"
"But how can you help me, child?" he asked, beginning to grow calmer under
her clear gaze. "It is such a very complicated case," he continued,
falling back gradually into his own natural manner. "You see, my friends
have probably arrived by this train, and yet I cannot go home until I have
set this other matter right with Fischelowitz. It is true, I have left a
word written for them on my table, and perhaps they are there now, waiting
for me, and if I went home I could have the money at once. But then--it
may be too late before I get here again--"
"What money?" asked Vjera, anxious to get at the truth without delay.
"Oh, it is an absurd thing," he answered, growing nervous again. "Quite
absurd--and yet, it is fifty marks--and until they come, I do not see what
to do. Fifty marks--to-day it seems so much, and to-morrow it will seem so
little!" He made a poor attempt to smile, but his voice trembled.
"But these fifty marks--what do you need them for to-night?" Vjera asked,
not understanding at all. "Will not to-morrow do as well?"
"No, no!" he cried in renewed anxiety. "It must be to-night, now, this
very hour. If I do not pay the money, I am ruined, Vjera, disgraced for
ever. It is a debt of honour--you do not understand what that means,
child, nor how terrible it is for a man not to pay before the day is
over--ah, if it were not a debt of honour!--but there is no time to be
lost. It is almost dark already. Go home, dear Vjera, go home.
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