They were to be married almost at once. Aldo was impatient, and Nancy was in love; and The Book was waiting. So Valeria left for Milan to prepare the trousseau, and Nancy must follow a week later. On the eve of her journey Clarissa went up to say good-night to Nancy in her room—the large, bare room in which the masterpiece had not been written. Nancy's trunks were packed. The ivory pen and The Book were put away. The large inkstand stood alone on the large table.
Nancy was leaning out of the window looking at the stars. Clarissa came and stood behind her and looked up into the cobalt depths.
"I hate the stars," said Nancy; "I am afraid of them."
"Why?" said Clarissa, to whom a star was a star.
"Oh, I want to be sure that somewhere they leave off," said Nancy. "It terrifies me to think of fabulous nothingness behind unending space, of perpetual neverness beyond unceasing time. I should like a wall built round the universe, a wall that would shut me safely in, away from the terrible infinity."
Clarissa laughed. "Perhaps when you are married you will feel less little and lonely."
"Perhaps," said Nancy. And she added: "Aldo must be the wall."
"Oh, my dear," said Clarissa, "Don't try to make poor Aldo anything that he isn't. He is sweet; he is lovely; he is full of talent. But he is no more a wall than this is." And she waved her filmy gossamer scarf that blew lightly in the air.
That evening Carlo said to his wife: "I feel like a brute, letting that good-for-nothing brother of mine marry the nice little girl. He will make her miserable."
"Not at all," said Clarissa, putting out the candle with her book, a thing Carlo could not bear. "She will write poems on his profile and be perfectly happy, until she gets tired of him for not being something that he isn't."