"Well, she left the store—you would never guess why! She wanted to be 'respectable'! She took up some kind of work, I forget what; but eventually she drifted into a café, as a waitress. Can you imagine 'respectable'—and a café waitress!"
Monsalvat, more and more irritated at his companion's flippancy, suggested that these attempts of Nacha to work and to be "respectable" were certainly nothing against her. She might be a good girl, after all!
"Good? Of course! These girls are all good—almost all, at least. We do judge them harshly, I realize. If they do wrong, it is without knowing exactly that it is wrong. And some of them really have a high moral code—for instance...."
Torres was not smiling now. Memories of the numberless poor creatures he had known, memories of extraordinary cases of generosity, and loyalty, and even heroism, for the moment drove his superficial cynicism from him.
Monsalvat was not interested however, obsessed as he was by the image of Nacha, who seemed to be appealing to him to rescue her. And rescue her he would! He would save her from her present tragic situation, from fearful hours awaiting her in the future, and from the memory of frightful hours of the past. An idea that he must see her, speak to her again, somehow, somewhere, took possession of him. But how? And where? And supposing he should meet her again? What would he say to her? He did not know; but his determination was not shaken on that account. He would see her—and save her; not for her own sake, nor because he was himself an "unfortunate" in society; nor because she was beautiful, and his eyes had dwelt upon her; but for love of his sister rather, for the sake of his own real self!
"These poor girls are simply victims of conditions, I suppose," continued Torres. "Nacha told me once that wherever she went, in shops, or workrooms, or business offices, the men were after her. And it's true, isn't it? We men, even the best of us, are a bad lot. I'd like to know how a girl who hasn't enough to eat, and who lives in the worst sort of surroundings, can resist temptation, especially when it comes in the form of a good-looking fellow who offers to take her out of the hell she is living in.... No, they are not to blame...."
Meanwhile the "Merry Widow" waltz floated languidly through the thick air of the café like a maze of shimmering diaphanous silk or impalpable tulle. But to Monsalvat it seemed that this music was winding itself about him, body and soul, a merciless bandage which bound him tighter and tighter, treacherously increasing the pain it promised to soothe. The sadness dwelling at the core of all worldly pleasures fell from each musical phrase, each bar, each note, on the heavy air of the café. Music in such places as this always distressed Monsalvat. Tonight his whole being was an open wound, over which the ceaselessly moving grind of the music grated until he wondered that he did not scream with pain. Was his own record absolutely clean? Had he, too, not bought favors from women—be it, indeed, with flattery and favors returned? And where were those women now?
Had they, too, by selling themselves, lost all right to the world's respect, the right to be treated as human beings, to be pitied? His fault? He despised himself utterly. Only the violence of his self-reproach gave him the strength to bear his pain.
"And then what?" he queried, rousing himself from his abstraction.
Torres, who had been silent for a time, now answered the question that came almost mechanically from Monsalvat's lips, and told all he knew of Nacha's history. Outstanding in her checkered career had been her love affair with the young poet, Carlos Riga. Together they had endured the most frightful poverty in the Argentine bohemia. Nacha had left him finally, driven away by sheer hunger—and the thought that perhaps her being always with him was an unjust burden on her penniless lover. In these circumstances she'd concluded that it was no use trying to be a "decent" girl; and she had gone off "on her own," taking up with a man—who was soon followed by another—better able to support her. One day the idea came into her head that exclusive devotion to any one protector meant a sort of unfaithfulness to Riga, whom she really adored. From that moment she gave herself up to the roving life of the cabarets and places of amusement. It was during this time that she met Arnedo. He found her pretty, intelligent, admired the ease of manner she had acquired in her mother's boarding house, was impressed by the smatterings of culture she had absorbed from Riga and other young writers she had known in Riga's company—in short, decided that Nacha was the jewel he was looking for—a girl he could "flash" on Capitol sportdom, and "show off" as his "woman" among people appreciative of such display.