It was never positive starvation and absolute rags,
but it was the hopeless grip of poverty all the time. It was her father
who taught her to play the violin. It seemed that he used to get drunk
sometimes, but without pleasure, and only because he was unable to
forget his fugitive wife. After he had a paralytic stroke, falling
over with a crash in the well of a music-hall orchestra during the
performance, she had joined the Zangiacomo company. He was now in a home
for incurables.
"And I am here," she finished, "with no one to care if I make a hole in
the water the next chance I get or not."
Heyst told her that he thought she could do a little better than that,
if it was only a question of getting out of the world. She looked at him
with special attention, and with a puzzled expression which gave to her
face an air of innocence.
This was during one of the "intervals" between the two parts of the
concert. She had come down that time without being incited thereto by a
pinch from the awful Zangiacomo woman. It is difficult to suppose that
she was seduced by the uncovered intellectual forehead and the long
reddish moustaches of her new friend. New is not the right word. She had
never had a friend before; and the sensation of this friendliness going
out to her was exciting by its novelty alone. Besides, any man who did
not resemble Schomberg appeared for that very reason attractive.
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