They were on their way to the office of the Mayor when abruptly Emil ordered the driver of the cab to halt, while he questioned Annie anxiously. Did she think it wise—what they were doing? Had she sufficiently considered?
For answer she put her hands on his shoulders and drew his head to her breast so vehemently that he had difficulty in breathing.
After that he spoke no more until their destination was reached, but stared out intently at the people, who passed in carriages and on foot, with a smile in which there was an uneasy melancholy.
A week later any scales he might have had over his eyes had vanished. Memories of Rachel obtruded themselves and he turned from them with stifled sighs. He was ill at ease and his conscience troubled him. He was penitent before Annie and redoubled his caresses. But she was not essential to him, and as time went on he buried himself in his work.
In the choice of the apartment the young girl betrayed the fundamental practicality of her nature. The rooms were inexpensive and at the same time attractive and homelike; but at the end of a month, Emil discovered a sky-lighted loft in the lower part of the city into which he wished to move. The place would be a more convenient one for his work. Thither Ding Dong, in the capacity of assistant to the inventor, accompanied the pair. With him he brought the monkey Lulu.
Largely because of his affection for her, though partly because of his hatred of his former employers on whom he thought absurdly to revenge himself, Ding Dong had stolen the little creature from the factory. He made her a cage, which she seldom occupied, her favourite station being the sill of the window where Emil had his work-bench. There she crouched among the tools with her little, worried, half-human face turned to the inventor, and now and then she reached out a black hand and laid it questioningly on his sleeve. Seeing his pet thus safely cared for, Ding Dong was free to spend himself in the service of his new master. He ran errands, bustled about in a flurry of often useless activity, and even fitted up the tiny room set apart for Annie. At first the young wife agreed to everything.
Crushed by a stormy interview with her father in which he had forbidden her to cross his threshold, in the early days of her marriage Annie accepted the privations of her new mode of life without a word. She thought to endear herself to her husband. But Emil, far from sympathizing with her position, was honestly unconscious of it. Carried away by the interest of his work, he forgot her. When made aware of her, bitterness filled his soul. He felt himself guilty toward her. Never the less, her tears, her letters to her mother, which he was forced to read and approve, her constant efforts on his behalf with her father, above all, her insistence that he go back and accept the situation of expert examiner, which was finally grudgingly offered him,—all this irked him in the extreme.
"Go back there—after the way he's treated me?" he cried,—"you ask it?"
"I thought—I thought—" murmured Annie, "we are very miserable."
"Well?" His significant tone seemed to imply, "Who's to blame?"