“I know. They’ll tell her all that sort of thing, too. You people who make a fetish of the immaterial, who believe that realization kills, amuse me.”
“Amusement is the privilege of youth,” Dmitri answered. “What you do not wish to understand or enjoy, you laugh away, but I tell you, your love, if realized, will kill the genius of you both, and you will find yourselves with clipped wings, domesticated wild swans ever yearning after the blue lanes of flight.”
“Every philosopher loves the sound of his own voice better than that of any woman,” said Ames.
Dmitri chuckled. “That is possible, quite possible, my friend. I wish I might call myself a philosopher, but I am a poor marksman. Philosophers are men who shoot mental shafts at the bull’s-eye of truth. I have never hit the inner circle myself.”
Ames drank his coffee thirstily and reached his cup for more. “Don’t preach at me, Dmitri,” he said bitterly. “I have come to you for straight advice, not a lot of axioms. Tell me what to do. She has gone away with Ward and Jacobelli. They will keep her from me.”
“Wait patiently with confidence,” Dmitri told him. “You will hear from her. Women are that way. There is some divine sixth sense that tells them of the beloved’s sufferings. Stay here with me to-night.”
Ames refused. The coffee had rested and stimulated him. He merely wanted companionship and the talk with one who believed in his success. Dmitri’s optimism restored his own confidence in himself. He would walk on down to the Square, he said, and wait there for some word from Carlota.
“What a pity you can’t sit down in this mood and improvise,” Dmitri said regretfully. “This way you will only walk it off, when if you could but express it in music—ah, my friend, what we owe to the mad loves and erratic moods of genius. I drink to its suffering.”
He accompanied Ames to the door and waved his hand in comradely fashion to him, watching until he had turned the corner of Madison Avenue. Then, with a quick sigh of relief, he ran his fingers through his hair and crossed the balcony to see if there was a light in Steccho’s window next door. It was dark, but as his hand touched the knob it came in contact with a letter which had been stuck in the door. He went back to his own quarters slowly, and relighted the brazier to make fresh coffee. The letter lay on the black walnut stand where he dropped it. It had been mailed in New York, the outer envelope attested, but when he examined it closely he was certain there was a second envelope inside. It was so that his own mail came to him, sent on through secret channels from Sofia. He mused speculatively on the news it might contain for the boy, Steccho. He would surely return to tell him what the midnight visitor had wanted of him. Possibly this letter had been a forerunner of the visit. News from the mother and little sister Maryna, no doubt. He lifted his head listeningly for a footfall along the silent street, but none came. And he leaned over the charcoal blaze as the moments passed, with a brooding look that was the very expectancy of fear.
Through the wooded drives of the north end of the Park Jurka’s car proceeded slowly. On the seat facing the Count, Steccho huddled. It was chilly in the early morning, and he was dressed scantily. The masterfulness of the other stole his vitality from him. He felt cowed and driven against his will. As they passed the penumbra of an arc light he would glance up at the handsome, easy-mannered figure opposite, his eyes filled with livid hatred.