“Who is the girl ... can nobody tell me?”
No. Nobody. But if an inquiry is to be made...?
Freder remained silent. He thought of Slim. He shook his head. First slowly, then violently. “No—”
One does not set a bloodhound on the track of a sacred, white hind.
“Nobody is to inquire about her,” he said, tonelessly.
He felt the soulless glance of the strange, hired person upon his face. He felt himself poor and besmirched. In an ill-temper which rendered him as wretched as though he had poison in his veins, he left the club. He walked home as though going into exile. He shut himself up in his work-room and worked. At nights he clung to his instrument and forced the monstrous solitude of Jupiter and Saturn down to him.
Nothing could help him—nothing! In an agonising blissful omnipresence stood, before his vision the one, one countenance; the austere countenance of the virgin, the sweet countenance of the mother.
A voice spoke:
“Look, these are your brothers.”
And the glory of the heavens was nothing, and the intoxication of work was nothing. And the conflagration which wiped out the sea could not wipe out the soft voice of the girl: