“Guten Morgen,” he replied in German and extended his withered right hand. “So you have come from Vienna,” he added without releasing her hand. “Do you know my friend Loeb?”
The young woman stood speechless, leaning over the couch, realizing for the first time that unless he lifted the paralyzed lid of his right eye he saw nothing. Tears overflowed her eyes.
“I have not come direct from Vienna,” she faltered—“I haven’t been there for some time, but—but I wanted some excuse to cross your threshold—I lisped your songs before I could lisp my prayers—they were my breviary—you have taught me the meaning of the beauty of life——”
Albert nodded his head as she uttered the last flattering words, a smile of great satisfaction appeared on his face. The speaker’s girlish voice attracted him; it was like a voice from his young life, the days of love-making in Gunsdorf, Bonn and Goettingen. And the voice was such a relief to him! He was tired of all the voices around him—of the jabbering speech of his nurses, and of his wife—good souls all, but God! what voices! It was years since he had heard a pleasing voice.
“Never mind why you came here,” he struck in, smiling, “I am happy that you are here. Sit down and tell me who you are.”
She moved a chair nearer the couch and sat down.
“I can hardly tell you who I am—” she was nervously plucking at the edges of the roll of music in her hands, her eyes filled with tears, rested pitifully on the face that spoke of a thousand sufferings. To her it was the face of the Christ—the suffering face of the Man of Sorrows; the beard and the superfine, bloodless lips and the nose and the closed eyes and the strange smile—there was something of the expression of Eli, Eli, lamah Zabachtani in that face.
“Come nearer, let me see what you look like.”
She moved her chair closer to the couch, and raising the right eyelid with the tips of his fingers, he held it for a moment and looked at the visitor, who hesitated to tell her name. He scented romance. The sweet tantalization of youth was again in his blood. He was eager, pursuing, impatient. The glimpse of her made him still more eager. He took in at a glance her roguish blue eyes, so appealing yet so shrewd, her light-brown hair, her slender figure—the slenderness, without the suggestion of meagerness that always attracted him.
He pressed her for information about herself. She fenced cleverly. She did not mean to tell him her history—she had never told her history to any one.