“Herr Kreisler, I think I have waited long enough. Will you please leave my room?”
He stirred gently like a heavy flower in a light current of wind. But he turned towards her and said:
“I don’t know what to say to you.—Is there nothing I can do to make up to you—? I shall go and shoot myself, Fräulein! I cannot stand the thought of what I have done!”
This was perplexing and made her angry. He appeared to possess a genius for making things complicated and more difficult.
“All I ask you is to go. That will be the best thing you can do for me.”
“Fräulein, I can’t!—Do listen to me for a moment.—I cannot even refer to what has happened without insult in the mere direction of the words.—I am mad—mad—mad!—You have showed yourself a good friend to me. And that is the way I repay you! Were you anywhere but here and unprotected, there would be a man to answer to for this outrage. I will be that man myself!—I come to ask your permission!”
His appetite, waking afresh, was the only directing thing in Kreisler at present. With hypocritical—almost palpably mock—eloquence, he was serving that.
This talk alone would have been of little use or consequence to Bertha. But coming in conjunction with her new independent reinforcement, which alone would have been enough to shape things to a specious ending, it was in a way effective.—The new contradiction and struggle in her mind was between her natural aversion for Kreisler now and her feeling of clemency towards him in his now beautiful usefulness.
She was very dignified, wise, and clement when she answered: