“I have been obliged to live in England, if that is what you mean—I am living in Germany at present.”
“And art—die Kunst—that is cruel!”
“You are amusing yourself at my expense, as you have always delighted in doing,” said I, sharply, cut to the quick.
“Aber, Fräulein May! What do you mean?”
“From the very first,” I repeated, the pain I felt giving a keenness to my reproaches. “Did you not deceive me and draw me out for your amusement that day we met at Köln? You found out then, I suppose, what a stupid, silly creature I was, and you have repeated the process now and then, since—much to your own edification and that of Herr Helfen, I do not doubt. Whether it was just, or honorable, or kind, is a secondary consideration. Stupid people are only invented for the amusement of those who are not stupid.”
“How dare you, how dare you talk in that manner?” said he, emphatically, laying his hand upon my shoulder, and somehow compelling my gaze to meet his. “But I know why—I read the answer in those eyes which dare everything, and yet—”
“Not quite everything,” thought I, uncomfortably, as the said eyes sunk beneath his look.
“Fräulein May, will you have the patience to listen while I tell you a little story?”
“Oh, yes!” I responded, readily, as I hailed the prospect of learning something more about him.
“It is now nearly five years since I first came to Elberthal. I had never been in the town before. I came with my boy—may God bless him and keep him!—who was then two years old, and whose mother was dead—for my wife died early.”