"Oh, lover and friend of mine, understand and forgive me. There is no room for love in my life. My life is full of haste and turmoil, full of Kings and Queens, full of rushing trains, and shouting voices, and clapping hands....
"Can you not see it all as in a picture—the Pied Piper whistling and dancing on ahead; little Anne-Marie, Fame-drunken, music-struck, whirlwinding after him; and I following them in breathless, palpitant haste, leaving all that was once mine behind me—my Books, my Dreams, my Love?... Love in the picture is not a rose-crowned god of laughter and passion. Love is a lonely figure, lonely and stern and sad. Oh, love, forgive me, and understand! And say good-bye—good-bye to Nancy!"
He forgave her, and understood, and said good-bye to Nancy.
XXVII
The days swung on. And they swung Anne-Marie from triumph to triumph. And they poured sunshine into her hair, and sea-shine into her eyes. And they reared her into fulgent maidenhood, as a white lily is reared on a fragile stem.
They swung Nancy back into the shadow where mothers sit with gentle hands folded, and eyes whose tears no one counts. She learned to forget that she had even known a poem about "La belle qui veut, la belle qui n'ose, ceuillir les roses du jardin bleu!" The blue garden of youth closed its gates silently behind her, and the roses that Nancy's hand had not gathered would bloom for her no more.
But for Anne-Marie, when the time was ripe, the Pied Piper tossed his flute to another Player. Anne-Marie stood still and listened to the new call—the far-away call of Love. Soon she faltered, and turned and followed the silver-toned call of Love.