In the Kârtner-Ring they drew up before a blazing entrance. Laughing people were passing in and out, women muffled in costly wraps, accompanied by men in evening-attire.
“What's this?” The change was so sudden that it shook his sense of reality. “This doesn't look like—”
She placed her lips close to his ear as she alighted.
“It looks like asking for revolution. 'After me, the deluge'—you remember? The men aren't Austrians. They're foreign vultures here to snatch bargains—human bargains as well. But the women—”
Inside the doors of the hotel every reminder of famine had been blotted out. Its white marble halls and stairways were richly carpeted. Its furnishings in gilt and satin had been carried out with the utmost lavishness. The costal of its chandeliers glittered with a dazzling intensity. From the restaurant drifted the wild gayety of a gipsy orchestra, enfever-ing the atmosphere with the yearning of elusive romance. Whispering to the beat of the music came the glide of dancing footsteps. Flunkeys with powdered heads, tricked out in plush breeches like marionettes, hurried to and fro on all-absorbing errands.
After Santa had been shown to her ornate room, he stepped out into the gloomy street to assure himself. It was all true, in spite of the lie which he had witnessed. The pinched faces were still there, and the enfeebled bodies crawling through the shadows.
As he reentered the white glare which shone from the hotel, he glanced back with a sense of impending ruin. For a second time his mind was filled with a tremendous picture: “And there was a certain rich man and a beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, desiring to be fed. Moreover, the dogs came and licked his sores.”
He caught the vision of his food-ships piling up stores in Holland. At the thought, as he crept between the sheets in his comfortable bed, he sickened.
IX
He had returned from a disturbing interview with the Austrian ministers responsible for considering his proposals. He was passing the hotel desk, when it occurred to him that some one might have left a message. On inquiry two were handed out to him, one a telegram, the other a letter. Ripping open the telegram, a glance told him it was in German and had been dispatched from Budapest. He had slipped it into his pocket, thinking, “I'll have to get Santa to translate that,” when he unfolded it again to see by whom it had been sent. The sender's name was a single word, “Anna.”