Just then the door opened.
"Well, Ossi?" Pistasch called.--"Ah!"--perceiving the Conte--"beg pardon for intruding."
"Not at all," said Oswald decisively, without looking at Capriani, "we have finished."
The Conte bowed and withdrew. But he turned in the doorway and said, "Might I beg you, Herr Count, to carry my remembrances to your honoured mother. For although she does not know Conte Capriani--she will surely be able to recall Doctor Alfred Stein." Whereupon he disappeared.
Oswald went to a marble table whereon stood a caraffe of water, and as he took it up he met his own glance in the mirror hanging above the table. A shudder crept icily over him. He poured out a glass of water, and drank it at a draught.
"What is the matter?" asked Pistasch.
"Nothing," Oswald replied slowly, and almost dreamily. "Talking with that--that scoundrel has agitated me. I feel as if I had just got rid of some loathsome reptile."
CHAPTER V.
"Is smoking allowed, I should like to know?"
Three times Pistasch made this impertinent little remark as he gazed about him in 'The Temple of National Art.' It was a temporary temple, neither unsuitable, nor wanting in taste, but built in the rapid, superficial manner of a circus, constructed over night as it were, and it was now filled to overflowing with Bohemian lovers of music.