“It is very expensive,” Schinkel went on, sociably.
“Yes, and I have no money, but it’s done. Was there no one else in the house while the woman was away?” the Princess asked.
“No, the people are out; she only has single men. I asked her that. She has a daughter, but the daughter has gone to see her cousin. The mother went only a hundred yards, round the corner there, to buy a pennyworth of milk. She locked this door, and put the key in her pocket; she stayed at the grocer’s, where she got the milk, to have a little conversation with a friend she met there. You know ladies always stop like that—nicht wahr? It was half an hour later that I came. She told me that he was at home, and I went up to his room. I got no sound, as I have told you. I came down and spoke to her again, and she told me what I say.”
“Then you determined to wait, as I have done,” said the Princess.
“Oh, yes, I want to see him.”
“So do I, very much.” The Princess said nothing more, for a minute; then she added, “I think we want to see him for the same reason.”
“Das kann sein—das kann sein.”
The two continued to stand there in the brown evening, and they had some further conversation, of a desultory and irrelevant kind. At the end of ten minutes the Princess broke out, in a low tone, laying her hand on her companion’s arm, “Mr Schinkel, this won’t do. I’m intolerably nervous.”
“Yes, that is the nature of ladies,” the German replied, imperturbably.
“I wish to go up to his room,” the Princess pursued. “You will be so good as to show me where it is.”