After another talk with Travis, Feuerstein decided that he must give up Hilda entirely until this affair with the Gansers was settled. Afterward--well, there would be time to decide when he had his five thousand. He sent her a note, asking her to meet him in Tompkins Square on Friday evening. That afternoon he carefully prepared himself. He resolved that the scene between her and him should be, so far as his part was concerned, a masterpiece of that art of which he knew himself to be one of the greatest living exponents. Only his own elegant languor had prevented the universal recognition of this and his triumph over the envy of professionals and the venality of critics.
It was a concert night in Tompkins Square, and Hilda, off from her work for an hour, came alone through the crowds to meet him.
She made no effort to control the delight in her eyes and in her voice. She loved him; he loved her. Why suppress and deny? Why not glory in the glorious truth? She loved him, not because he was her conquest, but because she was his.
Mr. Feuerstein was so absorbed in his impending ``act'' that he barely noted how pretty she was and how utterly in love--what was there remarkable in a woman being in love with him? ``The women are all crazy about me,'' was his inward comment whenever a woman chanced to glance at him. As he took Hilda's hand he gave her a look of intense, yearning melancholy. He sighed deeply. ``Let us go apart,'' he said. Then he glanced gloomily round and sighed again.
They seated themselves on a bench far away from the music and the crowds. He did not speak but repeated his deep sigh.
``Has it made you worse to come, dear?'' Hilda asked anxiously.
``Are you sick?''
``Sick?'' he said in a hollow voice. ``My soul is sick--dying.
My God! My God!'' An impressive pause. ``Ah, child, you do not know what suffering is--you who have lived only in these simple, humble surroundings.''
Hilda was trembling with apprehension. ``What is it, Carl? You can tell me. Let me help you bear it.''
``No! no! I must bear it alone. I must take my dark shadow from your young life. I ought not to have come. I should have fled.
But love makes me a coward.''
``But I love you, Carl,'' she said gently.
``And I have missed you--dreadfully, dreadfully!''
He rolled his eyes wildly. ``You torture me!'' he exclaimed, seizing her hand in a dead man's clutch. ``How CAN I speak?''
Hilda's heart seemed to stand still. She was pale to the lips, and he could see, even in the darkness, her eyes grow and startle.
``What is it?'' she murrmured. ``You know I--can bear anything for you.''
``Not that tone,'' he groaned. ``Reproach me! Revile me! Be harsh, scornful--but not those tender accents.''
He felt her hand become cold and he saw terror in her eyes.
``Forgive me,'' she said humbly. ``I don't know what to say or do. I--you look so strange. It makes me feel all queer inside.
Won't you tell me, please?''
He noted with artistic satisfaction that the band was playing passionate love-music with sobs and sad ecstasies of farewell embraces in it. He kissed her, then drew back. ``No,'' he groaned. ``Those lips are not for me, accursed that I am.''
She was no longer looking at him, but sat gazing straight ahead, her shoulders bent as if she were crouching to receive a blow.
He began in a low voice, and, as he spoke, it rose or fell as his words and the distant music prompted him. ``Mine has been a luckless life,'' he said. ``I have been a football of destiny, kicked and flung about, hither and yon. Again and again I have thought in my despair to lay me down and die. But something has urged me on, on, on. And at last I met you.''
He paused and groaned--partly because it was the proper place, partly with vexation. Here was a speech to thrill, yet she sat there inert, her face a stupid blank. He was not even sure that she had heard.
``Are you listening?'' he asked in a stern aside, a curious mingling of the actor and the stage manager.
``I--I don't know,'' she answered, startling. ``I feel so--so--queer. I don't seem to be able to pay attention.'' She looked at him timidly and her chin quivered. ``Don't you love me any more?''
``Love you? Would that I did not! But I must on--my time is short. How can you say I do not love you when my soul is like a raging fire?''
She shook her head slowly. ``Your voice don't feel like it,'' she said. ``What is it? What are you going to say?''
He sighed and looked away from her with an irritated expression.
