“Und she neffer asks yet for Santy—hein?”
“No,” answered the nurse.
“So,” he murmured, turning away his head. He waited a moment. Then he asked:
“You speak somedimes off me?”
“Yes,” answered the nurse.
He did not press her further, and so she was saved from telling him that at the mere mention of his name the maid shrank away in terror.
Schriftman waited until Gretzel’s temperature was normal—until for the first time in her life she slept soundly through the night. He himself had been sleeping less than one hour in the twenty-four. His clothes hung pitifully loose about his once firm body. As Burrell said, he was proving the truth of his own epigram: his love was costing him much—too much.
There came a day when Schriftman could stand it no longer; when he could fight himself no longer. He stole to the door of Gretzel’s room while she was at breakfast. The nurse had seen him coming and was running down the corridor as fast as she could run. She heard the maid’s shriek of terror and forced both hands over her ears.
Schriftman clutched at his heart. He grew ten years older in a minute as he saw the girl shrink away. She did not cry out again, but she kept her head hidden beneath the bedclothes.
“Kleine mädchen,” he trembled. “Don’t do dot. See, I vill go! I vill go und neffer again vill I scare you!”