“For God’s sake, Eugen, speak! Deny it! You can deny it—you must deny it!”
He looked up at last, with a tortured gaze; looked at Karl, at me, at the faces around. His lips quivered faintly. Silence yet. And yet it seemed to me that it was loathing that was most strongly depicted upon his face; the loathing of a man who is obliged to intimately examine some unclean thing; the loathing of one who has to drag a corpse about with him.
“Say it is a lie, Eugen!” Karl conjured him.
At last came speech; at last an answer; slow, low, tremulous, impossible to mistake or explain away.
“No; I can not say so.”
His head—that proud, high head—dropped again, as if he would fain avoid our eyes.
Karl raised himself. His face too was white. As if stricken with some mortal blow, he walked away. Some people who had surrounded us turned aside and began to whisper to each other behind their music. Von Francius looked impenetrable; May Wedderburn white. The noise and bustle was still going on all around, louder than before. The drama had not taken three minutes to play out.
Eugen rested his brow for a moment on his hand, and his face was hidden. He looked up, rising as he did so, and his eyes met those of Miss Wedderburn. So sad, so deep a gaze I never saw. It was a sign to me, a significant one, that he could meet her eyes.
Then he turned to von Francius.
“Herr Direktor, Helfen will take my place, nicht wahr?”