suggest that a cheese sandwich follow the oyster stew? I am famished, and this place looks as though it might make a speciality of cheese sandwiches.”
“By all means a cheese sandwich. Und was noch? That fresh air it has given you an appetite, nicht wahr?” But there was no sign of a smile on his face, nor was the kindly twinkle of amusement to be seen in his eyes—that twinkle that I had learned to look for.
“Smile for the lady,” I mockingly begged when we had been served. “You’ve been owlish all the afternoon. Here, try a cheese sandwich. Now, why do you suppose that this mustard tastes so much better than the kind one gets at home?”
Von Gerhard had been smoking a cigarette, the first that I had ever seen in his fingers. Now he tossed it into the fireplace that yawned black and empty at one side of the room. He swept aside the plates and glasses that stood before him, leaned his arms on the table and deliberately stared at me.
“I sail for Europe in June, to be gone a year— probably more,” he said.
“Sail!” I echoed, idiotically; and began blindly to dab clots of mustard on that ridiculous sandwich.
“I go to study and work with Gluck. It is the opportunity of a lifetime. Gluck is to the world of medicine what Edison is to the world of electricity. He is a wizard, a man inspired. You should see him—a little, bent, grizzled, shabby old man who looks at you, and sees you not. It is a wonderful opportunity, a—”
The mustard and the sandwich and the table and Von Gerhard’s face were very indistinct and uncertain to my eyes, but I managed to say: “So glad—congratulate you— very happy—no doubt fortunate—”
Two strong hands grasped my wrists. “Drop that absurd mustard spoon and sandwich. Na, I did not mean to frighten you, Dawn. How your hands tremble. So, look at me. You would like Vienna, Kindchen. You would like the gayety, and the brightness of it, and the music, and the pretty women, and the incomparable gowns. Your sense of humor would discern the hollowness beneath all the pomp and ceremony and rigid lines of caste, and military glory; and your writer’s instinct would revel in the splendor, and color and romance and intrigue.”
I shrugged my shoulders in assumed indifference. “Can’t you convey all this to me without grasping my wrists like a villain in a melodrama? Besides, it isn’t very generous or thoughtful of you to tell me all this, knowing that it is not for me. Vienna for you, and Milwaukee and cheese sandwiches for me. Please pass the mustard.”
But the hold on my wrists grew firmer. Von Gerhard’s eyes were steady as they gazed into mine. “Dawn, Vienna, and the whole world is waiting for you, if you will but take it. Vienna—and happiness—with me—”
I wrenched my wrists free with a dreadful effort and rose, sick, bewildered, stunned. My world—my refuge of truth, and honor, and safety and sanity that had lain in Ernst von Gerhard’s great, steady hands, was slipping away from me. I think the horror that I felt within must have leaped to my eyes, for in an instant Von Gerhard was beside me, steadying me with his clear blue eyes. He did not touch the tips of my fingers as he stood there very near me. From the look of pain on his face I knew that I had misunderstood, somehow.
“Kleine, I see that you know me not,” he said, in German, and the saying it was as tender as is a mother when she reproves a child that she loves. “This fight against the world, those years of unhappiness and misery, they have made you suspicious and lacking in trust, is it not so? You do not yet know the perfect love that casts out all doubt. Dawn, I ask you in the name of all that is reasoning, and for the sake of your happiness and mine, to divorce this man Peter Orme—this man who for almost ten years has not been your husband—who never can be your husband. I ask you to do something which will bring suffering to no one, and which will mean happiness to many. Let me make you happy—you were born to be happy—you who can laugh like a girl in spite of your woman’s sorrows—”
But I sank into a chair and hid my face in my hands so that I might be spared the beauty and the tenderness of his eyes. I tried to think of all the sane and commonplace things in life. Somewhere in my inner consciousness a cool little voice was saying, over and over again:
“Now, Dawn, careful! You’ve come to the crossroads at last. Right or left? Choose! Now, Dawn, careful!” and the rest of it all over again.
When I lifted my face from my hands at last it was to meet the tenderness of Von Gerhard’s gaze with scarcely a tremor.
“You ought to know,” I said, very slowly and evenly, “that a divorce, under these circumstances, is almost impossible, even if I wished to do what you suggest. There are certain state laws—”
An exclamation of impatience broke from him. “Laws! In some states, yes. In others, no. It is a mere technicality—a trifle! There is about it a bit of that which you call red tape. It amounts to nothing—to that!” He snapped his fingers. “A few months’ residence in another state, perhaps. These American laws, they are made to break.”
“Yes; you are quite right,” I said, and I knew in my heart that the cool, insistent little voice within had not spoken in vain. “But there are other laws—laws of honor and decency, and right living and conscience—that cannot be broken with such ease. I cannot marry you. I have a husband.”
“You can call that unfortunate wretch your husband! He does not know that he has a wife. He will not know that he has lost a wife. Come, Dawn—small one—be not so foolish. You do not know how happy I will make you. You have never seen me except when I was tortured with doubts and fears. You do not know what our life will be together. There shall be everything to make you forget—everything that thought and love and money can give you. The man there in the barred room—”
At that I took his dear hands in mine and held them close as I miserably tried to make him hear what that small, still voice had told me.
“There! That is it! If he were free, if he were able to stand before men that his actions might be judged fairly and justly, I should not hesitate for one single, precious moment. If he could fight for his rights, or relinquish them, as he saw fit, then this thing would not be so monstrous. But, Ernst, can’t you see? He is there, alone, in that dreadful place, quite helpless, quite incapable, quite at our mercy. I should as soon think of hurting a little child, or snatching the pennies from a blind man’s cup. The thing is inhuman! It is monstrous! No state laws, no red tape can dissolve such a union.”
“You still care for him!”
“Ernst!”
His face was very white with the pallor of repressed emotion, and his eyes were like the blue flame that one sees flashing above a bed of white-hot coals.
“You do care for him still. But yes! You can stand there, quite cool—but quite—and tell me that you would not
