“No; I guess what you see is just that I’ve been crying. Don’t say anything about it. Don’t notice it. Never mind. Come and sit down by the fire and get warm. Your hand was like ice.”
“It’s very bad out, and not much better in, except here by your generous fireside. I haven’t been warm all day.”
“Why didn’t you come before? It isn’t what I call balmy here, but I expect it’s balmier than at your place.”
With her kindly unconstraint she reached for one of his hands to test its temperature. With a little cry of “Mercy me!” she closed his numb fingers between her palms to warm them, as if the blaze could not have accomplished this end so well as they.
He let it be, not with the same unconsciousness in the 231matter as she, but hoping that the soft, warm infolding would somehow do him good. He had come in the rather desperate hope of being done good to. As he had been about to start out, having intended, when he sent the portrait, to follow close upon it, he had found himself feeling so ill–feeling, at the end of the dismal day, so indescribably burdened and ill and apprehensive of worse things–that he had been on the point of giving it up. But then the wish itself to escape from his bad feelings had impelled him forth toward the spot glowing warmer and cheerier in his thoughts than any other, where, if he could forget how ill he felt, he would naturally feel better. Aurora’s house during the days of painting the first portrait had come to feel remarkably like home to him.
So when Aurora released his hand, saying, “Let’s have the other,” he docilely gave it to her, though the fire had already partly thawed it. Gratefully, with the hand set free, he covered both her kind hands, which loved so much to warm things and feed things and pet things and give away money.
Overcoming his ordinary stiffness, he pressed them right manfully, to signify that he would not speak of her tears if she wished him not to, but here was his sympathy, and with it his penitence, if so were that, as she intimated, he had had a share in making them flow.
“So you are all alone this evening?” he asked in the voice that makes whatever is said seem affectionate and comforting.
“Yes. I haven’t even Busteretto. I let Estelle keep him on the foot of her bed. She’s perfectly devoted to him. And Clotilde is busy in her own corner of the house, going over the bills. It takes lots of time.”
232“And where is the musician in ordinary, the gifted Italo?” he inquired, with a smile meant to draw from her a smile.