He shrugged his shoulders. "An excuse, _gnädige Frau_, an excuse! I know the opinions of your husband’s class too well not to know perfectly what you prefer not to tell me. In any case, your considerations are a little belated. You should have thought of all that before you allowed your brother to enter into a circle"—he echoed her words with a kind of mocking satisfaction—"in which he could not sustain his position." Nora started. She knew now that there was a menace in this man’s looks and words. She understood that he would never have acted as he had done without the sure conviction that the power was in his hands. What that power was she did not know—she only knew that she was afraid. "Sit down, _gnädige Frau_," he went on more calmly. "You look pale, and I have something of importance to tell you. But before everything, I want you to believe that I come to you as your friend." He motioned her to be seated in the chair which he had pushed towards her, and she obeyed him passively. A sharply defined recollection of their first meeting came back to her as she did so. Then, too, he had acted with the insolent assurance of a man who knows himself master of the situation; but then she had had the power of her independence. Now she felt herself bound, helpless in the bonds of circumstance—and her own folly. "It is of your brother I have come to speak," Bauer went on, taking his place before her. "Nothing should prove my friendship better than the fact that I have come in spite of the rebuff to which I knew I should lay myself open. But I could not see the crisis break over you without a word of warning—without offering you a helping hand." She looked at him in mingled astonishment and anger. His familiarity was more terrible to her than his previous tone of menacing resentment. "I do not understand you," she said coldly. "Perhaps not. But you must surely be aware that your brother has not been living the most austere of lives since his arrival in Berlin. It may be that I am a little to blame. I thought by the way he talked that he could well afford it, and encouraged him to share my life with me. Well, it appears now that he bragged more than circumstances justified. I do not speak of the money he owes me nor his gambling-debts to my friends. Those I have already paid. It was not pleasant for me to be associated with a defaulting gambler, and what I did I did for my own sake. I ask no thanks or credit for it. But there are other matters." He had undone the buttons of his military coat, and drew out a folded sheet of paper, which he laid before her. "That is a rough list of your brother’s creditors, with the amounts attached," he said. "You will see for yourself that he has understood the art of amusing himself."