"Can you not be silent before him?" Scirocco attacks him.
"No," replies Pistasch, lazily; "I have never accustomed myself to keeping secrets; respectable people have no secrets. Besides, Lanzberg begins to be fairly unbearable, his manner has become so unsteady, so nervous; he no longer finishes a single sentence correctly, has not an opinion of his own, and crouches like a whipped dog. He makes me nervous."
"Are you of stone, have you no heart?" cries Scirocco.
"I am under no obligations to Lanzberg," grumbles Pistasch, very defiantly. "I----"
"Yes, you would be ashamed to protect him a little," says Scirocco, cuttingly. "Recently when L---- remarked to you that you seemed to associate with Lanzberg a great deal, you replied, 'Yes, he has a pretty wife!' Really, Pistasch, at that moment, in my eyes, you stood morally lower than poor Felix."
"Really," Pistasch imitates his cousin's tragic tone, "I think I have blundered into an educational institution! Lectures and nothing but lectures! First you, then Mimi. How you can permit yourself to compare me with a man like a 'certain Lanzberg.'"
"Do not talk yourself into useless heat, my dear fellow," says Scirocco, laying his hand on his shoulder. "At present I feel just as inclined to fight a duel with you as I should to cut my own brother's throat. Consider a little and you will come to the conclusion that you are in the wrong."
Scirocco leaves the billiard-room. For a while Pistasch pushes the ivory balls over the green table with furious zeal, then he throws himself irritably into an arm-chair.
Yes, he feels plainly that he is in the wrong, but he cannot resolve to change his behavior to Felix. He might at least avoid him, but just now, because and in defiance of Linda's prudishness, he does not wish to. His prejudice against Linda was nothing but arrogant affectation, but his antipathy to Felix is sincere; it almost resembles that aversion which many egoistic men feel for one mortally ill.
Rhoeden spends an hour in teaching the Countess--a totally unmusical woman who does not know a note, has no feeling for rhythm, but possesses a good voice and a great desire to shine in that direction--twelve bars of a new Italian romance of Tosti.