The doubts and fears agitating my heart made me indifferent to the
surpassing beauty of the scene: I turned impatiently from it to gaze
again on her graceful figure, girlish still in its slim proportions; but
her face, flushed with sunlight, and crowned with its dark, shining
hair, seemed to me like the face of one of the immortals. The expression
of rapt devotion on it made me silent, for it seemed as if she too had
been touched by nature's magic, like earth and sky, and been
transfigured; and waiting for the mood to pass, I stood by her side,
resting my hand on her knee. By-and-by she looked down and smiled, and
then I returned to the subject of her age.
"Surely, Yoletta," said I, "you were only poking fun at me--I mean,
amusing yourself at my expense. You can't possibly be more than about
fifteen, or sixteen at the very outside."
She smiled again and shook her head.
"Oh, I know, I can solve the riddle now. Your years are different, of
course, like everything else in this latitude. A month is called a year
with you, and that would make you, let me see--how much is twelve times
thirty-one? Oh, hang it, nearly five hundred, I should think.
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