Page:H.M. The Patrioteer.djvu/21

Rh spite of that, she thanked him softly and almost shyly. Diederich was annoyed. "These coquettish women are horrible," he reflected. She was looking for something in her bag.

"Now I have lost it—I mean my sticking-plaster. It is bleeding again."

She unwound her handkerchief from her finger. It looked so much like snow that Diederich thought that the blood on it would sink in.

"I have some plaster," he said with a bow.

He seized her finger, and before she could wipe off the blood, he licked it.

"What on earth are you doing?"

He himself was startled, and wrinkling his brow solemnly he said: "Oh, as a chemist I have to do worse things than that."

She smiled. "Oh yes, of course, you are a sort of doctor. &hellip; How well you do it," she remarked as she watched him sticking on the plaster.

"There," he said, pushing her hand away and moving back. The air seemed to have become close and he thought: "If it were only possible to avoid touching her skin. It is so disgustingly soft." Agnes stared over his head. After a time she tried again: "Haven't we got common relations in Netzig?" She compelled him to go over a few families with her and they discovered a cousin.

"Your mother is still living, isn't she? You should be glad of that. Mine is long since dead. I don't suppose I shall live long either. One has premonitions"—and she smiled sadly and apologetically.

Silently Diederich resolved that this sentimentality was ridiculous. Another long interval, and as they both hastened to speak, the gentleman from Mecklenburg arrived. He squeezed Diederich's hand so hard that the latter winced, and at the same time he looked into his face with a smile of triumph. He drew a chair unconcernedly close to Agnes's knee, and with an air of proprietorship began talking animatedly