on Livingstone, have joined hands with the girl to dance madly around him in a circle. But this was no laughing matter. This was terrible! Tragic! They had simply lost their heads, both of them, lost their heads and had no idea what they were doing. You could tell that by the wild glitter in their eyes. They were infatuated, that was it, infatuated. He must try to recall them to their senses. He turned imploringly to the girl. "But … but … but …" He was so agitated that he could not bring out his words. He stopped, drew a long breath, and passed his hand over his forehead. Then, very solemnly, "Do you know," he said to her, warningly, "do you know that you will probably have to do your own work?"

At this, she burst into an inexplicable, foolish shout of laughter, opening her eyes very wide at him and saying, "Appalling!"

She looked up at Crittenden, who for his part never took his eyes an instant from her.

How foolishly she talked! How foolishly she laughed! Why, they were acting as sentimentally as … Mr. Livingstone could not think of any comparison adequate to their foolishness.

They were moving away now, nodding good-by to him and smiling at each other. At the top of the dark steps leading down through the Palace of the Cæsars to the Forum they