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Gemma informed Sanin that she was the mother of five children, four sons and one daughter, a girl of eighteen, engaged to be married, and her photograph she enclosed as she was generally considered very like her mother. The sorrowful news Gemma kept for the end of the letter.
These prolonged studies, this stillness, this hidden life, like a snail in its shell, suited his spiritual condition to perfection; and for this, if nothing more, thanks to Gemma! But was she alive? Would she answer? At last a letter came, with an American postmark, from New York, addressed to him.
Sanin on his side begged the ladies to sing something; they too did not wait to be pressed. Frau Lenore sat down to the piano and sang with Gemma some duets and 'stornelle. The mother had once had a fine contralto; the daughter's voice was not strong, but was pleasing. But it was not Gemma's voice it was herself Sanin was admiring.
N'est-ce-pas, mon prince?" She fluttered away, chattering volubly to a bull-necked man with a heavy jaw and a coat glittering with orders; and her plaintive dirges for "notre malheureuse patrie," interpolated with "charmant" and "mon prince," died away along the terrace. Gemma stood quite still beside the pomegranate tree.
At last, by degrees, the storm abated. Frau Lenore gave over weeping, permitted Gemma to bring her out of the corner, where she sat huddled up, to put her into an arm-chair near the window, and to give her some orange-flower water to drink.
In this inferno, amongst the pungent odours, musty smells and 'acrid exhalations from the shops where fried fish and potatoes hissed in boiling grease, blossomed a pure white lily, as radiant amid mean surroundings as Gemma in the poor Frankfort confectioner's shop of Turgenev's Eaux Printanières.
Gemma, dear, there is nothing in all the world that would make me so happy as for you to join us you and the Padre." "Your Padre! Surely he " "No; he thinks differently. But I have sometimes fancied that is hoped I don't know " "But, Arthur! he's a priest." "What of that? There are priests in the society two of them write in the paper. And why not?
'Mine? Sanin was silent for a while. He felt a lump rising in his throat and catching at his breath. 'I too consider, he began with an effort ... Gemma drew herself up. 'Too? You too? 'Yes ... that is ... Sanin was unable, positively unable to add a single word more. 'Very well, said Gemma.
So Gemma talked, hesitating and smiling and dropping her voice or stopping altogether every time any one met them or passed by. And Sanin listened ecstatically, enjoying the very sound of her voice, as the day before he had gloated over her handwriting.
After dinner they all sat in the little salotto until it was time to go to the theatre, and still Olive talked and laughed with Orazio, teaching him English words and making fun of his pronunciation of them. Gemma watched her sombrely and judged her by her own standards, and Carmela caught at her cousin's arm presently as they passed down the crowded Via Cavour together.
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