“I can do nothing in the matter,” said Wilhelm brusquely.

He turned his back upon the man and absorbed himself pointedly in his books.  Auguste stood a moment, but seeing that Wilhelm would take no further notice of him, shrugged his shoulders and left the room.

Wilhelm was surprised himself at the impression the man’s information had made upon him.  Dismay, anger, and shame struggled for the mastery in his breast.  What a suffocating air he breathed in this house!  How vile and underhand and insincere were the people by whom he was surrounded!  But was this true that Auguste told him?  Did he not lie and slander like the rest?  Was he not doing the servant far too great an honor by letting his mind dwell on the low gossip of the servants’ hall?  He felt a kind of dim revolt against his own excitement which he felt to be unworthy of him, and, under other circumstances, he really would have been too proud to allow such tale-bearing to exert the slightest influence upon his thoughts or actions.  But, in his present state of mind, Auguste’s words sounded to him like a brutal translation of his own thoughts, condemning him for his cowardice in submitting to his humiliating position, and he recognized more clearly than ever that he must fight his way out of this degradation.

It was not easy to carry out this resolve.  When Pilar came to his room and took his arm to lead him down to lunch, she was as bewitching and fond as ever.  At table she chattered brightly about an exhibition of pictures in the Cercle des Mirlitons, which she wanted to see with him that afternoon, asked him about the work he had done to-day, and if he had given a thought to her now and then between his crusty old books, and altogether gave evidence of such childlike and implicit confidence in his love and faith, such utter absence of suspicion as to possible rocks ahead, that that which he had it in his mind to do seemed almost like a stab in the dark.  His mental suffering was so poignant as to be visibly reflected in his countenance, and Pilar interrupted her lively flow of talk to ask anxiously: 

“What is the matter with you to-day, darling?  Don’t you feel well?”

He took his courage in both hands, and answered with another question: 

“Tell me, Pilar, did you really trump up a story about me?  That I was a celebrated doctor and member of Parliament, and the future President of the German Republic?”

She flashed, but tried to laugh off her embarrassment.  “Oh, it was only a harmless little romance to amuse myself.  You could be all that if you liked, I am sure, you are ever so much cleverer than these puppets—­” She stopped short in the middle of the sentence as she caught sight of the menacing frown upon his face, drew her chair with a rapid movement close to his, and said, in her most humble and insinuating tones, “Dearest, are you vexed with me?”

“Yes, for it is a humiliating, and beside which, a totally unnecessary invention, and lays me open to the worst construction.”