"Perhaps it was because of this desire of hers that we so often went up and sat on the bastions of Castellaccio and looked out across the sea. And it was here, one evening, that I spoke of a matter which had been in my mind for some little time. We'd had Christmas together that year, and it was a clear, cold, windless afternoon in January that we rode up out of the city noise, and looked over the roofs and domes and hanging gardens, and saw the orange trees heavy with snow, and the ripe fruit glowing like globes of fire on the laden branches. You must not think that the romantic surroundings had inflamed my imagination, and that I was apprehensive of a lurid story. Not at all. I had turned the matter over, in my prosaic way, for several voyages, and I put the question to Rosa in a direct and simple form. I asked her who she was. It is all very well, in novels, for shy damsels to run into the arms of some casual Prince Charming, or for heroic clean-cut young college-men with over-developed jaw-bones to marry strange girls for, I suppose, heroic reasons. All very well in novels. But you try that sort of thing in real life, and see where you land. I don't mean externals--parents, social sets or legal tarradiddles. Such things are very slight obstacles. I mean the tremendous obstacles inside you: the mass of your inherited shrinkings and shynesses and delicacy; a whole quickset hedge of brambles and nettles and thistles, behind which your naked soul is hiding in a sort of terror; and you can't do it! I was in that position, because, so far, Rosa had made no reference to her birth except to say that, although Rebecca wasn't her mother, she was as good as one. "And Rebecca, when I had mentioned the matter to her one day, had said, with her chin resting on her knuckles, 'Ask Rosa.' I said. "'Ask her what?' "'Ask her if she wants you to know all about it.' "'Why,' I said, 'is there so much to know?' "'Little enough,' said she, 'but Rosa made Oscar and me promise to say nothing unless she gave us the word.' "'So Oscar knows it as well,' I said. Oscar was the steward Rebecca had married a few years before, a Dutchman, who was nearly always at sea when I was in Genoa, so I saw very little of him. "'Of course, Oscar knows,' said Rebecca. 'He knows a good deal of it first hand.' "'All right, I'll speak to Rosa,' I said. "And I did, as I was telling you. I asked her who she was. "'You have a good right to know,' she said, looking up to where a sentry's head and bayonet were sliding to and fro above the wall. 'I have meant to tell you, but I know very little. So little!' "I said I left the matter in her hands entirely.