“Oh, don’t! It isn’t anything at all, her interest in my work. She’s giving some sort of a fête for the Italian Relief Fund, a sort of glorified musicale as I understand it, and she wants me to give my operetta so her daughter can sing the mezzo part, Pippa. I intend that you shall sing Fiametta, the princess.”
“Impossible!” exclaimed Carlota in hushed alarm. “I never, never could do that, Mr. Ames.”
“You call me Griffeth,” he swung back happily. “You are going to sing it just the same, and it may make your fortune. I know it will mine. Dmitri’s all wrong, you know. He’s got some sort of a brain kink over this hatred of the rich. I don’t dare tell him even who my father is for fear he may cut my acquaintance.”
“Is your father, then, rich?” Her gaze never left his face.
“Well, they call him so where we live out in Colorado. You’re in the bondholder class there after you pass fifty thousand, but I don’t think Dad’s in danger of being counted an enemy of the people yet; just comfortably dusted.”
He laughed down at her as they crossed the Square towards the ’bus terminus. And at exactly the same instant Signor Jacobelli was bursting without warning or ceremony into a studio on the second floor where a model posed. He emerged, nonplussed and furious. On the third floor the door was locked. He shook the handle imperatively, and a disturbed but pleasantly modulated voice answered:
“Sorry, old man. Come Monday, will you?”
“It is impossible,” exclaimed the maestro to himself, when he reached the street, and stood wiping his forehead with a sense of baffled uncertainty. “Yet there are not two voices like hers in the world. I shall not wait. Love is a madness.”
He retraced his steps towards the Brevoort, determined now to tell Maria his suspicions. Up at the dormer window of the studio, Dmitri leaned out, placing bread crumbs on the fire escape for the sparrows.
“Go to, greedy one,” he said gravely, to one brown vagrant struggling after the largest piece. “You elbow for room in the bread-line. Beware the Infinite overlooks your falling.”