HASSENREUTER
Ah, don't you know this breast covered with high and exalted decorations? Klärchen and Egmont! Here you can drink your fill! [They embrace each other anew.] Carpe diem! Enjoy the passing hour! Ah, my little Miss Simplicity, champagne is not recorded at present on the repertory of your old manager, inspirer and friend. [He opens a wooden case and draws forth a bottle of wine.] But this old cloister vintage isn't to be sneezed at either! [He pulls the cork. At the same moment the door bell rings.] What? Sh! I wonder who has the monstrous impudence to ring here on Sunday afternoon? [The bell rings with increased violence.] Confound it all—the fellow must be a lunatic. Little girl, suppose you withdraw into the library. [ALICE hurries into the library. The ringing is repeated. He hurries to the door.] Either be patient or go to the devil. [He is heard opening the door.] Who? What? "It is I, Miss Walburga." What? I am not Miss Walburga. I am not the daughter. I am the father. Oh, it's you, Mr. Spitta! Your very humble servant. I'm only her father—only her father! What is it that you want?
HASSENREUTER reappears in the passage accompanied by ERICH SPITTA, a young man of twenty-one, spectacled, with keen and not undistinguished features, SPITTA passes as a student of theology and is correspondingly dressed. He does not hold himself erect and his development shows the influence of over-study and underfeeding.
HASSENREUTER
Did you intend to give my daughter one of your private lessons here in my storeroom?
SPITTA
I was riding past on the tram-car and I really thought I had seen Miss
Walburga hurry into the doorway downstairs.
HASSENREUTER
No possibility of such a thing, my dear Spitta. At this moment my daughter Walburga is attending a ritualistic service with her mother in the Anglican church.