"
"What curse?" he burst forth, passion shaking him. "You cursed my
mother's baptism. It would be a curse to be told that you would see me no
more, that I should be no more part of this home. There has been enough
of that curse here. . . . Ah, why--why--" she added with a sudden rush of
indignation, "why did you destroy the only thing I had of hers? It was
all that was left--her guitar. I loved it so."
All at once, with a cry of pain, she turned and ran to the door--entering
on the staircase which led to her room. In the doorway she turned.
"I can't help it. I can't help it, father. I love him--but I love you
too," she cried. "I don't want to go--oh, I don't want to go! Why do
you--?" her voice choked; she did not finish the sentence; or if she did,
he could not hear.
Then she opened the door wide, and disappeared into the darkness of the
unlighted stairway, murmuring, "Pity--have pity on me, holy Mother,
Vierge Marie!" Then the door closed behind her almost with a bang.
After a moment of stupefied inaction Jean Jacques hurried over and threw
open the door she had closed. "Zoe--little Zoe, come back and say
good-night," he called. But she did not hear, for, with a burst of
crying, she had hurried into her own room and shut and locked the door.
It was a pity, a measureless pity, as Mary the Mother must have seen, if
she could see mortal life at all, that Zoe did not hear him.
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