thought. Well, he could always shoot better than I could and he deserves it.
“Listen, daughter,” he said. “Don’t be sorry for me.”
“I’m not. Not at all. I just love you.”
“It isn’t much of a trade is it?” He said oficio instead of trade, because they spoke Spanish together too, when they left French, and when they did not wish to speak English before other people. Spanish is a rough language, the Colonel thought, rougher than a corncob sometimes. But you can say what you mean in it and make it stick.
“Es un oficio bastante malo,” he repeated, “loving me.”
“Yes. But it is the only one I have.”
“Don’t you write any more poetry?”
“It was young girl poetry. Like young girl painting. Everyone is talented at a certain age.”
At what age do you become old in this country, the Colonel thought. No one is ever old in Venice, but they grow up very fast. I grew up very rapidly in the Veneto myself, and I was never as old as I was at twenty-one.
“How is your mother?” he asked, lovingly.
“She is very well. She does not receive and she sees almost no one because of her sorrow.”
“Do you think she would mind if we had a baby?”
“I don’t know. She is very intelligent, you know. But I would have to marry someone, I suppose. I don’t really want to.”
“We could be married.”
“No,” she said. “I thought it over, and I thought we should not. It is just a decision as the one about crying.”
