She looked at me with such merriment in her face as I had never seen there before. She laughed again and again. I thought she would never have done laughing. I was petrified with horror.
“Stop!” I cried. “I must make you understand me! It is your child! Do you understand? Can you look at him and laugh? For shame, for shame!”
She calmed her laughter somewhat.
“Why, what is there in that,” she said, “to make me weep? If you only knew how ridiculous you look! Oh, dear!” And she went off into a peal of laughter gayer than before.
“Take him!” I said. “Look down at that little face, and smile again if you dare!” And I laid him in her lap.
She took him up carelessly and placed him out of her way on the divan.
“Really,” she said, “you mustn’t expect to disturb me with these things. I was singing a lovely new song when you came in. Listen!” And she took the lute in her hands and began to sing a stave of her song.
I felt a wave of anger rise within me. I rushed upon her blindly and tore the lute from her hands and dashed it on the floor. I seized her shoulders and shook her violently; and the more violently I shook her the more she laughed. I bethought me of the pin which lay in my pocket, and at the same time there flashed into my mind what the sorcerer had said about the Laughing Nymph; I had quite forgotten them both. I snatched the pin forth from my pocket with my left hand, and closing my eyes plunged it deep into the left arm of the Laughing Nymph.
She did not scream with pain, but her laughter instantly ceased. She looked at me with surprise, as if she were now seeing me for the first time. An expression of reproachful sorrow came over her face; tears started into her eyes and rolled down her cheeks; and suddenly she buried her face in her hands and wept bitterly. She arose, and threw herself on her knees beside the child and called to him wildly, sobbing as if her heart would break.
I looked on for a moment with my brain in a whirl. A strong impulse of love and pity moved me to put my arm around her and comfort her; but I restrained myself, and in that moment I saw what it all meant; I left the Laughing Nymph still weeping beside the child, and fled.