“D’you think Garibaldi was ever up here?” she asked Mr. Hirst. Oh, if she had been his bride! If, instead of a picnic party, this was a party of patriots, and she, red-shirted like the rest, had lain among grim men, flat on the turf, aiming her gun at the white turrets beneath them, screening her eyes to pierce through the smoke! So thinking, her foot stirred restlessly, and she exclaimed:
“I don’t call this life, do you?”
“What do you call life?” said St. John.
“Fighting—revolution,” she said, still gazing at the doomed city. “You only care for books, I know.”
“You’re quite wrong,” said St. John.
“Explain,” she urged, for there were no guns to be aimed at bodies, and she turned to another kind of warfare.
“What do I care for? People,” he said.
“Well, I am surprised!” she exclaimed. “You look so awfully serious. Do let’s be friends and tell each other what we’re like. I hate being cautious, don’t you?”
Something is happening here (but you don't know what it is) 