Night Games: And Other Stories and Novellas by Arthur Schnitzler Page A

friendly manner but without any noticeable emotion. He bent
over the hand as though he were about to kiss it, but she withdrew it at
once.
    "Do sit down, Lieutenant. To what do I owe this pleasure?" She offered him a comfortable chair while she herself took her apparently customary place on a straight-backed chair behind the long table with the
business ledgers opposite him. Willi felt as though he were in a lawyer's
or a doctor's office. "What can I do for you?" she asked now in an almost
impatient tone which did not sound very encouraging.
    "Madame," Willi began, after slightly clearing his throat, "I must
begin by telling you that it was definitely not my uncle who gave me
your address."
    She looked up at him in astonishment. "Your uncle?"
    "My uncle Robert Wilram," Willi replied, with emphasis.
    "Oh, of course," she smiled and looked down.
    "He knows absolutely nothing of this visit," Willi continued more
rapidly. "I want to emphasize that." And at her astonished glance, he
added, "I really haven't seen him for a long time, but that wasn't my
fault. Only today, in the course of conversation, he told me that he-had
married in the meantime."
    Leopoldine nodded her head in a friendly manner. "A cigarette,
Lieutenant?" She indicated an open box. He helped himself, and she lit it
for him and then lit one for herself as well. "Well! So may I finally know
to what I owe the pleasure of-"
    "Madame, my visit to you has to do with the same circumstance
that led me-to my uncle. A rather-embarrassing matter, as I'm sorry to
have to admit at once"-and since her expression immediately darkened noticeably, he hastily added, "I don't want to take too much of your time,
madam. So, without further preliminaries: I would like to request that
you-advance me a certain sum for three months."

    Strangely enough, her demeanor immediately became more amiable. "Your confidence in me is extremely flattering, Lieutenant," she
said as she tapped the ashes off the end of her cigarette, "though I really
don't know to what I owe this honor. But may I ask what the amount in
question is?" She drummed her pince-nez lightly on the table.
    "Eleven thousand gulden, madam." He immediately regretted that
he hadn't said twelve. He was just about to correct himself when it occurred to him that the consul might be satisfied with ten thousand, and so
he left it at eleven.
    "So," said Leopoldine, "eleven thousand. Hmm, that really is `a
certain sum.' " Her tongue played against her teeth. "And what security
can you offer me, Lieutenant?"
    "I'm an officer, madam!"
    She smiled-almost benevolently. "I beg your pardon, Lieutenant,
but in business matters that doesn't suffice as security. Who would be
willing to answer for you?"
    Willi remained silent and looked at the floor. A curt refusal would
not have embarrassed him more than this cool politeness. "I beg your
pardon, madam," he said. "It's true that I haven't thought enough about
the formal aspect of the matter. As it happens, I find myself in a truly desperate position. It concerns a debt of honor, which has to be paid tomorrow by eight o'clock in the morning. Otherwise my honor is lost
and-everything that is lost along with that among us officers." And.
imagining that he now saw a glimmer of sympathy in her eyes, he told
her, just as he had told his uncle an hour before, though in more elegant
and moving phrases, the story of the previous night. She listened with
ever increasing evidence of sympathy, even of pity. And as he finished,
she asked with a promising lift of her eyes, "And I-I, Willi, am the only
person on earth to whom you can go in this emergency?"
    These words, and even more her use of the intimate form of "you,"
encouraged him. He already believed himself saved. "Would I be here
otherwise?" he said. "I really have no one else!"

    She shook her head sympathetically. "That makes it all the more
painful for me," she answered, slowly extinguishing her still glowing