Heinz? What do you say?" demanded Schilsky with growing
impatience.

Still Krafft did not reply, and Schilsky was mastered by a violent
irritation.

"Why the devil can't you open your mouth? What's the matter with you?
Have YOU anything like that to show--you Joseph, you?"

Krafft let a waxen hand drop over the side of the sofa and trail on the
floor. "The letters were burned, dear boy--when you appeared." He
closed his eyes and smiled, seeming to remember something. But a moment
later, he fixed Schilsky sharply, and asked: "You want my opinion, do
you?"

"Of course I do," said Schilsky, and flung things about the room.

"Lulu," said Krafft with deliberation, "Lulu is getting you under her
thumb."

The other sprang up, swore, and aimed a boot, which he had been vainly
trying to put on the wrong foot, at a bottle that protruded from the
rubbish-heap.

"Me? Me under her thumb?" he spluttered--his lips became more marked
under excitement. "I should like to see her try it. You don't know me.
You don't know Lulu. I am her master, I tell you. She can't call her
soul her own."

"And yet," said Krafft, unmoved, "it's a fact all the same."

Schilsky applied a pair of curling tongs to his hair, at such a degree
of heat that a lock frizzled, and came off in his hand. His anger
redoubled. "Is it my fault that she acts like a wet-nurse? Is that what
you call being under her thumb?" he cried.

Furst tried to conciliate him and to make peace. "You're a lucky dog,
old fellow, and you know you are. We all know it--in spite of
occasional tantaras. But you would be still luckier if you took a
friend's sound advice and got you to the registrar. Ten minutes before
the registrar, and everything would be different. Then she might play
up as she liked; you would be master in earnest."

"Registrar?" echoed Krafft with deep scorn. "Listen to the ape! Not if
we can hinder it. When he's fool enough for that--I know him--it will
be with something fresher and less faded, something with the bloom
still on it."

Schilsky winced as though he had been struck. Her age--she was eight
years older than he--was one of his sorest points.

"Oh, come on, now," said Furst as he poured out the coffee. "That's
hardly fair. She's not so young as she might be, it's true, but no one
can hold a candle to her still. Lulu is Lulu."

"Ten minutes before the registrar," continued Krafft, meditatively
shaking his head. "And for the rest of life, chains.