quite alone.” His eyes, as they looked down on me from his great height had that in them which sent the blood rushing and tingling to my fingertips. I brought my hand to my head in stiff military salute.
“Inspection satisfactory, sir?”
He laughed a rueful little laugh. “Eminently. Aber ganz befriedigend.”
He was very tall, and straight and good to look at as he stood there in the hall with the light from the newel- post illuminating his features and emphasizing his blondness. Frau Nirlanger’s face wore a drawn little look of pain as she gazed at him, and from him to the figure of her husband who had just emerged from the dining room, and was making unsteady progress toward us. Herr Nirlanger’s face was flushed and his damp, dark hair was awry so that one lock straggled limply down over his forehead. As he approached he surveyed us with a surly frown that changed slowly into a leering grin. He lurched over and placed a hand familiarly on my shoulder.
“We mus’ part,” he announced, dramatically. “O, weh! The bes’ of frien’s m’z part. Well, g’by, li’l interfering Teufel. F’give you, though, b’cause you’re such a pretty li’l Teufel.” He raised one hand as though to pat my check and because of the horror which I saw on the face of the woman beside me I tried to smile, and did not shrink from him. But with a quick movement Von Gerhard clutched the swaying figure and turned it so that it faced the stairs.
“Come Nirlanger! Time for hard-working men like you and me to be in bed. Mrs. Orme must not nod over her desk to-morrow, either. So goodnight. Schlafen Sie wohl.”
Konrad Nirlanger turned a scowling face over his shoulder. Then he forgot what he was scowling for, and smiled a leering smile.
“Pretty good frien’s, you an’ the li’l Teufel, yes? Guess we’ll have to watch you, huh, Anna? We’ll watch ‘em, won’t we?”
He began to climb the stairs laboriously, with Frau Nirlanger’s light figure flitting just ahead of him. At the bend in the stairway she turned and looked down on us a moment, her eyes very bright and big. She pressed her fingers to her lips and wafted a little kiss toward us with a gesture indescribably graceful and pathetic. She viewed her husband’s laborious progress, not daring to offer help. Then the turn in the stair hid her from sight.
In the dim quiet of the little hallway Von Gerhard held out his hands—those deft, manual hands—those steady, sure, surgeonly hands—hands to cling to, to steady oneself by, and because I needed them most just then, and because I longed with my whole soul to place both my weary hands in those strong capable ones and to bring those dear, cool, sane fingers up to my burning cheeks, I put one foot on the first stair and held out two chilly fingertips. “Goodnight, Herr Doktor,” I said, “and thank you, not only for myself, but for her. I have felt what she feels tonight. It is not a pleasant thing to be ashamed of one’s husband.”
Von Gerhard’s two hands closed over that one of mine. “Dawn, you will let me help you to find comfortable quarters? You cannot tramp about from place to place all the week. Let us get a list of addresses, and then, with the machine, we can drive from one to the other in an hour. It will at least save you time and strength.”
“Go boarding-house hunting in a stunning green automobile!” I exclaimed. From my vantage point on the steps I could look down on him, and there came over me a great longing to run my fingers gently through that crisp blond hair, and to bring his head down close against my breast for one exquisite moment. So—“Landladies and oitermobiles!” I laughed. “Never! Don’t you know that if they got one glimpse, through the front parlor windows, of me stepping grand-like out of your, green motor car, they would promptly over-charge me for any room in the house? I shall go room-hunting in my oldest hat, with one finger sticking out of my glove.”
Von Gerhard shrugged despairing shoulders.
“Na, of what use is it to plead with you. Sometimes I wonder if, after all, you are not merely amusing yourself. Getting copy, perhaps, for the book, or a new experience to add to your already varied store.”
Abruptly I turned to hide my pain, and began to ascend the stairs. With a bound Von Gerhard was beside me, his face drawn and contrite.
“Forgive me, Dawn! I know that you are wisest. It is only that I become a little mad, I think, when I see you battling alone like this, among strangers, and know that I have not the right to help you. I knew not what I was saying. Come, raise your eyes and smile, like the little Soldatin that you are. So. Now I am forgiven, yes?”
I smiled cheerily enough into his blue eyes. “Quite forgiven. And now you must run along. This is scandalously late. The aborigines will be along saying `Morgen!’ instead of `Nabben’!’ if we stay here much longer. Goodnight.”
“You will give me your new address as soon as you have found a satisfactory home?”
“Never fear! I probably shall be pestering you with telephone calls, urging you to have pity upon me in my loneliness. Now goodnight again. I’m as full of farewells as a Bernhardt.” And to end it I ran up the stairs. At the bend, just where Frau Nirlanger had turned, I too stopped and looked over my shoulder. Von Gerhard was standing as I had left him, looking up at me. And like Frau Nirlanger, I wafted a little kiss in his direction, before I allowed the bend in the stairs to cut off my view. But Von Gerhard did not signify by look or word that he had seen it, as he stood looking up at me, one strong white hand resting on the broad baluster.
CHAPTER XVI
JUNE MOONLIGHT, AND A NEW BOARDINGHOUSE
There was a week in which to scurry about for a new home. The days scampered by, tripping over one another in their haste. My sleeping hours were haunted by nightmares of landladies and impossible boarding-house bedrooms. Columns of “To Let, Furnished or Unfurnished” ads filed, advanced, and retreated before my dizzy eyes. My time after office hours was spent in climbing dim stairways, interviewing unenthusiastic females in kimonos, and peering into ugly bedrooms papered with sprawly and impossible patterns and filled with the odors of dead-and- gone dinners. I found one room less impossible than the rest, only to be told that the preference was to be given to a man who had “looked” the day before.
“I d’ruther take gents only,” explained the ample person who carried the keys to the mansion. “Gents goes early in the morning and comes in late at night, and that’s all you ever see of ‘em, half the time. I’ve tried ladies, an’ they get me wild, always yellin’ for hot water to wash their hair, or pastin’ handkerchiefs up on the mirr’r or wantin’ to butt into the kitchen to press this or that. I’ll let you know if the gent don’t take it, but I got an idea he will.”
He did. At any rate, no voice summoned me to that haven for gents only. There were other landladies— landladies fat and German; landladies lean and Irish; landladies loquacious (regardless of nationality); landladies reserved; landladies husbandless, wedded, widowed, divorced, and willing; landladies slatternly; landladies prim; and all hinting of past estates wherein there had been much grandeur.
