“I go to study and work with Gluck. It is the opportunity of a lifetime. Gluck is to the world of medicine what Edison is to the world of electricity. He is a wizard, a man inspired. You should see him—a little, bent, grizzled, shabby old man who looks at you, and sees you not. It is a wonderful opportunity, a—”
The mustard and the sandwich and the table and Von Gerhard’s face were very indistinct and uncertain to my eyes, but I managed to say: “So glad—congratulate you—very happy—no doubt fortunate—”
Two strong hands grasped my wrists. “Drop that absurd mustard spoon and sandwich. Na, I did not mean to frighten you, Dawn. How your hands tremble. So, look at me. You would like Vienna, Kindchen. You would like the gayety, and the brightness of it, and the music, and the pretty women, and the incomparable gowns. Your sense of humor would discern the hollowness beneath all the pomp and ceremony and rigid lines of caste, and military glory; and your writer’s instinct would revel in the splendor, and color and romance and intrigue.”
I shrugged my shoulders in assumed indifference. “Can’t you convey all this to me without grasping my wrists like a villain in a melodrama? Besides, it isn’t very generous or thoughtful of you to tell me all this, knowing that it is not for me. Vienna for you, and Milwaukee and cheese sandwiches for me. Please pass the mustard.”
But the hold on my wrists grew firmer. Von Gerhard’s eyes were steady as they gazed into mine. “Dawn, Vienna, and the whole world is waiting for you, if you will but take it. Vienna—and happiness—with me—”
I wrenched my wrists free with a dreadful effort and rose, sick, bewildered, stunned. My world—my refuge of truth, and honor, and safety and sanity that had lain in Ernst von Gerhard’s great, steady hands, was slipping away from me. I think the horror that I felt within must have leaped to my eyes, for in an instant Von Gerhard was beside me, steadying me with his clear blue eyes. He did not touch the tips of my fingers as he stood there very near me. From the look of pain on his face I knew that I had misunderstood, somehow.
“Kleine, I see that you know me not,” he said, in German, and the saying it was as tender as is a mother when she reproves a child that she loves. “This fight against the world, those years of unhappiness and misery, they have made you suspicious and lacking in trust, is it not so? You do not yet know the perfect love that casts out all doubt. Dawn, I ask you in the name of all that is reasoning, and for the sake of your happiness and mine, to divorce this man Peter Orme—this man who for almost ten years has not been your husband—who never can be your husband. I ask you to do something which will bring suffering to no one, and which will mean happiness to many. Let me make you happy—you were born to be happy—you who can laugh like a girl in spite of your woman’s sorrows—”
But I sank into a chair and hid my face in my hands so that I might be spared the beauty and the tenderness of his eyes. I tried to think of all the sane and commonplace things in life. Somewhere in my inner consciousness a cool little voice was saying, over and over again:
“Now, Dawn, careful! You’ve come to the crossroads at last. Right or left? Choose! Now, Dawn, careful!” and the rest of it all over again.
When I lifted my face from my hands at last it was to meet the tenderness of Von Gerhard’s gaze with scarcely a tremor.