“You know each other,” said Linda.
Kurt cut in with:
“Of course, and Fourmy thinks he is so like Mozart.”
René felt a pang of uneasiness. He turned to Linda to find her eyes resting now on M’Elroy, now on himself, with quick little darting glances that seemed to take in every detail. It exasperated him to be pitted against M’Elroy, but, the rivalry having been introduced, though unsought by himself, he rose to it, and so, he felt, did M’Elroy. By way of protest René moved nearer to Mrs. Brock, who was sitting on the bottom stair.
“Gut Abend!” he said. “Ich bin——”
“Na, Sie sprechen Deutsch? So ist’s gut. Ist mir sehr lieb Deutsch zu hören.”
“Aber nicht——”
“Sie sprechen sehr gut. Mein Sohn wird nie Deutsch sprechen. Im Goetheverein aber, wo man so schöne Musik——”
“Ja,” interrupted René at a venture, and he found that, with these three expressions, he could get along very well and keep Mrs. Brock perfectly happy talking away as she never did when the use of English oppressed her. She never stopped. She talked him into the cab that came for them, out of it, up the stairs into the German club, and into the concert-room where she presented him to other women like herself, who nodded and smiled at his fumbled utterances—and talked.