"Ah!" said Lili Reinhart, "I had no chance. I had gone to Cologne for a few days just then! When I came back—Zu spät" (too late).—She stopped to scold her maid, who had brought her lemon too late for her tea.
And she added sententiously with the solemnity which the true German brings naturally to the performance of the familiar duties of daily life:
"Too late, as one so often is in life!"
(It was not clear whether she meant the lemon or her interrupted story.)
She went on:
"When I returned I found a line from her thanking me for all I had done and telling me that she was going; she was returning to Paris; she gave no address."
"And she did not write again?"
"Not again."
Once more Christophe saw her sad face disappear into the night; once more he saw her eyes for a moment just as he had seen them for the last time looking at him through the carriage window.
The enigma of France was once more set before him more insistently than ever. Christophe never tired of asking Frau Reinhart about the country which she pretended to know so well. And Frau Reinhart who had never been there was not reluctant to tell him about it. Reinhart, a good patriot, full of prejudices against France, which he knew better than his wife, sometimes used to qualify her remarks when her enthusiasm went too far; but she would repeat her assertions only the more vigorously, and Christophe, knowing nothing at all about it, backed her up confidently.