"He'd just come in," answered Hilda absently. "He won't bother us any more."
"If he comes again, don't speak to him," said Brauner in the commanding voice that sounded so fierce and meant so little. "Just call me or August."
Hilda could not thrust him out of her mind. His looks, his tones, his dramatic melancholy saddened her; and his last words rang in her ears. She no longer loved him; but she HAD loved him. She could not think of him as a stranger and an enemy—there might be truth in his plea that he had in some mysterious way fallen through love for her. She might be able to save him.
Almost mechanically she left the shop, went to Sixth Street and to the "family entrance" of Meinert's beer-garden. She went into the little anteroom and, with her hand on the swinging door leading to the sitting-room, paused like one waking from a dream.
"I must be crazy," she said half aloud. "He's a scoundrel and no good can come of my seeing him. What would Otto think of me? What am I doing here?" And she hastened away, hoping that no one had seen her.
Mr. Feuerstein was seated at a table a few feet from where she had paused and turned back. He had come in half an hour before and had ordered and drunk three glasses of cheap, fiery brandy. As the moments passed his mood grew wilder and more somber. "She has failed me!" he exclaimed. He called for pen, ink and paper. He wrote rapidly and, when he had finished, declaimed his production, punctuating the sentences with looks and gestures. His voice gradually broke, and he uttered the last words with sobs and with the tears streaming down his cheeks. He signed his name with a flourish, added a postscript. He took a stamped envelope from his pocket, sealed the letter, addressed it and laid it before him on the table. "The presence of death inspired me," he said, looking at his production with tragic pride. And he called for another drink.
When the waiter brought it, he lifted it high and, standing up, bowed as if some one were opposite him at the table. "I drink to you, Death!" he said. The waiter stared in open-mouthed astonishment, and with a muttered, "He's luny!" backed from the room.
He sat again and drew the knife from his pocket and slid his finger along the edge. "The key to my sleeping-room," he muttered, half imagining that a vast audience was watching with bated breath.
The waiter entered and he hid the knife.
"Away!" he exclaimed, frowning heavily. "I wish to be alone."