was aware that this was done
before her aunt had had any opportunity of explaining to him what
had occurred on that morning. "Fraulein," he said, "as you are alone
here, I have ventured to come in and join you."

"This is no proper place for you, Herr Steinmarc," she replied. Now,
it was certainly the case that Peter rarely passed a day without
standing for some twenty minutes before the kitchen stove talking
to Tetchen. Here he would always take off his boots when they were
wet, and here, on more than one occasion,--on more, probably, than
fifty,--had he sat and smoked his pipe, when there was no other
stove a-light in the house to comfort him with its warmth. Linda,
therefore, had no strong point in her favour when she pointed out to
her suitor that he was wrong to intrude upon the kitchen.

"Wherever you are, must be good for me," said Peter, trying to smirk
and to look pleased.

Linda was determined to silence him, even if she could not silence
her aunt. "Herr Steinmarc," she said, "I have explained to my aunt
that this kind of thing from you must cease. It must be made to
cease. If you are a man you will not persecute me by a proposal which
I have told you already is altogether out of the question. If there
were not another man in all Nuremberg, I would not have you. You may
perhaps make me hate you worse than anybody in the world; but you
cannot possibly do anything else. Go to my aunt and you will find
that I have told her the same." Then she walked off to her own
bedroom, leaving the town-clerk in sole possession of the kitchen.

Peter Steinmarc, when he was left standing alone in the kitchen, did
not like his position. He was a man not endowed with much persuasive
gift of words, but he had a certain strength of his own. He had a
will, and some firmness in pursuing the thing which he desired. He
was industrious, patient, and honest with a sort of second-class
honesty. He liked to earn what he took, though he had a strong
bias towards believing that he had earned whatever in any way he
might have taken, and after the same fashion he was true with a
second-class truth. He was unwilling to deceive; but he was usually
able to make himself believe that that which would have been deceit
from another to him, was not deceit from him to another. He was
friendly in his nature to a certain degree, understanding that
good offices to him-wards could not be expected unless he also was
prepared to do good offices to other