es were already busy after a few days of these goings
on.

"Deolda," my aunt said, sternly, "what are you going out with that old
Conboy for?"

"I'm going to marry him," Deolda answered.

"You're _what_?"

"Going to marry him," Deolda repeated in her cool, truthful way that
always took my breath.

"Has he asked you?" my aunt inquired, sarcastically.

"No, but he will," said Deolda. She looked out under her long, slanting
eyes that looked as if they had little red flames dancing in the depths
of them.

"But you love Johnny," my aunt went on.

She nodded three times with the gesture of a little girl.

"Do you know what you're headed for, Deolda?" said my aunt. "Do you know
what you're doing when you talk about marrying old Conboy and loving
that handsome, no-account kid, Johnny?"

We were all three sitting on the bulkheads after supper. 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.
I've seen what love comes to. I've seen my mother with her hands callous
with work and her temper sharp as a razor edge nagging my father, and my
father cursing out us children. She had a whole city in love with her
and she gave up everything to run away with my father. He was jealous
and wanted her for h