"What am I doing here?" he stammered, looking round with a wild glance. "Why have I come?"
Five, ten minutes passed, and she did not reappear. He stared at the door through which she had vanished. It was certain that she had another scheme on hand. Whatever it might be, she would find him pliable as putty. How tired he was! He dragged himself to the chair on which she had been sitting before he came in. He buried his head in his hands and brooded absently over the papers and letters which were strewn about the writing-table.
"My Dear Mamma,
"Nearly all the boys are going home for Christmas. Eric Froben will stay here, because he has no mamma, and Fritz Lawsky because he has only a guardian, and If., who comes from India, and is as yellow as a Gruyére cheese. All the other boys are going home. Why mayn't I come home? Some have a longer journey to their homes than I have. Oh, I do want to come home so badly. I cry every morning and every night, because I mayn't come home----"
He had read so far mechanically, hardly conscious that he was not reading the advertisement column of a newspaper, when suddenly he awoke to the reality. He took the sheet in both hands, and turned it over and over, while a sound like a faint whine came from his throat. With fixed, fierce eyes, he read on.
He read of the distribution of presents beneath the Christmas tree; of the bell which would be rung when the happy hour came; what If., the boy from India, was to get. He did not skip one of the childish wishes, from the lead soldiers to the pocket inkstand and the sweets. He half rejoiced that each item stabbed his breast like a sharp sword. He seemed to hear a child's voice crying out of the distance and the night, "Uncle Leo! Uncle Leo!"
He sprang to his feet. His mind was made up. Lifting his cloak from the floor, he threw it over his shoulder, and tapped and tested the double trigger of the weapon that was ready for coming events in the breast-pocket. And so he waited, armed and prepared. Then, noiselessly, the door opened. A half-naked figure stood on the threshold with the rosy light of the lamp cast full upon it. The softly rounded arms were lifted longingly in an arch above her head, displaying her full breasts. The white drapery fell from her plump shoulders in straight, unbroken folds to her pink, bare feet. She stood there like the very goddess of love, although there was nothing divine truly about the small, round face, with its tip-tilted nose and sensuous lips.
He looked at her, and she seemed the incarnation of the sin to which he had been an easy victim from the first--the smiling, flattering sin that meant no harm yet stalked on its complacent way over all hindrances, even over the body of the dead. Wrath and disgust convulsed him. It was for this, then, that he had come, for this!
She, on her side, expected that he would rush at her with an exclamation of delight, and, as Ulrich was not yet asleep, she gave a warning "Hush!" Then she let the door fall back in the lock with experienced caution.
Still he did not move, and, misinterpreting his stupefaction, she determined to give him courage. She glided across the room, and, nestling against him, she whispered, half roguishly, half humbly--"There! Now you have come into your property." Her bare arms encircled his neck. But he pushed her away from him with swift decision.