The shoulders heaved again in a deep sigh. Relief? Despair? Aldo was uncertain.
"So all your troubles are at an end, Nancy. I have settled enough on you and the child, so that you need no more exploit Anne-Marie."
Nancy started up and away from him. "Exploit Anne-Marie!" … Exploit Anne-Marie! Was that what he thought? Was that what other people thought?—that she was exploiting Anne-Marie?
Nancy covered her face again and burst into wild, uncontrollable sobs of grief. She cried loud, like a child, and Aldo felt that these were not the tears that he was used to and understood.
In these tears were all Nancy's broken hopes and lost aspirations, all that she had sacrificed and stifled and tried with prayers and fastings, for Anne-Marie's sake, not to regret. Her work, her Book, her hopes of Fame, her dreams of Glory, all that she had given up for love of Anne-Marie, laid down for Anne-Marie's little feet to trample on, stood up in her memory like murdered things. She remembered the beating wings of her own genius that she had torn out in order not to impede Anne-Marie in her flight, and the wounds burned and bled again.
"I have not been exploiting Anne-Marie," she said, raising her tear-merged eyes to Aldo. "All that she has earned in her concerts has been put away for her. It is sacrosanct. No one has touched it."
"Then how have you lived?" he said.
"I have borrowed money," she said defiantly and angrily. "A lot of money, which I shall repay when I can."
"From whom?" asked Aldo. Nancy did not answer.
"You can repay it now," said Aldo, frowning. And then he was silent.
The frivolous hotel clock struck four in tinkling chimes.
"Where is Anne-Marie?" asked Aldo, in a low voice.
"She is out." And Nancy's face grew hard as stone. "I do not want her to see you. She is not to be excited and upset."
"Nancy!"—and Aldo's nostrils went white—"you must let me see her. I have longed for her day and night for the past three years. I have thought of nothing else. I have lain awake hours every night planning the meeting with her. When I should be free, when I should be rich"—Nancy flinched and shivered—"I thought of finding you struggling and in need. And I planned our meeting. I was going to send something to her—with no name—every day for a week beforehand, every day something better than the day before. The first day only a box of sweets, or of toys. Then a cageful of singing birds. Then a bank book with money, and the last day"—Aldo's eyes were full of tears now, but Nancy's were dry and hard—"it was to be a pony-carriage with two white ponies and a stiff little groom sitting behind"—Aldo's voice broke—"and that was to fetch you both away, away from poverty, and misery, and loneliness, and bring you back to me!"
Aldo covered his face with his hands, and his tears fell over the diamond ring.
"Then I heard … I read … about Anne-Marie … and I would not go to hear her. I could not go, I could not sit alone … and see my own little girl … standing there … playing to a thousand strangers … while I, her father–" He became incoherent with grief.
"And I have never heard her, never heard her," he sobbed.
Nancy's lips were shut, and her heart was shut. She did not speak.
Aldo looked at her through his swimming orbs, and wished that she would weep too. He spoke in a broken whisper.
"Am I not to be forgiven? Can we not all be happy again?"
"No," said Nancy.
"Do you mean never?" asked Aldo, and his beard worked strangely.
"Never," said Nancy, and a shudder of dislike tightened her elbows to her side.
Then Aldo raved and wept. He had dreamed of this meeting for three years; he had always loved her; he had always loved Anne-Marie; he had done what he had done for her sake and for Anne-Marie; he had saved, and skimped, and schemed for her and for Anne -Marie; he could not have lived but for the thought of her and of Anne-Marie; and he would not live a day longer unless it were with her and with Anne-Marie!
As he spoke thus it was truth, and became truer while he said it, and while he saw her and felt that she would never be anything in his life again.
"Oh, Nancy! Nancy! Nancy!" He grasped her cold, limp hand, and crushed it in his own. "You will let me see Anne-Marie. You cannot refuse it! I shall abide by what she says. If she does not want me I will go away. But if she wants me—if she remembers me and says that I may stay—promise me that you will let me! Promise! promise! I will not leave you—I will not leave you until you promise!"
Nancy would not promise.
"Nancy, remember how we loved each other! Remember the days on Lake Maggiore! Remember when you were writing your Book, and you used to read it to me in the evening with your head against my arm. Remember everything, Nancy, and promise that I may see Anne-Marie, and that if she is willing you will let me stay. Promise, Nancy, promise!"
But Nancy would not promise.
"Nancy, have you forgotten the hard times in New York? The hunger and the misery we went through together? For the sake of those dark days, the days in the old Schmidls' house, and in the little flat; for the sake of my dreary little dark room, that I have since so often longed for and regretted, because I could see you and the child asleep through the open door … will you not promise, Nancy?"
No; Nancy could not promise.
"Do you remember when Anne-Marie had the measles?" sobbed Aldo. "And she would only eat the food I cooked?… And she would only go to sleep if she held my finger and I sang, 'Celeste Aïda!' to her?… Will you remember that, and will you promise?"
Nancy remembered that. And she promised.
They sat waiting for Anne-Marie to come back from her walk. Neither spoke; but Aldo took a little picture-postcard of Anne-Marie with her violin that lay on the table, and held it in his hand, gazing at it with his elbow on his knee. Then his head drooped, and he sat with his forehead pressed against the little picture.
The unconscious Arbiter of Destinies came running along the hotel passage with a balloon from the Bon Marché tied to her wrist. It was a large red balloon with the words "Bon Marché" in gold letters on it, and it had caused Fräulein intense mortification as she had walked beside it down the Boulevard des Italiens to the hotel.
"People will recognize you," she had said to Anne-Marie in the street, "and they will not take you and your music seriously any more. It is not for a great artist to walk about with a stupid balloon."
"It is not stupider than any other balloon," said Anne-Marie, slapping its red inflated head, and watching it ascend slowly to the length of its string. Then she pulled it down again, and a slight puff of wind made it knock lightly against Fräulein's cheek.
Fräulein was exceedingly vexed. "I cannot imagine how any one who plays the Beethoven Sonata—"
"Which Sonata?" asked Anne-Marie, who was an adept at changing the conversation. "The Kreutzer or the Frühling? I prefer the Kreutzer."
Then she forcibly inserted her fingers under Fräulein's hard and resisting arm, and trotted gaily beside her. The balloon bumped lightly against Fräulein's hat, but Fräulein did not mind; she merely said that she would have preferred if "Louvre" had been written on it instead of "Bon Marché," which looked so cheap.
Anne-Marie now entered the sitting-room, balloon in hand. Fräulein, seeing a visitor there, withdrew to her room.
Anne-Marie was used to people calling on her and waiting for her. She put out a small warm hand to the stranger, who had started to his feet, and was looking at her with vehement, tearful eyes.... Anne-Marie had seen many strangers and many tearful eyes. She was not moved or surprised.
"Bon jour," she said, judging by the beard.
Then she went to her mother. "Look at my balloon, Liebstes," she said, slipping the string off her wrist. The balloon rose quickly and gently, and before it could be stopped it was knock-knocking against the ceiling. Anne-Marie's despairing eyes followed it. The room was high. The piece of string hung beyond human reach. Then the man with the beard took her hand, and said: