"One, two, three; one, two, three;" he said pathetically, trying to control his thoughts. He realised that he was counting "up in the air," so to speak, but he was afraid of betraying himself. "If she suspected that I dared to think that she was my own Hélène, she'd turn me from the house," he thought.
"I've kept all these old dolls since I was a little baby; even my little German doll is there," said Hélène as she played on.
Von Barwig took up the dolls, one by one. "Your German doll?" he repeated.
"Yes, the one I had in Leipsic. It's a queer little sawdust affair, but I love it to pieces. It always reminds me of my mother. Do you know what I am playing?" but Von Barwig did not hear her.
"The little German doll," he repeated. "The one she had in Leipsic."
"I heard this at your house the night we first met," went on Hélène, playing dreamily. "It's a beautiful melody; it has so much sentiment in it, so much pathos, but oh, isn't it sad," and she sighed deeply.
Was it illusion, too, that the ghost of his long-forgotten symphony should be played by the girl at the piano there, who so resembled his own lost loved one? Was it illusion that he should recognise that little doll, her doll, as the doll with which his own child, his own Hélène, had played so long ago?
Von Barwig did not start as he picked up this mute evidence of the truth; he was almost prepared for it. It was as if he knew she was his own, and yet did not know it.
"That eye was never mended after all," he said in a pathetic, broken voice, and as he spoke the whole scene of years gone by came back to him. He saw once more his little girl pleading with him to mend the doll with the broken eye.
Von Barwig was quite calm now. He had grasped a certainty at last; he knew now that he did not dream. He looked over at the piano. The girl felt deeply the music that she was playing, for it responded to something in her own nature; and so interested was she at this moment that she almost forgot his presence. Tears filled his eyes as he gazed at her longingly, lovingly.