Nita and Lottchen scurried back to our group; the two elder women were looking both scandalized and disgusted; and Nessa bent over Lottchen, scarcely able to conceal her laughter. Fortunately Rosa kept her head.
Giving me first a look of scornful indignation, she said something to her mother and the whole group moved away.
The woman's outburst of hysterical passion had quieted by then, and she just let her head rest upon my shoulder, feasting her rather fine eyes upon my face with languishing rapture.
My first thought was that she was a lunatic; so I tried to unclasp her embrace. Gently at first, but then with considerable strength, for she resisted stoutly. Next I observed that for all her hysterical sobbing, her eyes were scarcely moist; a fact which put quite a different interpretation on the affair.
"We don't want a scene here," I said.
This had comparatively little effect and she tried to wrest her hands away and begin the embracing over again.
"If we have any more of this, I shall call the police," I said sharply. This did the business. After a moment she grew less demonstrative, making a great to-do in the effort to check her agitation, and allowed me to lead her away.
While we were shaking off the crowd there was time to study her and try to get a glimmer of the meaning of it all. Now that the hysterics were over, she appeared to be less emotional than perplexed. She kept her eyes on the ground, evidently thinking intently and taking no notice of the child at all, who was as unconcerned as if she didn't belong to the picture, except that once or twice she glanced up at the woman, as if wondering what to do and looking for a lead.
A thought of the truth occurred to me and made me look more searchingly than ever at the woman's side face. Two things struck me at once. She was older than I had believed; a little make-up cunningly concealed some wrinkles, and a touch of rouge on the cheek helped to account for my mistake about her age; and closer inspection revealed some lines of grease paint close to her hair.
I put her down then as a second-rate actress, and her over-acting in the embracing scene suggested corroboration. How the ordinary woman would behave on discovering her long lost lover or husband may be a question; but she certainly wouldn't shed tears which were carefully tearless out of the fear that they would spoil her make-up. It was obviously a plant.