“I fly,” answered Jacobelli shortly, but as he turned about, he encountered Mrs. Nevins. Somehow, with her elaborately arranged gray hair, fine aquiline profile, and costume of gray velvet trimmed in silver fox, she brought a memory of Marie Antoinette, or was it merely the reminder of some famous actress in the part? The old maestro paused before her, a half-comic air of having been captured on the point of flight.
“I have heard often of you,” she said graciously. “My daughter Nathalie sings. She is a wonderful child, and even you, signor, must recognize genius, though you meet it handicapped.”
Casanova’s half-closed eyes twinkled at the inference, but Jacobelli was in a mellow mood.
“I shall be charmed to hear her some time, madame. Let her not choke her voice upon her golden spoon.”
“You must hear her soon,” insisted Mrs. Nevins. “I am getting up a programme for my Italian fête, the milk fund for the children, you know, a wonderful cause. Don’t you think Signor Jacobelli might be a help to us, Signor Casanova? I do want to have everything in harmony, authentic and still startling. I want a little operetta for Nathalie’s sake, and have been talking over the libretto with a young composer I just met, Griffeth Ames; perhaps you may know him.”
But Jacobelli was in a hurry to leave, and protesting his utter ignorance of Mr. Ames’s existence, he departed, not realizing how the grim sisters of fate had tangled his thread of life that moment with Griffeth Ames’s destiny.
At the same moment Ames sat perched on the seat in the slanting dormer window, staring down moodily at the street below. It was nearly eleven. Sometimes she came in the morning, and they would have lunch together after her lesson. He had not realized how deep an interest she had become in his life until two days had elapsed without her. Ptolemy kept vigil with him through the long evenings, while he smoked and told himself all sophists and philosophers were bachelors and liars. Love was a terrible, disconcerting truth. And he saw Carlota’s face in the vanishing rings of his smoke.
At the corner stood a pushcart piled high with California grapes, turned into a shrine of Bacchus. Upreared on a wooden framework festoons of clusters dangled temptingly, and vine leaves were twined about the base of the cart. The boy who tended it bartered with an old sibyl-faced Sicilian grandmother, naming her a price, and whistling until she came around to it. And suddenly Ames caught sight of Carlota as she walked across the Square from the ’bus terminus, her slim, youthful figure conspicuous among the vari-clad denizens of the park. She paused at the stand and bought plentifully, not only of the grapes, but of late rich-toned pears and golden-russet apples. He leaned far out the window, watching her longingly, Ptolemy rubbing against his arm as though he, too, sensed the return of Columbine.
At the foot of the last flight of stairs Carlota hesitated, listening. From the studio came a new melody, a haunting, yearning strain that she remembered. Ames had played it at the Phelpses that first night when their eyes had met. He had named it the “Quest of Love,” “Cerca di Amore.” As it ended, she opened the door softly, without knocking.
“I have come to prepare lunch, signor,” she said demurely, but with a flash of mischief in her eyes. “If you are still angry, then Ptolemy and I will eat it together.”