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How could he tell her now? He was already struggling with words. How to look her in the face and say, “My beloved, I must go to war”?

He thought about all these things, losing himself in his mother’s sad eyes. Then he caressed her gently.

“It will be as God wishes, mother. Please, don’t worry!”

A tear ran down the woman’s cheeks. She kissed her son on the forehead and let him rest for the night.

When the dim light of the candle left the room with his mother, Ture felt the weight of the world on him.

So much for ‘Gnura Mena!

All the jinx of the world had hit him now that his heart had finally known love. Now that he had a reason to get out of bed every morning. Now that the future was beginning to look less bleak.

The war, like a blow between his head and neck, threw him back into distress, numb. He would lose so much love! His little brothers, his parents, and Rosa.

Would she, in the bloom of her youth, so beautiful and graceful, have waited for him? And for how long? In the end, it had only been a kiss on the cheek. Two words exchanged on an afternoon at the trough. It might have been just a fleeting moment and nothing more. How real could the love of a sixteen-year-old girl be? Although she told him she had had him in her heart for more than a year. But would she be willing to wait for him for who knows how much longer, staying away from so many other young men who would court her?