The girl laughed, opening her mouth in which the new teeth gleamed; then she opened her bag, excusing herself:
"What a funny idea, before everybody! Here are my keys, here an enamelled photograph of my lover; he really looks better than that."
But the eyes of Tograth were greedy; he had perceived all folded up in her bag several Parisian songs, rhymed and set to Viennese airs. He took these papers and after having scrutinized them, asked:
"These are nothing but songs, hast thou no poems?"
"I have a very lovely one," said the girl. "It was the bell-boy of the Hotel Victoria wrote it for me before he left for Switzerland. But I never showed it to Sossi."
And she proffered Tograth a little rose sheet of paper on which was written a pathetic acrostic.
| My dear beloved, ere I go away, | ||
| And thy love, Maria, I betray, | ||
| MARIA | Rail and sob, my sweet, once more—again, | |
| If you'd come with me to the woods, we twain,(!) | ||
| All would be sweeter; our parting would not pain. |
"It is not only poetry," exclaimed Tograth, "it is idiotic."
And he tore up the paper and threw it into the ditch, while the girl knocked her teeth in fright and cried:
"Sweet man, good man, I did not know that it was bad."