"Ach, vell, I guess ve von't do nussing about him."
"You won't be lettin' him go?"
"Vhy not? Dere's none to swear fur me and a hun'red to swear fur him. I kind of belief Schleger gif me de new blace as brice fur keepin' quiet, so dere's nussing to gain und efferysing to lose."
At first she would not hear of it, and she used her opposition to this dropping of the charge against Mirka as if it were an argument properly formed to oppose the next scheme that he proposed to her. But he had found her in her moment of weakness when he had come to her in his hour of strength renewed.
"No," he said firmly, "und dis evenin' ve'll be married. I got der license; I stopped at der church; Father Kelly's vatin'—dis evenin', Katie."
The world was slipping from beneath her feet. She did not answer.
"In two year'," he went on, "one part of dot store ve'll own. Katie, it's our chance; und in de meanvhile, if der Herr Gott sends der babies—und pray Gott he vill—dey von't at least do no vorse as ve hof done."
He drew her tighter, but she twisted in his arms and got free, so that he held only one of her firm hands. They stood there face to face, between them the unfathomable chasm of sex, their feet trembling at its brink.
Across the areaway the straight shafts of the setting sun caught the dirty little window-panes of the nearby squalid rooms and turned them to a shining glory. The rays were reflected into Katie's own room; they burnished the cheap paper into cloth of gold, they touched the floor and gilded it, they made of the rickety table a thing of splendor, and of the worn chairs fairy thrones. Hermann's blonde head was crowned with a halo, and as he looked at the girl, against the background of those yellow windows like a Madonna against the background that the Etruscan painters loved, he saw in her eyes what he had never seen before.
In the momentary struggle the coils of her black hair had loosened and fallen below her waist. They framed a face no longer strong with restraint, handsome from the flush of battle against the world, no longer set and self-reliant, but a face through which shone the light of the life-force, the motive-power of the universe, a beautiful face, white, frightened, wonderful.