She became indignant at once.
"You have no right to say anything against him! It was all my fault!"
"Why have I no right to say anything against him? Is his person sacred?"
One might almost have thought so, for whenever I attacked him she took his part.
Was it the freemasonry of caste which prompted her to stand up for him? Or were there secrets in her life which made her fear his enmity? I could not solve the riddle, nor discover the reason of her loyalty to him, which no disloyalty on his part could shake.
The sun set at last, and we parted. I slept the sleep of the famished; I dreamed that I was making desperate efforts to wing my way heavenwards, with a millstone round my neck.
Misfortune dogged our footsteps. We approached one of the theatrical managers with the request to give us a date for her first appearance. He replied that he could not, in his official position, have anything to do with a runaway wife.
We left no stone unturned, but all our efforts were doomed to failure. A year hence her resources would be exhausted, and she would be thrown on the street. It was my business, the business of the poor Bohemian, to save her from that fate.
To avoid every possibility of a misunderstanding, she called on an old friend of hers, a former tragedienne, whom up to quite recently she had constantly met in society, and who had cringed like a dog before the "golden-haired Baroness," her "little fairy."