"Since the day I first met you at Norah's," he said,
simply.
I stared at him, aghast, my ever-present sense of
humor struggling to the surface. "Not--not on that day
when you came into the room where I sat in the chair by
the window, with a flowered quilt humped about my
shoulders! And a fever-sore twisting my mouth! And my
complexion the color of cheese, and my hair plastered
back from my forehead, and my eyes like boiled onions!"
"Thank God for your gift of laughter," Von Gerhard
said, and took my hand in his for one brief moment before
he turned and walked away.
Quite prosaically I opened the big front door at
Knapfs' to find Herr Knapf standing in the hallway with
his:
"Nabben', Frau Orme."
And there was the sane and soothing scent of
Wienerschnitzel and spluttering things in the air. And
I ran upstairs to my room and turned on all the lights
and looked at the starry-eyed creature in the mirror.
Then I took the biggest, newest photograph of Norah from
the mantel and looked at her for a long, long minute,
while she looked back at me in her brave true way.
"Thank you, dear," I said to her. "Thank you. Would
you think me stagey and silly if I were to kiss you, just
once, on your beautiful trusting eyes?"
A telephone bell tinkled downstairs and Herr Knapf
stationed himself at the foot of the stairs and roared my
name.
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