“And you came and found me,” said Mae, after a pause, wiping the tears from her eyes.  “Yes, thank God,” said Norman.  He was sober enough now.  “Why did you do it?” asked Mae, “when I had been so naughty, and silly, and unkind?” He came very near telling her the reason as she looked up at him, but he did not, for she dashed on, “O!  Mr. Mann, I have been—­”

“Don’t confess to me, Miss Mae.  Leave all of this till you get home to your own, who have a right to your confessions and penitence.  Never mind what you have been, here you are, and as I have only one more handkerchief and your own looks as if it had been sea-bathing, you had better dry your eyes and be jolly for the next two hours.”  This was a precarious speech, but Mae only laughed at it, and dried her eyes quickly.  “But I have one thing to say to you,” she said, “and please mayn’t I?”

“You may say anything you please to me, of course,” replied this very magnanimous Norman.

“It is not about the miserable past or my doings, but it’s about the future.  I’ve said good-bye to my dreams of life—­the floating and waving and singing and dancing life that was like iced champagne.  I’d rather have cold water, thank you, sir, for a steady drink, morning, noon and night.  I’m going to be good, to read and study and grow restful,”—­and Mae folded her hands and looked off toward the sea.  “She’s a witching child,” thought Norman.  Then she raised her head.  “I said it lightly because I felt it deeply,” she added, as if in reply to his thought.  “I am going to grow, if I can, unselfish and sympathetic, and perhaps, who knows, wise, and any way good.”

“There is no need of giving up your champagne entirely.  Give yourself a dinner party now and then o’ holidays.  The world is full of color and beauty, and poetry you love.  All study is full of it—­most of all it lives in humanity.”

“Well,” said Mae, “aren’t you glad I’m going to change so?”

“I’m glad you’re going to give your soul a chance.  Your body has been putting it down hard of late.”

“It’s but a weakling,” said Mae, with a shake of her head, “and I’ve hardly heard its whimpers at all, but—­O, Mr. Mann, if you could have seen Talila—­she’s dreadful.”

“Who is Talila? and what has she to do with your soul?”

“O, she’s one of those Sorrento people,” replied Mae, as if she had lived there for years.  “I have so much to tell you:  it will take—­”

“Years, I hope, dear.”  The last word dropped without his noticing it, but Mae caught it and hid it in her heart.

“What made you think of coming for me?” she asked, after a pause, during which Norman had hummed a song as she had been writing her name on the sand.  They were quite on the shore and only a narrow stretch of beach separated them from the bay.  “You said if you ever came away, you would go to Sorrento, and I knew you had a friend in the kitchen who lived near Naples.  So I searched for her and the padrona, and, finding neither of them, set Giovanni a babbling, and learned that the woman Lisetta had left that morning for Sorrento.  I told the boys I had a mere suspicion that I would trace for them.  So off I came last night, and by stopping and enquiring at every settlement, at last discovered you.”