"If the class sends you again, of course."
"That was a lie," she stammered. "Not a soul knows I came here."
He sprang to his feet, almost like a man in good health. His face lengthened, his eyes filled with tears. He stretched out his hands, which were trembling violently, as if to ward her off.
"If you don't go," he went on, excitement almost stifling his words, "you will ruin your future. Young ladies do not visit unmarried men who live the way I do--even if the man is their teacher and sick as I am. Tell no one that you have been here, no friend, not a single human being. Your livelihood depends upon your reputation. I cannot steal your bread. _Please go._"
"May I never come again?" Her eyes pled with him.
"No!!" he shouted in a voice like riven iron.
Lilly felt herself being shoved through the doorway. The key was turned in the lock behind her.
She disobeyed his injunction that very hour. She ran to Rosalie Katz, her friend _du jour_, to confess everything and relieve her feelings in tears. The little brown Jewess had a soft heart and was also head over heels in love with her teacher, and so the girls wept together.
But they had forgotten to lock the door, and thus it happened that Mr. Katz, whose wealth and social position found pictorial expression in a round paunch, and whose waistcoat buttons consequently were always coming loose, entered his daughter's room to have one sewed on.
When he discovered the girls in tearful embrace, he discreetly retired. But the instant Lilly had left the house, he extracted all the completer a confession from his daughter. He learned the story of the sick teacher, the abortive committee meetings, and the futile meringues glacés.
"Well, we can fix that," he said with a smirk, twirling the very thin watch chain--heavy watch chains were worn only by those among the grain merchants who had remained below on the social scale--which branched out to the right and to the left from the third buttonhole of his waistcoat.
A week later Dr. Mälzer received a registered letter from two strangers informing him that means had been found to enable him to make a lengthy sojourn in the south. All he needed to do was obtain leave of absence and draw the first payment at the office of Goldbaum, Katz & Co.