He vehemently denied that he was trying to make up his mind. The girl was nothing to him. She was an empty-headed doll. But his indignation was not genuine, and his eyes were fixed on space. For "the doll" had five millions.
And the next afternoon he brought her photograph. Without taking it out of the soft paper in which it was wrapped, she laid it aside. Merely touching it made her hands tremble. She was afraid that her first glance at it would betray her inward agitation.
"Aren't you going to look at it?" he asked, a little disappointed.
"There will be time enough when you are gone," she replied, and congratulated herself on her smile of indifference.
When he was in the hall she called after him:
"To-morrow I will tell you what I think, you know."
Then she rushed back to the photograph, not omitting, however, to wave from the window to Richard, a duty which had become a habit with her.
"And now ... now the photograph!" Oh, what a good, calm, rather delicate-looking girlish face it was, looking at her with sorrowful though nice eyes. The fair plaits of hair, as thick as a man's wrist, were twisted round the back of the head in country fashion; a timid smile played on the full-lipped mouth. It was the face of a lovable child. Happiness would make it bloom like a spray of lilac put in water. It indicated a nature reposeful, not too gifted, housewifely, and clinging. Exactly what he wanted.
She placed the picture on a chair and threw herself on her knees before it. She prayed and wrestled with herself, but in the end she could not help saying to herself again, "Exactly what he wants; what he would never find a second time if he hunted all the world over."
And she had five millions! If she did not give him up now she would indeed be one of those harpies, to whom, according to Frau Jula, she and her kind were likened in respectable family circles.