He stopped at a house close to the road, and stood still, his teeth bared in a grin.
“But I bore you,” he said. His cigar, flung down, sputtered forth its sparks on the road in front of Harz. “I live here—good-morning! You are a man for work—your honour is your Art! I know, and you are young! The man who loves flesh better than his honour is a low type—I am a low type. I! Mario Sarelli, a low type! I love flesh better than my honour!”
He remained swaying at the gate with the grin fixed on his face; then staggered up the steps, and banged the door. But before Harz had walked on, he again appeared, beckoning, in the doorway. Obeying an impulse, Harz went in.
“We will make a night of it,” said Sarelli; “wine, brandy, kummel? I am virtuous—kummel it must be for me!”
He sat down at a piano, and began to touch the keys. Harz poured out some wine. Sarelli nodded.
“You begin with that? Allegro—piu—presto!
“Wine—brandy—kummel!” he quickened the time of the tune: “it is not too long a passage, and this”—he took his hands off the keys—“comes after.”
Harz smiled.
“Some men do not kill themselves,” he said.
Sarelli, who was bending and swaying to the music of a tarantella, broke off, and letting his eyes rest on the painter, began playing Schumann's Kinderscenen. Harz leaped to his feet.