He did not speak connectedly; Imma Spoelmann interrupted him with questions and helped him on with questions. She listened carefully, and asked for explanations of what she did not at once understand. Dressed in her loose-sleeved, red-silk dress with the broad embroidery on the yoke, an old-Spanish chain round her child-like neck, she sat leaning on one elbow over the table, her chin buried in her ringless hand, and listened with her whole soul, while her big, dark eyes scrutinized the Prince's face.
But while he spoke, in answer to Imma's verbal and ocular questions, worked at his subject, grew excited and entirely absorbed in it, Countess Löwenjoul no longer felt herself restricted to sober clarity by his presence, but let herself go and indulged in the luxury of drivelling. All the misery, she explained with dignified gestures, even the bad harvest, the burden of debt and the rise in the price of gold, were due to the shameless women who swarmed everywhere, and unfortunately had discovered the way through the floor, as last night the wife of a sergeant from the Grenadiers' Barracks had scratched her breasts and pommelled her in a horrible way. Then she alluded to her Schlosses in Burgundy, through the roofs of which the rain came, and went so far as to relate that she had gone as lieutenant in an expedition against the Turks, on which she had been the only one who “had not lost her head.” Imma Spoelmann and Klaus Heinrich threw her a kind word now and then, readily promised to call her Frau Meier in future, and for the rest took no notice of her.
The cheeks of both were burning when Klaus Heinrich had said all he knew—even on Miss Spoelmann's usually pearl-white cheeks there was a shade of red to be seen. They then stopped, the Countess too kept quiet, with her little head inclined on her shoulder, and staring into vacancy. Klaus Heinrich played on the white and sharply folded table-cloth with the stem of an orchid, which had stood in a glass by his plate; but as soon as he raised his head he met Imma Spoelmann's large, flaming eyes, which spoke a message of secret entreaty across the table, a darkly eloquent language.
“It has been nice to-day,” she said in her broken voice, when she said good-bye this time, and he felt her small, soft hands clasp his with a firm squeeze. “Next time your Highness honours our unworthy house, do bring me one or two of those excellent books you have bought.” She could not entirely resist mocking him, but she asked him for his finance books, and he brought them to her.
He brought her two of them, which he considered the most informative and comprehensive; he brought them some days later in his carriage through the damp Town Garden, and she thanked him for doing so. As soon as tea was over, they retired to a corner of the room, and there, while the Countess absently continued sitting at the tea-table, they began their common studies in throne-like chairs at a gilt table, bending over the first page of a manual called “The Science of Finance.” They even read the headings to the sections, each reading a sentence softly in turn; for Imma Spoelmann insisted on going methodically to work and beginning at the beginning.
Klaus Heinrich, well prepared as he was, acted as guide through the paragraphs, and nobody could have followed more smartly or clear-headedly than Imma.
“It's quite easy!” she said and looked up with a laugh. “I'm surprised that it is at bottom so simple. Algebra is much harder, Prince.”
But as they went so deeply into things, they did not get far in one afternoon, so made a mark in the book at which to start next time.
And so they went on, and the Prince's visits to Delphinenort were devoted to dull realities. Whenever Mr. Spoelmann did not come to tea, or, with Dr. Watercloose, left them, after eating his rusk, Imma and Klaus Heinrich sat down at the gilt table with their books, and plunged heads together into the Science of Economics. But as they progressed, they compared what they learned with the reality, applied what they read to the circumstances of the country, as Klaus Heinrich conceived them to be, and made their studies profitable, though it happened not seldom that their investigations were interrupted by considerations of a personal kind.
“It seems, then,” said Imma, “that the issue may be effected either directly or indirectly—yes, that's obvious. Either the State turns directly to the capitalists and opens a subscription list … Your hand is twice as broad as mine,” she said; “look, Prince.”