He shifted his position, folded his arms, looked away from the curtain and down at the floor. Come, come, this was becoming nothing more than a fixed idea, a mania! It was idiocy to let it master him so! Good God, what had she been but a little girl! What was she now but a little girl! A girl of fifteen was no more than a child. His heart sprang up at him with a tiger's leap—"only three more years to wait—perhaps only two more—." He frowned, cleared his throat, and taking his handkerchief out of his pocket, passed it across his lips.
And then she might be totally changed by this time; girls often did change. Suppose she had grown very stout—or were gawkily thin like his sister Danielle, or bold and forward, or dull. He rolled himself in the hair-shirt of all the possible changes for the worse, and felt his passion burn hotter. Well, he would see. In a few moments he would see. He looked at his watch.
"It must soon begin," said his mother anxiously, leaning towards him, evidently fearing that the delay might bore him.
He smiled at her reassuringly, and put his watch back. Dear Maman! How she did spoil him! How he had missed her, missed his home, those two years in America. He thought of the boarding-house on 59th Street with a qualm. How good it was to get back to a real home.
But there were fine things in America, too, even if they did not know how to create real homes, even if the men did not know how to love their mothers, or cherish their wives. He had learned a great deal there, a great deal even beyond the revelation of new business methods. What he had learned commercially was enormous! He faced his future here in France, sure of success.
But he had taken in other things too—he was thankful that he had been to Marise's native country and had learned something about the attitude towards women there—not that he would ever, ever treat Marise as American wives were treated, with that rough-and-ready, cowboy lack of ceremony, nor would he ever neglect her, leave her out of his life, as American husbands did. He would know how to combine the American honesty and sincerity with what no American ever felt or showed, with what no American woman ever experienced—tenderness, cherishing tenderness. He would be tender for Marise as no other human being could be; he would find the most exquisite ways to surround her with tenderness, to protect that sweet mouth of hers from bitterness or sorrow, or knowledge of the world's evil.
He looked down steadily at the floor, a knot in his throat, his heart aching, and swallowed hard.
Three wooden thumps sounded from the platform, and the curtain drew itself aside, showing the stage decorated with a stand, two potted palms, an armchair, and a sprawling black grand piano with two cane-bottomed chairs before it.
From the wings trudged in a red-cheeked young girl, with a large bust, and brawny rough arms, hanging down over her starched white dress. Behind her trotted a short withered elderly woman, a black silk waist crossed over her flat chest, her scanty gray hair smoothed down in thin bandeaux over her ears. They sat down before the piano, opened the music, carried by the older woman, waited till she had adjusted drooping eye-glasses on her high thin nose, and had peeringly found her place. Then the young girl began to pound out the Raindrop Prelude while the other turned over the pages.