"Go on," she said.
Von Barwig shook his head. "You look so serious," he said after a pause. "I thought perhaps something had happened to prevent my coming here, and the thought made me very unhappy. I am a foolish old man, eh? But, I am so happy here, so happy! I try to explain," he said. "Everything I have had in this world, everything I love I have lost! I am afraid to love anything for fear that I shall lose it. That's superstition, is it not? You tell me you have deceived me, and immediately I think she is going to tell me that she will no longer deceive me, that she does not like me for a music master! I know," he added plaintively, "that I am foolish. But my life here since I have been in this country has made of me a coward. Forgive me; please forgive me!"
The girl's eyes filled with tears. "No, no!" she said gently. "You need not fear. I shall never want any other music master but you, never!"
Chapter Seventeen
Pinac and Fico noticed it and so did Miss Husted. Poons probably would have noticed it, too, if he had not been in love. But Jenny was the only one who really felt the change in Professor Von Barwig. Try as he would, the old man could not conceal from them the fact that "something had happened." Not that he was not just as affable to Miss Husted as ever, not that he was any less warm in his manner toward his friends, but there was something missing and Jenny was the only one who came anywhere near guessing the truth. "He has found some one whom he loves more than us," thought she, and she felt glad at heart for his sake; though she did not understand.
"He feels so bad with himself that we have lost our engagement through him that he cannot come over it," said Fico in answer to Pinac's query as to what was the matter with Von Barwig. They knew there was no chance now of their getting the symphony engagement, for Van Praag, hampered by creditors, unable to carry out his contracts owing to the strike, had gone into bankruptcy and retired from the venture with the loss of all his money. He wrote a letter to Von Barwig saying he was going back to Germany, where musical art was one thing and bricks another. Von Barwig sadly showed them the letter, but his mind was so taken up with his new pupil that he did not feel the loss of the engagement as they did.
And yet his financial position was daily growing worse and worse, for he had practically no pupils at all—that is, no paying pupils. Besides this, the weather was so cold and business had dropped off to such an extent at the Museum that Costello had been compelled to reduce Von Barwig's salary fifty per cent. "A half a loaf is better than none," he had told the night professor as he handed him his envelope with half salary in it; so Von Barwig had been compelled to take what he could get. He now seriously considered moving upstairs.
"We haven't a room vacant," said Miss Husted in a decided tone; "and if we had," tenderly, "no, professor, no top floor for you! I couldn't bear the idea of it; I couldn't really! Pay me when you get it," she said when the old man pleaded that he must live within his means.
"But I may never get it," expostulated the professor.