"If you'll just peep into my room this afternoon…."
Toni followed directions…. The poor substitute crept down the stairs—caught and powerless. He followed his wife who knelt sobbing beside their bed. She was not to be comforted, nor to be moved. She repulsed him and wept and wept.
Weigand had never dreamed that he was so passionately loved. The more violent was the anger of the deceived wife…. She demanded divorce, instant divorce….
He begged and besought and adjured. In vain.
Next he enlisted the sympathy of his father-in-law who had taken no great interest in the business during these years, but was content if the money he had invested in it paid the necessary six per cent. promptly.
The old man came immediately and made a scene with his recalcitrant daughter…. There was the splendid business and the heavy investment! She was not to think that he would give her one extra penny. He would simply withdraw his capital and let her and the child starve.
Toni did not even deign to reply.
The suit progressed rapidly. The unequivocal testimony of the waitress rendered any protest nugatory.
Three months later Toni put her possessions on a train, took her child, whom the deserted father followed with an inarticulate moan, and travelled to Koenigsberg where she rented a small flat in order to await in quiet the reunion with her beloved.
The latter was trying to work up a practice in a village close to the Russian border. He wrote that things were going slowly and that, hence, he must be at his post night and day. So soon as he had the slightest financial certainty for his wife and child, he would come for them.