It was one of
those soft nights with great lazy yellow clouds with pink edges sailing
down over the rim of the sea, fleet after fleet of them. I was terribly
interested in it all, but horribly shocked, and from my vantage of
fifteen years I said.
"Deolda, I think you ought to marry Johnny."
"Fiddledeedee!" said my aunt. "If she had sense she wouldn't marry
either one of 'em--one's too old, one's too young."
"She ought to marry Johnny and make a man of him," I persisted, for it
seemed ridiculous to me to call Johnny Deutra a boy when he was twenty
and handsome as a picture in a book.
My prim words touched some sore place in Deolda. She gave a brief
gesture with her hands and pushed the idea from her.
"I can't," she said, "I can't do it over again. Oh, I can't--I can't.
I'm afraid of emptiness--empty purses, empty bellies. The last words my
mother spoke were to me. She said, '_Deolda, fear nothing but
emptiness--empty bellies, empty hearts._' She left me something, too."
She went into the house and came back with the saffron shawl, its long
fringe trailing on the floor, its red flowers venomous and lovely in the
evening light.
"You've seen my mother," she said, "but you've seen her a poor old
woman. She had everything in the world once. She gave it up for love.
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