The office was a small affair of glass partitions, and I could see as well as hear all that took place. I wasn't consciously eavesdropping at first, and later when I must confess to a certain eagerness of ear and eye, I had the excuse that it would have been impossible for me to move away without creating a distinctly awkward situation. So I sat there quiet and still, hardly daring even to smoke lest the smell of the cigar should drift across into the hall and betray me. For he was proposing to her! There in that little hotel-office, with his face as pale as chalk and his voice half-trembling, he was asking her to marry him! At first he spoke in German, but after a short while relapsed into stammering staccato English. Most men, when they propose, are doubtless optimists--not only about the proposal, but about themselves and the world in general. But Terry wasn't an optimist. The whole business would have been just comic, if one had allowed oneself to see the joke of it. He informed her in a series of short sentences that he was entirely ineligible--he had no money, and poorish prospects, and it might and probably would be years before he could afford to marry her. Altogether he was a pretty hopeless sort of suitor, and he even reminded her that she could always give him up if she had the good sense to change her mind while there was yet time. All he wanted, apparently, was a vague assurance that some day, if and when he could afford it, and if and when she wished, she would marry him. While he was talking in this stumbling, sorrowful way, she was all the time sitting at her desk, pen in hand, looking up at him. She didn't say a word; she let him talk on, and then, when he had said everything, she just lifted up her hands and arms and pulled him down to her. I never saw anything so swift and sudden. A second afterwards she was in his arms and kissing him.... Where I was I could feel the sharp slackening of tension as they clung together. And then, after the ecstasy of that first embrace, she seemed to recover a certain self-protective calmness; she was the business woman again, chary of committing herself. "Terry," she whispered, "you must not ask me for an answer now. It would not be possible after this.... To-morrow I will give it you--when I have thought it over calmly...." He didn't protest. He didn't seem to care greatly whether she gave him an answer or not. His mind and body were reeling; he could only stammer: "Oh, Mizzi--Mizzi----" He threw himself into a chair and buried his face in his hands, and she stooped over him like a mother over a child. It was unbearable, somehow, to be spying on them then. I took the risk of tip-toeing out of the room and across to the foot of the staircase. They neither saw nor heard. And it was later--much later--when he came up to bed. XIII Monday....