Paolina put her hands to her face.
“It sounds so terrible. I cannot bear to think of it. Last night he was alive, talking to me, telling me how much he loved me. Today he is dead!”
“Forget him,” Sir Harvey said briefly. “There are men at this moment dying on the battlefields, men being drowned at sea, there are men struggling to improve the world in all sorts of different ways and losing their lives during the process. We cannot distress ourselves unduly about a young fool who rated his life so lightly that he was prepared to chuck it away for a whim. Forget him.”
“I will try,” Paolina nodded. “But it will not be easy.”
She picked up the camellias, which had fallen to the ground.
“It was kind of the Contessa to send me these. In the same circumstances I might not have been so generous
