"Your mother has gone out. Do come!" And Adèle gave Nancy's hair a little pull on each side and a pat on the top, and hurried her to the drawing-room, where the Englishman was waiting. He rose, a stern-looking, clean-shaven man, with friendly eyes in a hard face.
Nancy put out her hand and said: "Buon giorno."
He answered: "How do you do? My Italian is very poor. May I speak English?"
Nancy dimpled. "You may speak it, but I may not understand it," she said.
But she understood him. He had written a critical essay on her book, with prose translations of some of the lyrics, and wished to close the article with an aperçu of her literary aims and intentions. What work was she doing at present! What message——?
"Nothing," said Nancy, with a little helpless Latin gesture of her hands. "I am doing nothing."
"Peccato!" said the Englishman. And he added: "I mean your Italian word in both senses—a pity and a sin."
Nancy nodded, and looked wistful.
"Why are you not working?" asked her visitor severely.
Nancy repeated the little helpless gesture. "I don't know," she said; then she smiled. "In Italy we talk so much. We say all the beautiful things we might write. That is why Italian literature is so poor, and Italian cafés so interesting. As for our thoughts, when we have said them they are gone—blown away like the fluff of the dandelions I used to tell the time by when I was a little girl in England."