“You must stay some days now in Frankfort,” said Gemma: “why should you hurry away? It would be no nicer in any other town.” She paused. “It wouldn’t, really,” she added with a smile. Sanin made no reply, and reflected that considering the emptiness of his purse, he would have no choice about remaining in Frankfort till he got an answer from a friend in Berlin, to whom he proposed writing for money. “Yes, do stay,” urged Frau Lenore too. “We will introduce you to Mr. Karl Klüber, who is engaged to Gemma. He could not come to-day, as he was very busy at his shop … you must have seen the biggest draper’s and silk mercer’s shop in the _Zeile_. Well, he is the manager there. But he will be delighted to call on you himself.” Sanin—heaven knows why—was slightly disconcerted by this piece of information. “He’s a lucky fellow, that fiancé!” flashed across his mind. He looked at Gemma, and fancied he detected an ironical look in her eyes. He began saying good-bye. “Till to-morrow? Till to-morrow, isn’t it?” queried Frau Lenore. “Till to-morrow!” Gemma declared in a tone not of interrogation, but of affirmation, as though it could not be otherwise. “Till to-morrow!” echoed Sanin. Emil, Pantaleone, and the poodle Tartaglia accompanied him to the corner of the street. Pantaleone could not refrain from expressing his displeasure at Gemma’s reading. “She ought to be ashamed! She mouths and whines, _una caricatura_! She ought to represent Merope or Clytemnaestra—something grand, tragic—and she apes some wretched German woman! I can do that … _merz, kerz, smerz_,” he went on in a hoarse voice poking his face forward, and brandishing his fingers. Tartaglia began barking at him, while Emil burst out laughing. The old man turned sharply back. Sanin went back to the White Swan (he had left his things there in the public hall) in a rather confused frame of mind. All the talk he had had in French, German, and Italian was ringing in his ears. “Engaged!” he whispered as he lay in bed, in the modest apartment assigned to him. “And what a beauty! But what did I stay for?” Next day he sent a letter to his friend in Berlin. VIII He had not finished dressing, when a waiter announced the arrival of two gentlemen. One of them turned out to be Emil; the other, a good-looking and well-grown young man, with a handsome face, was Herr Karl Klüber, the betrothed of the lovely Gemma.