"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.