He took hold of her hand and led her into the room.
"Who put it into your head, child?" he asked.
"The grocer's wife was trimming her Christmas tree when I got there at three o'clock, and I thought it so pretty I said to myself, _he_ shall have his tree too, and shall know that there is at least one person to think of him. I asked her to show me how to gild apples, and gilded a supply while I was there, and bought the lights and got a sack to put the tree in, so that you shouldn't see it."
"I cut it down myself at the edge of the forest not far from here."
She laughed contemptuously. "A little wind wouldn't hinder me, _Herr_," And then with a sudden outburst of joyous ecstasy, she exclaimed, "Oh, just look, _Herr_, how beautifully it burns! How pious it looks. Hasn't it really a sort of pious face, as if an angel had brought it?"
He assented, laughing, and expressed his thanks in a few words of forced condescension, for he was afraid of being too gracious.
But she was more than satisfied. "Why should you thank me, _Herr_?" she asked reproachfully. "It's all bought with your money. I have none. I'm only a poor girl. Else, ah, else--" She threw up her hands and clasped them above her head.
The cheque came into his mind. "This is to show you," he said, handing it to her, "that I have thought of your Christmas too."
She looked at him in bewilderment. "Am I to read it?" she asked, respectfully taking the piece of paper between two of her fingers. After studying it carefully, she still looked perplexed.
"Don't you understand what it is?" he asked.
"Oh yes--I understand ... But to begin with, you can't be in earnest. And even if you are, ... what good is it to me?"
"My future is provided for.... I have all I want. Good food, ... and I am dressed like a lady. What can I possibly want besides?"
"But we may not go on living always together like this."
She gave a cry of dismay. "Are you thinking of packing me off, _Herr_?" she asked with tightly clasped hands.
She shook her head meditatively. "I should die too," she said.
"Or I might have to go to the war again?"
"Then I should go with you as a vivandière."
Her persistence annoyed him. "Do as you like," he said, "only take what I give you."