"Why, whatever could you have been thinking of?" she said, took the shawl in her hands, let it slip in and out among her fingers, put it around her, draped herself in it, looked at herself in the mirror, still speechless, until she finally walked over to Graesler with genuine delight written upon her features and, gazing up at him, took his head in both her hands and drew his lips down to hers.
"Thank you a thousand times," she said.
"That doesn't satisfy me."
"Well, then, a million times." He shook his head. She smiled. "Thank you, dear," she said, and put up her lips for him to kiss.
He took her in his arms and immediately told her that he had picked the pretty thing out for her that afternoon in the garret, and that he would probably find in all these trunks and chests many another nice bit that would be just as becoming to her as this. She shook her head as though to say that she would be unwilling to put up with any more gifts of such value. He asked her how the previous evening had agreed with her and whether there was much to do in the store that day; and after she had prattled along about everything he had wanted to know, he reported to her, as to some dear old friend, his doings of the day: how he had cut the hospital and instead had loitered around in the city park recalling bygone days when, as a child, he had played there between the old, grass- grown ramparts. Then he reverted to all manner of other things out of his past, particularly—half by accident and half on purpose—to the period of his activity as a ship's-doctor; and when Katharina interrupted him with childishly curious questions about the appearance, dress, and customs of unfamiliar peoples, and about coral-reefs and ocean storms, he felt that those things which he had recently recited to the approbation of higher circles must now be adapted to a simpler but all the more appreciative audience. And unwittingly he assumed the tone and manner of a story-telling uncle who in a dim-lit chamber seeks to stir and entertain, through tales of fabulous adventure, a group of attentive children.
Katharina, who had been sitting beside him on the divan with her hands in his, had just got up to prepare supper, when he heard the door-bell ring. Graesler started slightly. What did this mean? His thoughts succeeded one another rapidly. A telegram? From The Range? Sabine? Was her father sick? Or her mother? Or did it have something to do with the sanitarium? A pressing inquiry on the part of the proprietor? Had another prospective buyer
