"But how did you know that I would come on this train?" he asked gently; and, clasping his hands about his knees, he stared at Annie with a peculiar concentrated interest.
She looked up at him with a faint suggestion of reproach. "I didn't know; though I was prepared to wait until you did come," she said. "The fact is, Alexander," she continued, "what Father has done is shameful. It isn't right, and as he's my father, it's only just—well, I hope you won't take it wrong—but I have a little money which was left me by an aunt to do with just as I choose. I've got it all here, see, in this bag," and she opened the drawstrings. "It isn't much, only a thousand dollars, but I thought perhaps—perhaps you would take it until you could invent something."
To save his life Emil could not prevent the joy that flashed in his eyes. To be free to invent, even for a brief space! It was an unexpected glimpse straight into Paradise. He peeped in—just one peep; then greatly to his credit, considering how little of an ordinary man he was and how much of a genius,—who resembles a bird of heaven in his freedom from a sense of obligations,—he shut the door on the Paradise forcibly.
He bent forward and took both of Annie's hands in his. Slowly, very slowly, he shook his head.
"Oh, please!" she supplicated, and her face puckered. As she looked straight into his eyes with her own, he saw them suffuse with tears. The sight of these tears perturbed him so that he was no longer master of himself.
"But see here, I can't!" he said, and the blood darkened his cheek, "I can't take money from you; you're mad!"
"Oh, if that's the way you consider me—just like a stranger!" And Annie turned sharply aside and buried her face in a scrap of a handkerchief from which ascended an odour of subtle feminine appeal.
In their excitement both had risen and Emil spread his massive bulk to screen her distress from the few people who were seated in the waiting-room. Never had he been driven into such a net by his own emotions.
"See here," he cried, bending over her and breathing the words into her ear, "I consider you my only friend"; and his ardour was augmented by his remembrance of Rachel.
This was devotion, this!