"You know I haven't any heart to give you," she answered at last.
Otto did not know anything of the kind, but he knew she thought so, and he was too intelligent to dispute, when time would settle the question—and, he felt sure, would settle it right. So he reached out and took her hand and said: "I'll risk that."
And they sat watching the waterfall and listening to it, and they were happy in a serious, tranquil way. It filled him with awe to think that he had at last won her. As for her, she was looking forward, without illusions, without regrets, to a life of work and content beside this strong, loyal, manly man who protested little, but never failed her or any one else.
On the way home in the train she told her mother, and her mother told her father. He, then and there, to the great delight and pleasure of the others in the car, rose up and embraced and kissed first his daughter, then Otto and then Otto's mother. And every once in a while he beamed down the line of his party and said: "This is a happy day!"
And he made them all come into the sitting-room back of the shop. "Wait here," he commanded. "No one must move!"
He went down to the cellar, presently to reappear with a dusty bottle of Johannisberger Cabinet. He pointed proudly to the seal. "Bronze!" he exclaimed. "It is wine like gold. It must be drunk slowly." He drew the cork and poured the wine with great ceremony, and they all drank with much touching of glasses and bowing and exchanging of good wishes, now in German, now in English, again in both. And the last toast, the one drunk with the greatest enthusiasm, was Brauner's favorite famous "Arbeit und Liebe und Heim!"
From that time forth Hilda began to look at Otto from a different point of view. And everything depends on point of view.
Then—the house in which Schwartz and Heilig had their shop was burned. And when their safe was drawn from the ruins, they found that their insurance had expired four days before the fire. It was Schwartz's business to look after the insurance, but Otto had never before failed to oversee. His mind had been in such confusion that he had forgotten.
He stared at the papers, stunned by the disaster. Schwartz wrung his hands and burst into tears. "I saw that you were in trouble," he wailed, "and that upset me. It's my fault. I've ruined us both."
There was nothing left of their business or capital, nothing but seven hundred dollars in debts to the importers of whom they bought.