She now cut him short. ``If you don't come I'll have to suffer
for it,'' she said. ``You MUST come! I'll not be glad to see
you. But if you don't come I'll never speak to you again!'' And
she left him and went to the other counter and ordered the
chickens from Schwartz.

Heilig was wretched,--another of those hideous dilemmas over
which he had been stumbling like a drunken man in a dark room
full of furniture ever since he let his mother go to Mrs. Brauner
and ask her for Hilda. He watched Hilda's splendid back, and
fumbled about, upsetting bottles and rattling dishes, until she
went out with a glance of jeering scorn. Schwartz burst out
laughing.

``Anybody could tell you are in love,'' he said. ``Be stiff with
her, Otto, and you'll get her all right. It don't do to let a
woman see that you care about her. The worse you treat the women
the better they like it. When they used to tell my father about
some woman being crazy over a man, he always used to say, `What
sort of a scoundrel is he?' That was good sense.''

Otto made no reply. No doubt these maxims were sound and wise;
but how was he to apply them? How could he pretend indifference
when at sight of her he could open his jaws only enough to
chatter them, could loosen his tongue only enough to roll it
thickly about? ``I can work,'' he said to himself, ``and I can
pay my debts and have something over; but when it comes to love
I'm no good.''