"Indeed?"
"Now you despise me, don't you? Say 'Yes,' say 'Yes' quite calmly. It doesn't matter."
"Who was it?"
"I'll tell you. We ought to have the courage of our sins, even if it costs us our head, oughtn't we? He was a commissionaire in a music-shop."
"Great Scot!"
"Dreadful, wasn't it? He had long fair curly hair--very long. And when we went for walks of an afternoon, Frau Lüttgen in front, he used to stand at the door and make eyes at me. And I always got red, like the donkey I was."
"Now listen, child, and I'll give you some good counsel," he said, laughing. "Not only must we have the courage of our sins, as you so wisely remarked just now, but we must do penance for them."
"You mean ... because I said.... But first hear how he behaved. I had two friends, called Käthi Greiffenstein and Daisy Bellepool, both Americans, and that is why I hate America."
"The whole country, from top to bottom?"
"Yes, and my heart felt lighter when you had cleared out of it. Well, I made those two girls the confidantes of my secrets, and one day--what do you think happened? Novels were found under Käthi Greiffenstein's mattress: 'The Broken Heart,' 'The Marble Bride,' and 'Hussar's Love,' and I don't know what else. There was an awful row. Frau Lüttgen held a court-martial. Käthi denied everything. She knew nothing about the books. Some one else must have put them in her bed. Another search was made, and behold in Daisy Bellepool's bed the same discovery! But besides the books there was a packet of letters too--love-letters. To whom? Why, to me, signed Bruno Steifel.... Of course I didn't know any one called Bruno Steifel, but who believed me when I said so? Not a soul! The letters were answers to those I was supposed to have written to him, in which I had asked him to get me novels from the lending library, ... as a knightly service and testimony of his love. Wasn't it awful?"