"Is Mama all right?" asked Naomi.
"All right, she's fine! There, now ... there!"
And inside the machine Lena Auffmann could be heard saying, "Oh!" and then again, "Ah!" in a startled voice. "Look at that!" said his hidden wife. "Paris!" and later, "London! There goes Rome! The Pyramids! The Sphinx!"
"The Sphinx, you hear, children?" Leo Auffmann whispered and laughed.
"Perfume!" cried Lena Auffmann, surprised.
Somewhere a phonograph played "The Blue Danube" faintly.
"Music! I'm dancing!"
"Only thinks she's dancing," the father confided to the world.
"Amazing!" said the unseen woman.
Leo Auffmann blushed. "What an understanding wife."
And then inside the Happiness Machine, Lena Auffmann began to weep.
The inventor's smile faded.
"She's crying," said Naomi.
"She can't be
!"
"She is," said Saul.
"She simply can't be crying!" Leo Auffmann, blinking, pressed his ear to the machine. "But ... yes ... like a baby ..."
He could only open the door.
"Wait." There his wife sat, tears rolling down her cheeks. "Let me finish." She cried some more.
Leo Auffmann turned off the machine, stunned.
"Oh, it's the saddest thing in the world!" she wailed. "I feel awful, terrible." She climbed out through the door. "First, there was Paris ..."
"What's wrong with Paris?"
"I never even thought of being in Paris in my life. But now you got me thinking: Paris! So suddenly I want to be in Paris and I know I'm not!"
"It's almost as good, this machine."
"No. Sitting in there, I knew. I thought, it's not real!"
"Stop crying, Mama."
She looked at him with great dark wet eyes. "You had me dancing. We haven't danced in twenty years."
"I'll take you dancing tomorrow night!"
"No, no! It's not important, it shouldn't be important. But your machine says it's important! So I believe! It'll be all right, Leo, after I cry some more."
"What else?"