"The mother who loved not the home, and from that's come all the sorrow! She loved not the home." Von Barwig's words came quickly now, and were interspersed with dry, inarticulate sobs. "The mother of my little girl, for whose memory I love you. Ah, keep to the home, Jenny, for God's sake! Always the home!"
Jenny nodded. "Where are they?" she asked, pointing to the portrait.
"Ah, where are they?" he almost sobbed. "For sixteen years I have not seen my own flesh and blood! He, my friend who did this to me, robbed me of them, and took them far, far away from me. I mustn't say more!"
Jenny understood; she no longer looked tenderly at the portrait. She pointed to it almost in horror. "She was not a good woman?"
Von Barwig was shocked. Here was the verdict of the world, through the mouth of a child. He had never thought of his wife as bad.
"She was a good woman; not bad, not bad! No, no, Jenny! I thought of nothing but my art, of music, of fame, fortune. One night, the night of the big concert, when I came home she had gone and she had taken with her my little Hélène. It was the night that symphony was played. Listen, you hear, you hear? It's the second movement. It was a wonderful success, but ah, Jenny, that night I won the world's applause, but I lost my own soul!"
The strains of the music came through the open door. Jenny looked at him. He was listening eagerly now. In the red glow of the late afternoon sun his eyes sparkled with unnatural excitement.
"It takes me home," he said, and then he looked at the picture. "Not bad; oh, no, Jenny; she is not bad!"
Jenny shook her head. She hated the woman from that moment.
"She is bad," she thought, "or how could she have done it?" But she did not speak, and the old man went on:
"I am not angry! No, mein Gott, no! I only want my little girl. Anything to have her back, my baby, my little baby girl, gone these sixteen years! My little baby!"
"Yes, but she wouldn't be a baby now," broke in Jenny.
Von Barwig, about to speak, stopped suddenly. "Of course not; I never thought of that!" Then he shook his head violently.
"I cannot think of her as anything but a baby!"
"Yes, but she'd be a grown-up young lady," insisted Jenny.
"How old was she when you--when she--when you left her."