"Are you in pain?" he asked.
"No," replied Poons, trying to smile, but only succeeding in grinning. Then he laughed with real tears in his eyes.
"Are you laughing or crying?" asked Von Barwig. "If you are laughing, please cry; and if you are crying, for heaven's sake laugh."
Poons nodded. "I am very happy," he said tearfully, "so happy."
"Then you don't know how to show it," commented Von Barwig; whereupon they all laughed at him until he laughed too, in spite of himself. They joked all through the breakfast. So noisy were they that they attracted the attention of Galazatti, the proprietor or the café, who came over to the four friends and shook hands with them. He had served them for many years, and he was glad to see them enjoy themselves.
"How is the good lady of your house?" he asked.
"Miss Husted is at the top of the notch," replied Pinac, who generally constituted himself spokesman for the party. "We are all top of the notch," he added, "eh, Poonsie?" slapping the young man on the back.
"What a strange thing is this human existence!" thought Von Barwig, as he left his friends and walked back to his studio alone. "Here I am in the middle of Houston Street, giving music instructions for fifty cents per lesson, playing out nights in a dime museum, and yet my heart, my mind is with this daughter of a great millionaire. To-day at three I shall be with her, and I can think of nothing else. What is she to me that I should care so much? A chance likeness, perhaps no likeness at all except that which exists in my brain! Am I mad? Is this world of shadows real? What does it all mean? Who will tear the veil from this mystery, and tell me why one human being is so much more to us than another, why one human being so resembles another, and yet is not that one?"
From time to time he looked at the clock wishing the time would pass more quickly. He brushed his clothes very carefully that morning. The frock coat he had worn for a dozen years now proved its claim to being made of the finest texture, for it responded splendidly to the brush, and gave up most of its spots; but it still retained its shine. When he had put on a clean collar and cuffs and his best white dress shirt, Von Barwig looked at himself in the glass.
"If only this shine on my coat were transferred to my boots, what a happy transformation!" thought Von Barwig. "Still, if that button on my sleeve is transferred to my coat, it will restore the balance of harmony," so Jenny's services were called into requisition.