“How splendid. Wunderbar! I admire you!”
“Your admiration is not asked for!”
“It leaps up involuntarily! Prosit! But I did not mean, Herr Kreisler, that my desire to interfere, had such desire existed, would have been tolerated. Oh, no! I meant that no such desire existing, we had no cause for quarrel. Prosit!”
Tarr again raised his glass expectantly and coaxingly, peering steadily at the German. He said, “Prosit” as he would have said, “Peep-oh!”
“Pros’t!” Kreisler answered with alarming suddenness, and an alarming diabolical smile. “Prosit!” with finality. He put his glass down. “That is all right. I have no desire,” he wiped and struck up his moustaches, “to quarrel with anybody. I wish to be left alone. That is all.”
“To be left alone to enjoy your friendship with Bertha—that is your meaning? Am I not right? I see.”
“That is my business. I wish to be left alone.”
“Of course it’s your business, my dear chap. Have another drink!” He called the garçon. Kreisler agreed to another drink.
Why was this Englishman sitting there and talking to him? It was in the German style and yet it wasn’t. Was Kreisler to be shifted, was he meant to go? Had the task of doing this been put on Bertha’s shoulders? Had Tarr come there to ask him, or in the hope that he would volunteer a promise, never to see Bertha again?
On the other hand, was he being approached by Tarr in the capacity of an old friend of Bertha’s, or in her interests or at her instigation?