More gentle-voiced and more simply gowned than her lady-in-waiting, the Queen, standing beside a table laden with flowers, moved to meet the little figure in the huge plumed hat. Nancy forgot the practised curtsey and the rehearsed salute. She clasped and held the gracious hand extended to her, and suddenly, as the awed, childish eyes filled with tears, the Queen bent forward and kissed her....
It was late and almost dark when Nancy returned, dream-like, with pale lips, to her mother, her aunt, and her cousin, who were having a nervous meal of sand wiches and wines with a gentleman in uniform standing beside them, and two powdered footmen waiting on them. They all three hurriedly put on their boas as soon as Nancy appeared, and they left, escorted and bowed out by the gentleman in uniform. "Probably the Duke of Aosta," said Aunt Carlotta vaguely. Another powdered footman conducted them to the royal automobile in which they returned to the hotel.
Nancy was disappointing in her description of everything. She sat in the dusky carriage with her eyes shut, holding her mother's hand. She could not tell Aunt Carlotta what she had eaten. Tea? Yes, tea. And cakes? Yes, cakes. But what kind of cakes, and what else? She did not remember. And she could not tell Adèle how the Queen was dressed. In white? No, not in white. Was it silk? She did not know. What rings did the Queen wear, and what brooch? Nancy could not remember. And had she said "Your Majesty" to her, or "Signora"? Nancy did not know. Neither, she thought. Then her mother asked timidly: "Did she like your poems?" And Nancy tightened the clasp on her mother's hand and said, "Yes."
Carlotta and Adèle were convinced that Nancy had made a fiasco of the visit and of the reading. She had blundered over the greeting, and had forgotten to say "Maestà." But they talked to everybody in the hotel about their afternoon at the Quirinal, and pretended not to be surprised when the hall-porter brought to them at the luncheon-table a packet containing three pictures of the Queen with her signature, one for each; and for Nancy a jewel-case, with crown and monogram, containing a brooch of blue enamel with the royal initial in diamonds.
Nancy bought a diary, and wrote on the first page the date and a name—the name of a flower, the name of the Queen.
They returned to Milan in a dream. A crowd of friends awaited them at the station, foremost among them Zio Giacomo, shorter of breath and quicker of temper than ever, and beside him the returned prodigal, Nino, who had never been seen and seldom been heard of for the past eight years. Adèle turned crimson, and Valeria turned white as the well-remembered dark eyes smiled at them from the handsome, sunburnt face; and Nino turned up his moustache and helped them to alight from the train, and kissed them all loudly on both cheeks. Nancy did not remember him at all. She looked at him gravely while he rapidly described to her a pink pinafore she used to wear in England eight years ago, and a Punch-and-Judy show, stage-managed by a Fräulein Something or other, and a dimple just like her mother's that she then possessed. Immediately the dimple reappeared, dipping sweetly in the young curved cheek, and Valeria smiled with tears in her eyes and kissed Nancy. Then Nino kissed Valeria and kissed Nancy, and then he kissed Adèle, too, who was acidly looking on. At last Zio Giacomo, growing very impatient, hurried them off the crowded platform and into cabs and carriages. They drove home, Nino crushing in at the last moment with Valeria, Carlotta, and Nancy. He did not ask about the Queen, nor did he tell them anything about his own long absence; but he quoted Baudelaire and Mallarmé to them all the way home in a low resonant voice broken by the jolts of the carriage. He did not quote Nancy's poems. "They are sacro sanct," he said. "My lips are unworthy." Then he drifted into Richepin:
"Voici mon sang et ma chair,
Bois et mange!"
he said, looking straight before him at Valeria. And Valeria turned pale again, uselessly, hopelessly; for the eyes that looked at her did not see her.
Zio Giacomo and Nino stayed with them to dinner, and two of the poets, a successful one and an unwashed one, came later in the evening.