Then
what scope for a pathetic scene of reconciliation and forgiveness--the
whole to conclude with a peal of marriage bells, two people living together
'happy ever after.' But I am not writing a romance, and I am a musician,
not a poet.
Sometimes, however, it strikes me that I should like to see Ninette again,
and I find myself seeking traces of her in childish faces in the street.
The absurdity of such an expectation strikes me very forcibly afterwards,
when I look at my reflection in the glass, and tell myself that I must be
careful in the disposition of my parting.
Ninette, too, was my contemporary. Still I cannot conceive of her as a
woman. To me she is always a child. Ninette grown up, with a draggled dress
and squalling babies, is an incongruous thing that shocks my sense of
artistic fitness. My fiddle is my only mistress, and while I can summon its
consolation at command, I may not be troubled by the pettiness of a merely
human love. But once when I was down with Roman fever, and tossed on a
hotel bed, all the long, hot night, while Giacomo drowsed in a corner over
'Il Diavolo Rosa,' I seemed to miss Ninette.
Remembering that time, I sometimes fancy that when the inevitable hour
strikes, and this hand is too weak to raise the soul of melody out of
Stradivarius--when, my brief dream of life and music over, I go down into
the dark land, where there is no more music, and no Ninette, into the sleep
from which there comes no awaking, I should like to see her again, not the
woman but the child.
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