“Thank God, that is all.”
“Then you have not let her carry away your heart and offer of marriage in her little gold bonbon case?”
Ames shook his head miserably. “No one will ever believe I did not know who she was,” he repeated. “She merely told me that her people, her own people, were all dead back in Italy. Of course I thought she just came to me from some neighborhood around the quarter until you warned me where she really lived.”
“My boy,” Dmitri comforted him, “you love the indefinite. It would have dispelled the illusion to have trailed her into the bosom of her family. A family is so commonplace.”
“But she always dressed simply.”
“Simply? You do not recognize the art of the modiste and tailor. I have myself seen her wearing a coat or gown that must have cost all out of reason to her apparent circumstances, but I said nothing to dispel your happiness. There was also her voice, her hand, her very manner. Griff, you were blind not to see and know you entertained an angel unawares.”
“I suppose she thought she was helping me, singing ‘Fiametta’ to-night, and instead, it will ruin my whole career. They will call it an unthinkable and gigantic piece of unpardonable impudence by the time Jacobelli finishes with me.”
“Stop thinking of yourself all the time. What of her?” warned Dmitri gently. “She did not want to go to Belvoir. She did not want ever even to sing in public, and you made her do it for you, you renegade. You get back to your own case. Do you not think she is suffering too?”
“If I thought she were, I’d be the happiest man alive,” Ames declared fervently. “If I thought she really cares anything for me, that this wouldn’t end everything, I mean.”
“You mean, if she is the girl you believe her to be, she will not give you up?” Dmitri blew wavery, violet ovals into the air and sighed. “I do not envy you people who eternally seek to win your ideal, to bring it to earth, and make it domesticated, so to speak. Possibly this is the greatest thing that could have happened to either of you. You will be like the most wonderful lovers in the world—Dante and Beatrice. To me they are the greatest of all because they are divinely ideal. My dear boy, he had a wife and five children, yet he beheld her at the bridge over the Arno once, only once, in the crimson gown, and he immortalized her with his ideal love. Paolo possessed Francesca’s avowal, Abelard had his memories in his cell, yet Dante, in his poverty of earthly happiness attained the empyrean following his dream.”