Now Herr Kreutzer smiled. Having determined on the sacrifice, he was
delighted by this first error in her argument. "Yes, Madame," he said,
quite truthfully, "I _have_ been at your house. I called while you
were driving. M'riar will tell you. She went with me. I called there
to tell Anna that I should expect her here, this afternoon. A servant
showed me to her room--showed M'riar and me both to her room. I can
prove all of this by M'riar--by your own servants, Madame. I waited
for her, for a time, there in her room, and, as I walked to and fro, I
saw, through an open door, upon a table--that jewel-box."

Mrs. Vanderlyn was looking at him in complete astonishment. Even in
her artificial soul there rose some admiration for the man who would
confess to felony, rather than submit his child to suffering.

"And you--," she cried.

He bowed before her, almost as he had, in bygone days, bowed low
before an appreciative audience. Was not this, as much as ever any
solo on the flute had been, a triumph of high art? And more! Was it
not the triumph of his love for Anna over, first, this hard-souled,
little-minded Mrs. Vanderlyn, and, second, the last selfish impulse
lingering within his own unselfish soul?

"I am very, very poor, Madame," he said. "I am only a poor
flute-player. Things have not gone well with me since I have been in
your so great, so glorious country. No; they have gone very far from
well with me. If they had not gone most ill do you imagine that I ever
would have let my Anna go to you as your companion? Do you not imagine
that it cut my soul to have her separate from me, that it cut my pride