The offices of the famous New York lawyer, Samuelson, were partitioned off with wood and ground glass from an immense hall, a writing factory, in which there was a horde of assistants working typewriters.  Samuelson made the impression of a man of nearly forty.  He was not very tall, had a bad, pallid complexion, and wore a short, pointed beard.  The clothes of this man, whose share of the firm’s income was estimated at three hundred thousand dollars a year, though of the correct cut, were by no means new; in fact, they were rather shabby, and his entire appearance suggested that he was scarcely a model of American cleanliness.  He spoke in a very low, thick voice, as if suffering from a sore throat.

Within less than fifteen minutes, the contract between Lilienfeld and Ingigerd had been concluded, a contract, which owing to the fact that Ingigerd was a minor, was no more valid than the contract with Webster and Forster.  Samuelson showed that he was informed of all the details of the case of Hahlstroem vs. Webster and Forster.  When the question of their demands arose, he merely smiled with an air of great disdain and said: 

“We will quietly lie low and let them make the advance.”

When Ingigerd and Frederick were sitting alone together in a closed cab on the way home, he put his arms about her passionately.

“If you dance on the stage, Ingigerd, I’ll go out of my mind.  I feel as if you and I and our love would be exposed in the pillory.  If it were I instead of you, it would not be half so hard to stand.”

The poor young scholar began again to pour out before the little vampire all the anguish he had been suffering, this time with hot kisses and embraces.

“I am a drowning man.  If you do not hold your hand out to me I shall sink forever.  You are stronger than I am.  You can save me.  The world is nothing to me.  What I lost is nothing, was nothing and will always be nothing to me, if only I can exchange it for you.  Come with me, and you shall be all in all to me, the one thing of significance in my life.”

“You are not weak,” the girl whispered with a dying-away look in her eyes.  She breathed heavily, her narrow lips parted, and that fatal, seductive smile spread over her languishing face, like a mask.

“Take me!  Run away with me!”

For a time they were silent as the cab rolled along easily on its rubber tires.

“They can wait a long while for you, Ingigerd,” Frederick at length said.  “To-morrow we shall be with Peter Schmidt in Meriden.”

But she laughed.  Yes, she laughed at him, and Frederick clearly saw he had melted her body, not her soul; or a soul was a thing this girl did not possess.

The cab came to a halt in front of the club-house.  Frederick seemed to have lost his speech.  Without saying a word, he escorted Ingigerd to the door, pressed her hand, and returned to the cab.  He chose a place at random, and called to the coachman to drive him there.