Niels Heinrich stood quite still for a while, and a green rage seethed in his eyes. “Is that so?” he said finally. The gentleman wanted to liquidate the firm now, did he? First take a poor, stupid wench and trick her out and make a fool of her year in and year out, and then, when she was gone, not even put up something decent for her mourning family. Well, the gentleman needn’t think he’d get off so cheaply as long as he, Niels Heinrich, was on deck. And if the gentleman didn’t come across with a good pile of shekels, he’d live to see something that’d surprise him; he’d find out, so sure’s his name was Niels Heinrich Engelschall. He laughed a short harsh laugh and spread out his legs. “I know who you are, and I’m not afraid of you,” said Christian, with an almost cheerful expression. Niels Heinrich was taken aback. His glance, which had grown unsteady, fell upon Christian’s delicate, narrow, cultivated hands. Suddenly he looked at his own hands, holding them out and spreading the fingers apart. This gesture interested Christian immensely, though he could not account for the source of his interest. The whole man fascinated him suddenly from a point of view which he had never before assumed; and it was solely due to this curious gesture. Niels Heinrich observed this and was startled anew. Was that all, he asked, that the gentleman had to say? His mood was menacing now. The gentleman could speak fine High German, he went on, that was sure. But if necessary, he, Niels Heinrich, could do as much. Why not? But if a man was a man of family, and especially of a family where they breed millions the way common folks breed rabbits--well, it was shabby to try to sneak off like a cheat in an inn. He wasn’t going to insist on the pearls, although he didn’t like to decide how much of a pretence and a hypocrisy this story of lending them was. No gentleman would do such things. But some compensation--he did demand that, he’d insist on it, he owed that to his own honour; and his late sister, if the truth were known, would have expected that much. Again he regarded his hands. Christian looked at him attentively, and replied: “You are mistaken in this too. I have no money at my disposal. My liberty of action, so far as money is concerned, is more restricted than your own, more so than that of any one who earns his bread by his own work.” He interrupted himself as he observed Niels Heinrich’s incredulously jeering smile. The spiritual vulgarity in that smile was overwhelming.