She stood silently, her hands clasped behind her, watching him. He was neater than usual, had resumed the frock-coat he wore the day she had first met him—how long ago that seemed!—his collar was stiffly white, and if his cravat was more gorgeous than is usually seen in a man correctly arrayed, it had the complementary value of being new.
He held in his hand a small bouquet of flowers tightly packed, their stems enclosed in silver foil, a white paper frill supplying an additional expression of gentility.
“These are for you.” He jerked out his hand towards her.
Mirabelle looked at the flowers, but did not take them. He seemed in no way disconcerted, either by her silence, or by the antagonism which her attitude implied, but, laying the flowers on top of the books, he clasped his hands before him and addressed her. He was nervous, for some reason; the skin of his forehead was furrowing and smoothing with grotesque rapidity. She watched the contortions, fascinated.
“To every man,” he began, “there comes a moment of domestic allurement. Even to the scientific mind, absorbed in its colossal problems, there is this desire for family life and for the haven of rest which is called marriage.”
He paused, as though he expected her to offer some comment upon his platitude.
“Man alone,” he went on, when she did not speak, “has established an artificial and unnatural convention that, at a certain age, a man should marry a woman of that same age. Yet it has been proved by history that happy marriages are often between a man who is in the eyes of the world old, and a lady who is youthful.”
She was gazing at him in dismay. Was he proposing to her? The idea was incredible, almost revolting. He must have read in her face the thoughts that were uppermost in her mind, the loathing, the sense of repulsion which filled her, yet he went on, unabashed:
“I am a man of great riches. You are a girl of considerable poverty. But because I saw you one day in your poor house, looking, gracious lady, like a lily growing amidst foul weeds, my heart went out to you, and for this reason I brought you to London, spending many thousands of pounds in order to give myself the pleasure of your company.”
“I don’t think you need go any farther, Dr. Oberzohn,” she said quietly, “if you’re proposing marriage, as I think you are.”
He nodded emphatically.
“Such is my honourable intention,” he said.
“I would never marry you in any circumstances,” she said. “Not even if I had met you under the happiest conditions. The question of your age”—she nearly added “and of your appearance,” but her natural kindness prevented that cruel thrust, though it would not have hurt him in the slightest degree—“has nothing whatever to do with my decision. I do not even like you, and have never liked you, Mr. Oberzohn.”
“Doctor,” he corrected, and in spite of her woeful plight she could have laughed at this insistence upon the ceremonial title.
“Young miss, I cannot woo you in the way of my dear and sainted brother, who was all for ladies and had a beautiful manner.”
She was amazed to hear that he had a brother at all—and it was almost a relief to know that he was dead.
“Martyred, at the hands of wicked and cunning murderers, slain in his prime by the assassin’s pistol …” His voice trembled and broke. “For that sainted life I will some day take vengeance.”
It was not wholly curiosity that impelled her to ask who killed him.
“Leon Gonsalez.” The words in his lips became the grating of a file. “Killed … murdered! And even his beautiful picture destroyed in that terrible fire. Had he saved that, my heart would have been soft towards him.” He checked himself, evidently realizing that he was getting away from the object of his call. “Think over this matter, young lady. Read the romantic books and the amorous books, and then perhaps you will not think it is so terrible a fate to drift at moonlight through the canals of Venice, with the moon above and the gondoliers.”
He wagged his head sentimentally.
“There is no book which will change my view, doctor,” she said. “I cannot understand why you propose such an extraordinary course, but I would rather die than marry you.”
His cold eyes filled her with a quick terror.
“There are worse things than death, which is but sleep—many worse things, young miss. Tomorrow I shall come for you, and we will go into the country, where you will say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ according to my desire. I have many—what is the word?—certificates for marriage, for I am too clever a man to leave myself without alternatives.”
(This was true; he had residential qualifications in at least four counties, and at each he had given legal notice of his intended marriage.)
“Not tomorrow or any other day. Nothing would induce me.”
His eyebrows went almost to the top of his head.
“So!” he said, with such significance that her blood ran cold. “There are worse men than the Herr Doktor,”—he raised a long finger warningly—“terrible men with terrible minds. You have met Gurther?”
She did not answer this.
“Yes, yes, you danced with him. A nice man, is he not, to ladies? Yet this same Gurther … I will tell you something.”
He seated himself on a corner of the table and began talking, until she covered her ears with her hands and hid her white face from him.
“They would have killed him for that,” he said, when her hands came down, “but Gurther was too clever, and the poor German peasants too stupid. You shall remember that, shall you not?”
He did not wait for her answer. With a stiff bow he strutted out of the room and up the stairs. There came the thud of the trap falling and the inevitable rumble of the concrete
