Sanin positively started back a little; he had not expected that.

'I won't say anything now,' Frau Lenore went on, 'of the disgrace
of it, of its being something unheard of in the world for a girl to
jilt her betrothed; but you see it's ruin for us, Herr Dimitri!' Frau
Lenore slowly and carefully twisted up her handkerchief in a tiny,
tiny little ball, as though she would enclose all her grief within it.
'We can't go on living on the takings of our shop, Herr Dimitri! and
Herr Klueber is very rich, and will be richer still. And what is he to
be refused for? Because he did not defend his betrothed? Allowing that
was not very handsome on his part, still, he's a civilian, has not had
a university education, and as a solid business man, it was for him
to look with contempt on the frivolous prank of some unknown little
officer. And what sort of insult was it, after all, Herr Dimitri?'

'Excuse me, Frau Lenore, you seem to be blaming me.'

'I am not blaming you in the least, not in the least! You're quite
another matter; you are, like all Russians, a military man ...'

'Excuse me, I'm not at all ...'

'You're a foreigner, a visitor, and I'm grateful to you,' Frau Lenore
went on, not heeding Sanin. She sighed, waved her hands, unwound her
handkerchief again, and blew her nose. Simply from the way in which
her distress expressed itself, it could be seen that she had not been
born under a northern sky.

'And how is Herr Klueber to look after his shop, if he is to fight