"Fan, do you
remember that woman in `The Three Musketeers'? The hellish
woman, that all men loved and loathed? Well, Olga's like
that. I'm not whining. I'm not exaggerating. I'm just
trying to make you understand. And yet I don't want you to
understand. Only you don't know what it means to have you
to talk to. To have some one who"--he clutched her hand,
fearfully--"You do love me, don't you, Fanny? You do, don't
you, Sis?"
"More than any one in the world," Fanny reassured him,
quietly. "The way mother would have, if she had lived."
A sigh escaped him, at that, as though a load had lifted
from him. He went on, presently. "It would have been all
right if I could have earned just a little more money."
Fanny shrank at that, and shut her eyes for a sick
moment. "But I couldn't. I asked her to be patient. But
you don't know the life there. There is no real home life.
They live in the cafes. They go there to keep warm, in the
winter, and to meet their friends, and gossip, and drink
that eternal coffee, and every coffee house--there are
thousands--is a rendezvous.
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