LITMIR.BIZ

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"Good? Must one always look for good in everything?—I can see quite well that from your point of view the whole thing must seem absurd. I expect nothing whatever from it, but I'm going to know her, and that's all about it."

      Still in the same position, with folded arms, Madeleine observed him with unblinking eyes.

      "And you won't bear me a grudge, if things go badly?—I mean if you are disappointed, or dissatisfied?"

      He made a gesture of impatience.

      "Yes, but I know Louise, and you don't."

      He had picked up from the writing-table the photograph of a curate, and he stared at it as if he had no thought but to let the mild features stamp themselves on his mind. Madeleine's eyes continued to bore him through. At last, out of a silence, she said slowly: "Of course I can introduce you—it's done with a wave of the hand. But, as your friend, I think it only right to warn you what you must expect. For I can see you don't understand in the least, and are laying up a big disappointment for yourself. However, you shall have your way—if only to show you that I am right."

      "Thanks, Madeleine—thanks awfully."

      They settled down to read Schiller. But Maurice made one slip after another, and she let them pass uncorrected. She was annoyed with herself afresh, for having made too much of the matter, for having blown it up to a fictitious importance, when the wiser way would have been to treat it as of no consequence at all.

      The next afternoon he arrived, with expectation in his face; but not on this day, nor the next, nor the next again, did she bring the subject up between them. On the fourth, however, as he was leaving, she said abruptly: "You must have patience for a little, Maurice. Louise has gone to Dresden."

      "That's why the blinds are down," he exclaimed without thinking, then coloured furiously at his own words, and, to smooth them over, asked: "Why has she gone? For how long?"

      But Madeleine caught him up. "SIEH DA, some one has been playing sentinel!" she said in raillery; and it seemed to him that every fold in his brain was laid bare to her, before she answered: "She has gone for a week or ten days—to visit some friends who are staying there."

      He nodded, and was about to open the door, when she added: "But set your mind at rest—HE is here."

      Maurice looked sharply up; but a minute or two passed before the true meaning of her words broke on him. He coloured again—a mortifying habit he had not outgrown, and one which seemed to affect him more in the presence of Madeleine than of anyone else.

      "It's hardly a thing to joke about."

      "Joke!—who is joking?" she asked, and raised her eyebrows so high that her forehead was filled with wrinkles. "Nothing was further from my thoughts."

      Maurice hesitated, and stood undecided, holding the doorhandle. Then, following an impulse, he turned and sat down again. "Madeleine, tell me—I wouldn't ask anyone but you—what sort of a fellow IS this Schilsky?"

      "What sort of a fellow?" She laughed sarcastically. "To be quite truthful, Maurice, the best fiddler the Con. has turned out for years."

      "Now you're joking again. As if I didn't know that. Everyone says the same."

      "You want his moral character? Well, I'll be equally candid. Or, at least, I'll give you my opinion of him. It's another superlative. Just as I consider him the best violinist, I also hold him to be the greatest scamp in the place—and I've no objection to use a stronger word if you like. I wouldn't take his hand, no, not if he offered it to me. The last time he was in this room, about six months ago, he—well, let us say he borrowed, without a word to me, five or six marks that were lying loose on the writing-table. Yes, it's a fact," she repeated, complacently eyeing Maurice's dismay. "Otherwise?—oh, otherwise, he was born, I think, with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has one piece of luck after another. Zeppelin discovered him ten years ago, on a concert-tour—his father is a smith in Warsaw—and brought him to Leipzig. He was a prodigy, then, and a rich Jewish banker took him up, and paid for his education; and when he washed his hands of him in disgust, Schaefele's wife—Schaefele is head of the HANDELVEREIN, you know—adopted him as a son—some people say as more than a son, for, though she was nearly forty, she was perfectly crazy over him, and behaved as foolishly as any of the dozens of silly girls who have lost their hearts to him."

      "I suppose they are engaged," said Maurice after a pause, speaking out of his own thoughts.

      "Do you?" she asked with mild humour. "I really never asked them.—But this is just another example of his good fortune. When he has worn out every one else's patience, through his dishonest extravagance, he picks up a rich wife, who is not averse to supporting him before marriage."

      Maurice looked at her reproachfully. "I wonder you care to repeat such gossip."

      "It's not gossip, Maurice. Every one knows it. Louise makes no mystery of her doings—doesn't care that much what people say. While as for him—well, it's enough to know it's Schilsky. The thing is an open secret. Listen, now, and I'll tell you how it began—just to let you judge for yourself what kind of a girl you have to deal with in Louise, and how Schilsky behaves when he wants a thing, and whether such a pair think a formal engagement necessary to their happiness. When Louise came here, a year and a half ago, Schilsky was away somewhere with Zeppelin, and didn't get back till a couple of months afterwards. As I said, I knew Louise pretty well at that time; she had got herself into trouble with—but that's neither here nor there. Well, my lord returns—he himself tells how it happened. It was a Thursday evening, and a Radius Commemoration was going on at the Con. He went in late, and stood at the back of the hall. Louise was there, too, just before him, and, from the first minute he saw her, he couldn't take his eyes off her—others who were by say, too, he seemed perfectly fascinated. No one can stare as rudely as Schilsky, and he ended by making her so uncomfortable that she couldn't bear it any longer, and went out of the hall. He after her, and it didn't take him an hour to find out all about her. The next evening, at an ABEND, they were both there again it was just like Louise to go!—and the same thing was repeated. She left again before it was over, he followed, and this time found her in one of the side corridors; and there—mind you, without a single word having passed between them!—he took her in his arms and kissed her, kissed her soundly, half a dozen times—though they had never once spoken to each other: he boasts of it to this day. That same evening——"

      "Don't, Madeleine—please, don't say any more! I don't care to hear it," broke in Maurice. He had flushed to the roots of his hair, at some points of resemblance to his own case, then grown pale again, and now he waved his arm meaninglessly in the air. "He is a scoundrel, a—a——" But he recognised that he could not condemn one without the other, and stopped short.

      "My dear boy, if I don't tell you, other people will. And at least you know I mean well by you. Besides," she went on, not without a touch of malice as she eyed him sitting there, spoiling the leaves of a book. "Besides, I may as well show you, how you have to treat Louise, if you want to make an impression on her. You call him a scoundrel, but what of her? Believe me, Maurice," she said more seriously, "Louise is not a whit too good for him; they were made for each other. And of course he will marry her eventually, for the sake of her, money "—here she paused and looked deliberately at him—"if not for her own."

      This time there was no mistaking the meaning of her words.

      "Madeleine!"

      He rose from his seat with such force that the table tilted.

      But Madeleine did not falter. "I told you already, you know, that Louise doesn't care what is said about her. As soon as this unfortunate affair began, she threw up the rooms she was in at the time, and moved nearer the TALSTRASSE—where he lives. Rumour has it also that she provided herself with an accommodating landlady, who can be blind and deaf when necessary."

      "How CAN you repeat such atrocious scandal?"

      He stared at her, in incredulous dismay. Her words were so many arrows, the points of which remained sticking in him.

      She shrugged her shoulders. "Your

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