"I shall never marry. I do not believe in such an institution. It degrades women, makes tyrants of men. No, Arthur--I am fond of you, perhaps--" she paused,--"so fond that I might enter into any relation but marriage,--that never!"
"And I tell you, Yetta, anarchy or no anarchy, I could never respect the woman if she were not mine legally. In America we do these things differently--" he was not allowed to finish.
She glared at him, then she strode to the shop door and opened it.
"Farewell to you, Mr. Arthur Schopenhauer Wyartz, amateur anarchist. Better go back to your mother and sisters! _Mein Gott_, Schopenhauer, too!" He put his Alpine hat on his bewildered head and without a word went out. She did not look after him, but walked over to the old bird-fancier and sat on his leather-topped stool. Presently she rested her elbows on her knees and propped her chin with her gloveless hands. Her eyes were red. Koschinsky peeped at her and shook his head.
"Yetta--you know what I think!--Yetta, the boy was right! You shouldn't have asked him for the Star-Spangled Banner! The Marseillaise would have been better."
"I know, I know. But a nice boy--_so_ well fixed."
"I don't care," she insisted. "I'm married to the revolution."
"Yah, yah! the revolution, Yetta--" he pushed his lean, brown forefinger into the cage of an enraged canary--"the revolution! Yes, Yetta Silverman, the revolution!" She sighed.
So I saw in my dream that the man began to run.
As the first-class carriage rolled languidly out of Balak's only railway station on a sultry February evening, Pobloff, the composer, was not sorry.
"I wish it were Persia instead of Ramboul," he reflected. Luga, his wife, he had left weeping at the station; but since the day she disappeared with his orchestra for twenty-four hours, Pobloff's affection had gradually cooled; he was leaving the capital without a pang on a month's leave of absence--a delicate courtesy of the king's extended to a brother ruler, though a semi-barbarous one, the khedive of Ramboul.
Pobloff was not sad nor was he jubilantly glad. The journey was an easy one; a night and day and the next night would see him, God willing,--he crossed himself,--in the semi-tropical city of Nirgiz. From Balak to Nirgiz, from southeastern Europe to Asia Minor!