“I haven’t the remotest idea,” said I.
She lifted her eyelids slowly—oh, very, very slowly, glanced quiveringly at me, while the shadow of a smile fluttered round her lips. I verily believe the baggage exulted in her feminine heart. I turned away, leading the two animals, and picked up the parasol which I closed and restored to her.
“I thought you wanted to cry,” I remarked.
“I can’t,” said Carlotta, plaintively.
“And you won’t tell me why you exclude me from your universal hatred?”
Carlotta dug up the sand with the point of her foot. The sight of it recalled the row of pink toes thrust unashamedly before my eyes on the second day of her arrival in London. An old hope, an old fear, an old struggle renewed themselves. She was more adorably beautiful even than the Carlotta of the pink tus, and spiritually she was reborn. I heard her whisper:
“I can’t.”
Now I had sworn to myself all the oaths that a man can swear that I should be Carlotta’s grandfather to the end of time. Hitherto I had felt the part. Now suddenly grey beard and slippered pantaloons are cast aside and I am young again with a glow in my heart which beats fast at her beauty. I shut my teeth.
“No,” said I to myself. “The curtain shall not rise on that farcical tragedy again.”
I threw the reins on the neck of Carlotta’s mule, which with its companion had been regarding us with bland stupidity.