"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.