“Very good, Frau Professor.”
Herr Sung smiled in the Frau Professor’s eyes,
and notwithstanding her protests insisted on pouring
out a glass of wine for her. The Frau Professor
ate her supper with a good appetite. But she had
triumphed unwisely. Just before going to bed
she called the servant.
“Emil, if Fraulein Cacilie’s box is ready
you had better take it downstairs tonight. The
porter will fetch it before breakfast.”
The servant went away and in a moment came back.
“Fraulein Cacilie is not in her room, and her
bag has gone.”
With a cry the Frau Professor hurried along:
the box was on the floor, strapped and locked; but
there was no bag, and neither hat nor cloak. The
dressing-table was empty. Breathing heavily, the
Frau Professor ran downstairs to the Chinaman’s
rooms, she had not moved so quickly for twenty years,
and Emil called out after her to beware she did not
fall; she did not trouble to knock, but burst in.
The rooms were empty. The luggage had gone, and
the door into the garden, still open, showed how it
had been got away. In an envelope on the table
were notes for the money due on the month’s
board and an approximate sum for extras. Groaning,
suddenly overcome by her haste, the Frau Professor
sank obesely on to a sofa. There could be no
doubt. The pair had gone off together. Emil
remained stolid and unmoved.
Hayward, after saying for a month that he was going
South next day and delaying from week to week out
of inability to make up his mind to the bother of
packing and the tedium of a journey, had at last been
driven off just before Christmas by the preparations
for that festival. He could not support the thought
of a Teutonic merry-making. It gave him goose-flesh
to think of the season’s aggressive cheerfulness,
and in his desire to avoid the obvious he determined
to travel on Christmas Eve.
Philip was not sorry to see him off, for he was a
downright person and it irritated him that anybody
should not know his own mind. Though much under
Hayward’s influence, he would not grant that
indecision pointed to a charming sensitiveness; and
he resented the shadow of a sneer with which Hayward
looked upon his straight ways. They corresponded.
Hayward was an admirable letter-writer, and knowing
his talent took pains with his letters. His temperament
was receptive to the beautiful influences with which
he came in contact, and he was able in his letters
from Rome to put a subtle fragrance of Italy.
He thought the city of the ancient Romans a little
vulgar, finding distinction only in the decadence of
the Empire; but the Rome of the Popes appealed to
his sympathy, and in his chosen words, quite exquisitely,
there appeared a rococo beauty. He wrote of old
church music and the Alban Hills, and of the languor
of incense and the charm of the streets by night,
in the rain, when the pavements shone and the light
