We were silent for some moments. At last, abruptly—“My dear fellow,” I said, “I should take some satisfaction in seeing you immediately leave Homburg.”
“Immediately?”
“To-day—as soon as you can get ready.”
He looked at me, surprised, and little by little he blushed. “There is something I have not told you,” he said; “something that your saying that Madame Blumenthal has no reputation to lose has made me half afraid to tell you.”
“I think I can guess it. Madame Blumenthal has asked you to come and play her game for her again.”
“Not at all!” cried Pickering, with a smile of triumph. “She says that she means to play no more for the present. She has asked me to come and take tea with her this evening.”
“Ah, then,” I said, very gravely, “of course you can’t leave Homburg.”
He answered nothing, but looked askance at me, as if he were expecting me to laugh. “Urge it strongly,” he said in a moment. “Say it’s my duty—that I must.”
I didn’t quite understand him, but, feathering the shaft with a harmless expletive, I told him that unless he followed my advice I would never speak to him again.
He got up, stood before me, and struck the ground with his stick. “Good!” he cried; “I wanted an occasion to break a rule—to leap a barrier. Here it is. I stay!”