“Claim? Why? How do you mean? Oh, I see. No, no. It’s the way things are in our business. The feller to whom you give your money, he protects you, and the others mind him. If he’s strong and has many friends you’re safe. They’re all rotten, but you got no choice. You get no rest day or night, and your flesh gets tired, I can tell you.” “I can imagine that,” Christian replied, and for a second looked into Karen’s round and lightless eyes, “and for that reason I wanted to put myself at your disposal. I shall leave Hamburg either to-day or to-morrow, and probably stay in Berlin for some months. I am ready to take you with me. But you must not delay your decision, because I have not yet any address in Berlin, I don’t know yet where I shall live, and if a plan like this is delayed it is usually not carried out at all. At the moment you have eluded your pursuer, and so the opportunity to escape is good. You don’t need to send for your things. I can get you whatever you need when we arrive.” Those words, spoken with real friendliness, did not have the effect which Christian expected. Karen Engelschall could not realize the simplicity and frankness of their intention. A mocking suspicion arose in her mind. She knew of Vice Crusaders and Preachers of Salvation; and these men her world as a rule fears as much as it does the emissaries of the police. But she looked at Christian more sharply, and an instinct told her that she was on the wrong track. Clumsily considering, she drifted to other suppositions that had a tinge of cheap romance. She thought of plots and kidnapping and a possible fate more terrible than that under the heel of her old tormentor. She brooded over these thoughts in haste and rage, with convulsed features and clenched fist, passing from fear to hope and from hope to distrust, and yet, even as on the day before, compelled by something irresistible, a force from which she could not withdraw and which made her struggles futile. “What do you want to do with me?” she asked, and gave him a penetrating glance. Christian considered in order to weigh his answer carefully. “Nothing but what I have told you.” She became silent and stared at her hands. “My mother lives in Berlin,” she murmured. “Maybe you’d want me to go back to her. I don’t want to.” “You are to go with me.” Christian’s tone was firm and almost hard. His chest filled with breath and exhaled the air painfully. The final word had been spoken. Karen looked at him again. But now her eyes were serious and awake to reality. “And what shall I do when I’m with you?” Christian answered hesitatingly: “I’ve come to no decision about that. I must think it over.” Karen folded her hands. “But I’ve got to know who you are.” He spoke his name. “I am a pregnant woman,” she said with a sombre look, and for the first time her voice trembled, “a street-walker who’s pregnant. Do you know that? I’m the lowest and vilest thing in the whole world! Do you know that?”