"
"Then _you_ cannot understand," Catharina said almost proudly. "But _I_
understand!"
She spoke no more after that, but took up her knitting, and watched
Bernardine playing with the kittens. She was playing with the kittens,
and she was thinking; and all the time she felt conscious that this
peasant woman, stricken in mind and body, was pitying her because that
great happiness of loving and being loved had not come into her life.
It had seemed something apart from her; she had never even wanted it.
She had wished to stand alone, like a little rock out at sea.
And now?
In a few minutes the Disagreeable Man and she sat down to their meal.
In spite of her excitement, Liza managed to prepare everything nicely;
though when she was making the omelette _aux fines herbes_, she had to
be kept guarded lest she might run off to have another look at the
silver watch and the photographs of herself in her finest frock!
Then Bernardine and Robert Allitsen drank to the health of Hans and
Liza: and then came the time of reckoning. When he was paying the bill,
Frau Steinhart, having given him the change, said coaxingly:
"Last time, you and Fraeulein each paid a share: to-day you pay all.
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