Handling of C++ Functions Returning References (Unexpected Copies)

[drowaudio]

I'm not sure if this is a bug or by design but it's surprising behaviour to me either way.
In mixed mode, if you have a cpp1 function that returns a reference, calling that function from cpp2 will result in a copy of the object.

This behaves semantically differently to if the function returned a pointer as the referenced object is left unmodified.
E.g.

struct widget
{
    int size = 42;
};

widget& get_widget();

expand_widget: () =
{
    w:= get_widget();
    w.size += 42;
} 

compiles to

auto expand_widget() -> void
{
    auto w {get_widget()}; 
    w.size += 42;
}

w is a copy of the object returned from get_widget().

I know the fix is to take a the address of the object but is this copying of a referenced object intentional? If so, is there a design rationale I can read somewhere?

expand_widget: () =
{
    w:= getWidget()&;
    w*.size += 42;
}

Thanks!

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BTW, I'm loving the design of the language as a whole. Even starting by writing small examples you can see how the code is much more readable, safer and terser.