"Ah, yes, forgive me," she cried. "All that was to be swept out....
How forgetful one can be...."

Smiling, she leaned her head against his shoulder and was not to be
persuaded from her silence.




Chapter VI


"There are delicate boundaries within the realm of the eternal
womanly,"--thus Niebeldingk reflected next day,--"in which one is
sorely puzzled as to what one had better put into an envelope: a poem
or a cheque."

His latest adventure--the cause of these reflections--had blossomed,
the evening before, like the traditional rose on the dungheap.

One of his friends who had travelled about the world a good deal and
who now assumed the part of the full-blown Parisian, had issued
invitations to a house-warming in his new bachelor-apartment. He had
invited a number of his gayer friends and ladies exclusively from
so-called artistic circles. So far all was quite Parisian. Only the
journalists who might, next morning, have proclaimed the glory of the
festivity to the world--these were excluded. Berlin, for various
reasons, did not seem an appropriate place for that.

It was a rather dreary sham orgy. Even chaperones were present.