These questions followed each other so rapidly that I contented myself with answering the last.
"Why not? It is no disgrace to be a fireman."
"But you look so--so black--so sooty--so frightful. I cannot bear such black men. You used to look much, very much better."
I did not know what to answer to this, so I merely shrugged my shoulders.
"You must come away from here!" said the young beauty, vivaciously. "This is no place for you."
"And yet it was very well that I was here to-day," I said with a touch of pride, of which I felt ashamed as soon as I had said it.
"I know it," she answered. "The captain told us. It is like you; but for that very reason you should not stay here. You are destined to something better than this."
"I thank you, Fräulein Hermine, for your kind interest," I answered gravely; "but what I am destined to, the result must show. In the mean time I must pursue my way, wherever it leads me."
She looked at me partly in displeasure, and partly, as it seemed to me, with compassion, and added quickly:
"You are poor: perhaps that is the reason you are here and look so--so--not nice. My father must help you: he is very rich."