And the woman, in caressing tones, but with an Italian accent, replied—
“What is the use? I am now quite old. I am twenty-seven years of age. Artistic triumphs would have no value for me now. Sing in a theatre, in public;—be the object of everybody’s gaze? Oh no. I no longer think of such a thing.”
“And yet you would obtain a great success!”
“For whom?”
They passed by, and Baudoin was obliged to confess to himself that this woman in mourning had not the same voice as the “other,” the one who had brought death with her. He saw the two promenaders disappear into the house, then he heard the clear tones of the piano, and the pure vibrating voice of the young woman arose, filling the silence of the woods with its melodious accents. Thereupon Baudoin descended the mound, and returned to Ars preoccupied and reflective. As he passed in front of the post-office he entered and wrote the following despatch:—
“Laforêt, War Office, rue Saint Dominique, Paris. Come to Ars, near Troyes. Ask for me at works. Baudoin.”
After paying he watched the transmission of his telegram, and, slightly relieved, returned home. At seven o’clock Marcel arrived. He dined without uttering a single word, and immediately afterwards retired into the laboratory, where Baudoin heard him pacing to and fro, far into the night.
Meanwhile Madame Vignola, seated in her small salon, an Oriental cigarette between her lips, was cutting a pack of cards under the complaisant looks of her chambermaid. The latter, a confidential companion rather than a servant, was a small, dark-complexioned woman, whom Sophia had had with her for the last ten years. Her name was Milona, but she was always called Milo. She had been born in the Carpathians, in the midst of a gipsy encampment. Her mother had died by the side of a ditch, leaving her, at the age of twelve, quite alone, and exposed to the attentions of a villain of the band, who had been smitten with the precocious grace of the child.
Sophia, as she passed through Trieste, in the course of her adventurous life, had been present, in the court of the inn where she had put up, at a quarrel between Milona and her ferocious suitor. The little one boldly opposed the zingaro, who wished to compel her to follow him, and to his loud-voiced threats uttered in the Romany tongue, she replied by a determined denial and a flashing look of defiance. The whole band, the only relations Milona knew, supported the young bandit’s pretensions. But Milona continued her refusal, when the chief of the band, an old man with grey beard and white curly hair, a regular patriarch, whose chief business was to steal poultry from the villages they traversed, tried to reason with the young girl.
Sophia, with her elbows resting on the window-sill, was enjoying the sight, and a feeling of sympathy came over her for this proud child who would not submit to the man’s tyranny. She appeared to understand the language these gipsies spoke, and smiled at the highly-coloured expressions of their speech.