"She'll like that, won't she?" he
asked.
"You won't die," she said suddenly and abruptly, her eyes fixed on his.
"What?" he asked sharply. "Well, who said I was going to die?"
"The doctors--unless you go to the invalids' place."
"Oh, and my dear aunt doesn't agree with them?" Eagerness now broke
through the mockery in his tones. He had longed so for a word of hope,
for someone to persuade him that he might still live and could still
work. "But suppose they proved right? Well, that's no worse than the
other anyhow."
"Not much," said Aunt Maria. "But I don't believe 'em." Her faith in him
came back at his first summons of it. He had but to tell her that he
would live and need not die, and she would believe him. Sandro's ways
were not as other men's; she could not believe that for Sandro as for
other men there were necessities not to be avoided, and a fate not to be
mastered by any defiant human will. So there she sat, persuading him that
he was not mortal; and he lay listening, mocking, embittered, yet still
lending an ear to the story, eager to believe her fable, rejoicing in the
power that he had over her mind.
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