Which reveals the fact that, genius or not, she was only a young and rather frightened girl, and that every atom of her ached with loneliness.
She did not sleep at all, but sat curled up on the bed with her feet under her and thought things out. At dawn the Portier, crawling out into the cold from under his feathers, opened the door into the hall and listened. She was playing, not practicing, and the music was the barcarolle from the “Tales” of Hoffmann. Standing in the doorway in his night attire, his chest open to the frigid morning air, his face upraised to the floor above, he hummed the melody in a throaty tenor.
When the music had died away he went in and closed the door sheepishly. His wife stood over the stove, a stick of firewood in her hand. She eyed him.
“So! It is the American Fraulein now!”
“I did but hum a little. She drags out my heart with her music.” He fumbled with his mustache bandage, which was knotted behind, keeping one eye on his wife, whose morning pleasure it was to untie it for him.
“She leaves to-day,” she announced, ignoring the knot.
“Why? She is alone. Rosa says—”
“She leaves to-day!”
The knot was hopeless now, double-tied and pulled to smooth compactness. The Portier jerked at it.
“No Fraulein stays here alone. It is not respectable. And what saw I last night, after she entered and you stood moon-gazing up the stair after her! A man in the gateway!”
The Portier was angry. He snarled something through the bandage, which had slipped down over his mouth, and picked up a great knife.
“She will stay if she so desire,” he muttered furiously, and, raising the knife, he cut the knotted string. His mustache, faintly gray and sweetly up-curled, stood revealed.
“She will stay!” he repeated. “And when you see men at the gate, let me know. She is an angel!”
“And she looks like the angel at the opera, hein?”
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