Markheim bought his opinions, and was attentive to those which cost the most....
Morning drew a napkin the size of a doll’s handkerchief from a pile. A plate of eggs and bacon rung, as if hitting a bull’s-eye upon the white marble before him. He was still wondering what Markheim was afraid of. He didn’t like the feel of it. The Lowenkampf of Duke Fallows’ had crept into the play—Lowenkampf, whose heart was pulled across the world by the mother and child. How they had broken his concentration on the eve of the great battle.
At the time, he had seen the tragic sentimentalist as one caught in a master weakness, but all that was gone. Lowenkampf still moved white in his fancy, while the other generals, even Mergenthaler, had become like the dim mounds in his little woodland.... And what a dramatic thing, to have a woman and a child breaking in upon the poised force of a vast Russian army. It was like Judith going down into the valley-camp of the Assyrians and smiting the neck of Holofernes with his own fauchion. Morning’s mind trailed away in the fascination of Fallows, and in the dimension he had been unable to grasp in those black hours of blood.... So many things were different after this summer alone; yet he had never seemed quite rested, neither in mind nor body.... He had been all but unkillable like the sorrel Eve before that journey from Liaoyang to New York. Now, even after the ease and moral healing of the summer alone, his wound was unhealed....
The telephone-miss in Markheim’s reception-room was very busy when he called the next afternoon.... Something about her reminded him of Mio Amigo. She was a good deal sharper. Was it the brass handle?... To hear her, one would think that she had come in late, and that New York needed scolding, even spanking, which exigencies of time and space deferred for the present. Her words were like the ‘spat, spat, spat,’ of a spanking.... She was like an angry robin, too, at one end of a worm. She bent and pulled, but the worm had a strangle-hold on a stone. It gave, but would not break.... Morning saw the manuscript at this point on her side-table, and the fun of the thing was done.... She looked up, trailed a soft arpeggio on the lower-right of her board, grasped the manuscript firmly, and shoved it to him.
“Mr. Morning to see Mr. Markheim,” he said.
“Mr. Markheim is——”
But the husky voice of the producer just now reached them from within.
“Busy——” she finished with a cough.... New York was at it again. Stuyvesant especially had a devil, and Bryant was the last word.
“... You can’t see Mr. Markheim. This is your message——”
“Oh, it really isn’t. This is just an incident. I hesitate to trouble you, but I must see Mr. Markheim.”