Monsalvat did not insist. He could not have done so. He took his hat and went away, stumbling like a man who has come to the end of his strength. One might have thought him sick, or crazy, or perhaps drunk, as he staggered out. Crossing that threshold was like wrenching his soul from his body; and in the little parlor that knew only shabbiness and shame, grief remained, lending it a dignity it had never known before.
Nacha could no longer hold her anguish at bay. She snatched off her hat with a frantic gesture, and tore it into bits. Moaning and weeping she fled into one of the other rooms and threw herself down on the bed.
The cripple rolled her wheel chair to the door and looked in. Believing that she understood Nacha's trouble, she did not disturb her, but went away again. She talked to the girls awhile; but the tragedy she saw close at hand saddened her; for it reminded her of old intimate griefs of her own. She too, in her youth, had known love, in far away Italy; and that love had been maimed and destroyed. After that, dishonor and vice seemed a small matter; yet, at times, even now, she went back in thought to the home of her childhood, so different in its simple beauty from the wretchedness of her present surroundings. But here she was, old, crippled, with no choice but to go on in the familiar rut. Why let herself be saddened then? She had known life, and found that melancholy had a bad effect on the liver! So she chatted with the girls, merrily, as was her custom whenever she felt a touch of sadness.
But someone came in, and asked for Nacha. The cripple rolled her chair into the bedroom where the girl was still weeping, her head almost hidden by the pillow.
"Nacha child! Don't cry that way! Why let yourself suffer so? No man is worth it. You know that. You are worth more than the best of them, you have a good heart ... and they...."
She muttered an obscene word to herself and began to laugh.
"Come, Nacha, someone wants to see you. They are all alike! No one of them is worth more than another. They're all rotten—just good to ruin women and then desert them. Come, child, come—here's a friend!"
She patted Nacha on the shoulder, and told her she would send her caller in. Nacha suddenly sat up. She wiped away her tears and said quietly, "No, señora. Don't send him. I am going away for good."
"But, child, why? Are you angry with me?" the old cripple exclaimed, astonished by Nacha's tone. "Aren't you ever coming back to my house?"