Around the hour of afternoon tea Niebeldingk, true to a dear, old
habit, went to see his friend.
She inhabited a small second-floor apartment in the _Regentenstrasse_
which he had himself selected for her when she came as a stranger to
Berlin. With flowers and palms and oriental rugs she had moulded a
delicious retreat, and before her bed-room windows the nightingales
sang in the springtime.
She seemed to be expecting him. In the great, raised bay, separated
from the rest of the drawing-room by a thicket of dark leaves, the
stout tea-urn was already expectantly humming.
In a bright, girlish dress, devoid of coquetry or pouting, Alice came
to meet him.
"I'm glad you're here again, Richard."
That was all.
He wanted to launch out into the tale which he had meant to tell her,
but she cut him short.
"Since when do I demand excuses, Richard? You come and there you are.
And if you don't come, I have to be content too." "You should really
be a little less tolerant," he warned her.
"A blessed lot it would help me," she answered merrily.
Gently she took his arm and led him to his old place. Then silently,
and with that restrained eagerness that characterised all her actions
she busied herself with the tea-urn.
His critical and discriminating gaze followed her movements. With
swift, delicate gestures she pushed forward the Chinese dish, shook
the tea from the canister and poured the first drops of boiling water
through a sieve.... Her quick, bird-like head moved hither and
thither, and the bow of the orange-coloured ribbon which surrounded
her over-delicate neck trembled a little with every motion.
"She really is the most charming of all," such was the end of his
reflections, "if only she weren't so damnably sensible."
Silently she took her seat opposite him, folded her white hands in her
lap, and looked into his eyes with such significant archness that he
began to feel embarrassed.
Had she any suspicion of his infidelities?
Surely not. No jealous woman can look about her so calmly and
serenely.
"What have you been doing all this time?" he asked.
"I? Good heavens! Look about you and you'll see."
She pointed to a heap of books which lay scattered over the window
seat and sewing table.
There were Moltke's letters and the memoirs of von Schön, and Max
Müller's Aryan studies. Nor was the inevitable Schopenhauer lacking.
"What are you after with all that learning?" he asked.
"Ah, dear friend, what is one to do? One can't always be going about
in strange houses. Do you expect me to stand at the window and watch
the clouds float over the old city-wall?"
He had the uncomfortable impression that she was quoting something
again.
"My mood," she went on, "is in what Goethe calls the minor of the
soul. It is the yearning that reaches out afar and yet restrains
itself harmoniously within itself. Isn't that beautifully put?"
"It may be, but it's too high for me!" In laughing self-protection, he
stretched out his arms toward her.
"Don't make fun of me," she said, slightly shamed, and arose.
"And what is the object of your yearning?" he asked in order to leave
the realm of Goethe as swiftly as possible. "Not you, you horrible
person," she answered and, for a moment, touched his hair with
her lips.
"I know that, dearest," he said, "it's a long time since you've sent
me two notes a day."
"And since you came to see me twice daily," she returned and gazed at
the floor with a sad irony.
"We have both changed greatly, Alice."
"We have indeed, Richard."
A silence ensued.
His eyes wandered to the opposite wall.... His own picture, framed in
silvery maple-wood, hung there.... Behind the frame appeared a bunch
of blossoms, long faded and shrivelled to a brownish, indistinguishable
heap.
These two alone knew the significance of the flowers....
"Were you at least happy in those days, Alice?"
"You know I am always happy, Richard."
"Oh yes, yes; I know your philosophy. But I meant happy with me,
through me?"
She stroked her delicate nose thoughtfully. The mocking expression
about the corners of her mouth became accentuated.
"I hardly think so, Richard," she said after an interval. "I was too
much afraid of you ... I seemed so stupid in comparison to you and I
feared that you would despise me." "That fear, at least, you have
overcome very thoroughly?" he asked.
"Not wholly, Richard. Things have only shifted their basis. Just as,
in those days, I felt ashamed of my ignorance, so now I feel
ashamed--no, that isn't the right word.... But all this stuff that I
store up in my head seems to weigh upon me in my relations with you. I
seem to be a nuisance with it.... You men, especially mature men like
yourself, seem to know all these things better, even when you don't
know them.... The precise form in which a given thought is presented
to us may be new to you, but the thought itself you have long
digested. It's for this reason that I feel intimidated whenever I
approach you with my pursuits. 'You might better have held your
peace,' I say to myself. But what am I to do? I'm so profoundly
interested!"
"So you really need the society of a rather stupid fellow, one to whom
all this is new and who will furnish a grateful audience?"
"Stupid? No," she answered, "but he ought to be inexperienced. He
ought himself to want to learn things.... He ought not to assume a
compassionate expression as who should say: 'Ah, my dear child, if you
knew what I know, and how indifferent all those things are to me!' ...
For these things are not indifferent, Richard, not to me, at
least.... And for the sake of the joy I take in them, you ..."
"Strange how she sees through me," he reflected, "I wonder she clings
to me as she does."
And while he was trying to think of something that might help her, the
dear boy came into his mind who had to-day divulged to him the sorrows
of youth and whom the unconscious desire for a higher plane of life
had driven weeping through the streets.
"I know of some one for you."
Her expression was serious.
"You know of some one for me," she repeated with painful
deliberateness.
"Don't misunderstand me. It's a playfellow, a pupil--something in the
nature of a pastime, anything you will."
He told her the story of _Siegfried_ and the two seamstresses.
She laughed heartily.
"I was afraid you wanted to be rid of me," she said, laying her
forehead for a few moments against his sleeve.
"Shame on you," he said, carelessly stroking her hair. "But what do
you think? Shall I bring the young fellow?"
"You may very well bring him," she answered. There was a look of pain
about her mouth. "Doesn't one even train young poodles?"