me?"

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 bl