“That wouldn’t matter, mother, in the least,” he said, at length.  “Money!  Do you think it possible that it would sway me?  We won’t starve together—­quite.  I’m strong—­I am a man and I can do a man’s work in the world.  But you—­remember, mother, you will have to take your choice between receiving Anna—­and myself—­together—­or of being left alone.”

Without another word he left the room—­left it with an old man’s dimmed and misty eyes agaze upon him, full of love and admiration.

Mrs. Vanderlyn rose, too, beside herself with shame and grief and indignation.  She turned upon the flute-player.

“Alone!” she cried.  “Did you hear that?  Oh, the ingratitude, the selfishness, of children!”

“Madame,” said Herr Kreutzer gravely, “do you not think he has a right to his own life—­his happiness?”

“His happiness!” A rasping scorn was in the voice of the unhappy woman.  “Nobody thinks of mine!  He is my only son.  He knows quite well that I can’t live without him—­that I could not give him up!”

Kreutzer smiled—­not with an air of triumph—­the discomfiture of the unhappy woman did not make him feel the least exultant.  It was pure happiness that made him smile—­joy to think that Anna’s wedding would not, after all, be shadowed by her husband’s sorrow for the loss of mother-love.

“Then Madame will yield?” he cried.  “Madame will make the dear young people happy?”

“Upon one condition.  Positively only upon one condition.”

“What is that, Madame?”

“Your daughter, really, is charming.”

“There I agree with you.”

“She is wonderfully well-bred—­I do not understand it.  I could pass her, anywhere, for a distinguished foreigner—­a foreigner of noble birth.”

The father of the subject of her praise smiled gravely.  “That is very true.  She will—­what you call it?—­look the part.”

“But to be quite frank,” the lady went on “you, yourself, are quite impossible, Herr Kreutzer.  Quite impossible, I must assure you.”

“I, impossible?  I—­you say that I am quite impossible?”

She nodded very positively.  “I don’t like to hurt your feelings, my dear man; but I must make you understand.  I can’t have people saying that my dear son’s father-in-law is a shabby old musician—­a flute-player in a theatre.  You see that clearly, don’t you.  How could I—­”

“It is quite true,” Herr Kreutzer admitted humbly.  “I am a shabby old flute-player and you do not make it quite as bad as it is really, Madame.”  He looked at her and smiled a rueful smile.  “It is not even a theatre in which I play, Madame, it is a beer-garden.”

“A beer-garden!” she cried in horror.  “Oh—­Herr Kreutzer!  Worse and worse!” Then, wheedlingly:  “Listen.  You say you love your daughter.”

“Yes; surely; I love my daughter very dearly—­almost as much, perhaps, as Madame loves her son.  Almost.  Almost.”