Page 198 - of-human-bondage-

Chinaman, with his yellow skin and flat nose, and his little
pig’s eyes! That’s what made it so horrible. It filled one with
disgust to think of it.
‘Bitte, bitte,’ said Cacilie, with a rapid intake of the breath.
‘I won’t listen to anything against him.’
‘But it’s not serious?’ gasped Frau Erlin.
‘I love him. I love him. I love him.’
‘Gott im Himmel!’
The Frau Professor stared at her with horrified surprise;
she had thought it was no more than naughtiness on the
child’s part, and innocent, folly. but the passion in her voice
revealed everything. Cacilie looked at her for a moment
with flaming eyes, and then with a shrug of her shoulders
went out of the room.
Frau Erlin kept the details of the interview to herself,
and a day or two later altered the arrangement of the table.
She asked Herr Sung if he would not come and sit at her end,
and he with his unfailing politeness accepted with alacrity.
Cacilie took the change indifferently. But as if the discovery
that the relations between them were known to the whole
household made them more shameless, they made no se-
cret now of their walks together, and every afternoon quite
openly set out to wander about the hills. It was plain that
they did not care what was said of them. At last even the
placidity of Professor Erlin was moved, and he insisted
that his wife should speak to the Chinaman. She took him
aside in his turn and expostulated; he was ruining the girl’s
reputation, he was doing harm to the house, he must see
how wrong and wicked his conduct was; but she was met

1