“Doesn’t she flirt?”
I was stretching my sympathetic privileges a little too far. My excuse is curiosity, vulgar but natural. I had never before seen any one like Miss Harris and I wanted to get at the heart of her mystery.
“Flirt!” exclaimed the count. “Does a goddess flirt? That’s what she is. Think of it—in this new shiny country, in this city with telephones and policemen, in this sad street with the houses all built the same.” He sat upright and shook his cigarette at me. “She belongs where it is all sunshine and joy, and they dance and laugh and there is no business and nobody has a conscience.”
“Do you mean Ancient Greece or Modern Naples?”
The count made a vague sweeping gesture that left a little trail of smoke in the air.
“N’importe! But not here. She is a pagan, a natural being, a nymph, a dryad. I don’t know what in your language—but oh, something beautiful that isn’t bothered with a soul.”
I started, Masters and the count, raw America and sophisticated Italy, converging toward the same point.
Before I could answer her voice sounded startlingly loud through the register. For the first moment I didn’t recognize the strain, then I knew it—“Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore”—I have lived for art, I have lived for love. We looked at each other in surprised question as the impassioned song poured from the grating. It was as if she had heard us and this was her answer.
My knowledge of nymphs and dryads is small, but I feel confident if one of them had ever sung a modern Italian aria through a modern American register she could not have rendered it with less heart and soul than Miss Harris did.
Yesterday morning Betty telephoned me to come and lunch with her. Betty’s summons are not casual outbreaks of hospitality. There is always an underlying purpose in them, what a man I know who writes plays would call “a basic idea”. She is one of the few people who never troubles about meaningless formalities or superfluous small talk. It’s her way, and then she hasn’t time. That’s not just a phrase but a fact. Every hour of her day has its work, good work, well done. Only the poor know Betty’s private charities, only her friends the number of her businesslike benefactions.