Ma nun me lasciar’—
“Ma nun me lasciar’—!” she murmured, repeating the music. “That means—Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me! But why? Why shouldn’t one human being go away from another? What does it mean? That awful noise! Isn’t love the most horrible thing! I think it’s horrible. It just does one in, and turns one into a sort of howling animal. I’m howling with one sort of pain, he’s howling with another. Two hellish animals howling through the night! I’m not myself, he’s not himself. Oh, I think it’s horrible. What does he look like, Nurse? Is he beautiful? Is he a great hefty brute?”
She looked with big, slow, enigmatic eyes at Alvina.
“He’s a man I knew before,” said Alvina.
Mrs. Tuke’s face woke from its half-trance.
“Really! Oh! A man you knew before! Where?”
“It’s a long story,” said Alvina. “In a travelling music-hall troupe.”
“In a travelling music-hall troupe! How extraordinary! Why, how did you come across such an individual—?”
Alvina explained as briefly as possible. Mrs. Tuke watched her.
“Really!” she said. “You’ve done all those things!” And she scrutinized Alvina’s face. “You’ve had some effect on him, that’s evident,” she said. Then she shuddered, and dabbed her nose with her handkerchief. “Oh, the flesh is a beastly thing!” she cried. “To make a man howl outside there like that, because you’re here. And to make me howl because I’ve got a child inside me. It’s unbearable! What does he look like, really?”