“You seem unwilling.”
“I am not: but I should have supposed that my unwillingness—if I had been unwilling—would have been an inducement to you to ask me.”
“Herrgott! Why?”
“Since you took a vow to be disagreeable to me, and to make me hate you.”
A slight flush passed rapidly over his face, as he paused for a moment and bit his lips.
“Mein Fräulein—that night I was in bitterness of spirit—I hardly knew what I was saying—”
“I will accompany you,” I interrupted him, my heart beating. “Only how can I begin unless you play, or tell me what you want to play?”
“True,” said he, laughing, and yet not moving from his place beside the piano, upon which he had leaned his elbow, and across which he now looked at me with the self-same kindly, genial glance as that he had cast upon me across the little table at the Köln restaurant. And yet not the self-same glance, but another, which I would not have exchanged for that first one.
If he would but begin to play I felt that I should not mind so much; but when he sat there and looked at me and half smiled, without beginning anything practical, I felt the situation at least trying.
He raised his eyes as the door opened at the other end of the saal.