“This… this home that she wants to set up. Quite passionate she seems about these rather unfortunate girls"

Two perfectly good ways of getting to exactly the same place, albeit from the opposite direction, Felix thinks as he looks up at the double staircase in the Von Albrecht home. The height of modern style, perhaps, a celebration of symmetry — but he prefers his own home: small but without airs and graces.

The drawing room is on the first floor, and when a servant ushers him to follow, Felix cannot help but take the opposite staircase and meet him in the center.

He’s announced in the drawing room. Joachim, lolling in a corner chair with a cigarette in one hand and a newspaper in the other, looks up at him with some irritation. Felix steps forward.

“I do apologize for interrupting your dinner.”

“You have not interrupted. My father brooks no interruptions, and I agree with his policy. I am merely relaxing over the day’s politics.”

Felix nods. “Wolf sent me here. There is an article he is considering printing in his paper.”

He holds out the carefully typed pages. Joachim motions him to sit. He leans back as he reads. Felix watches the man’s eyes traveling across the page, inching down the paper.

Joachim’s face gives nothing away, even when he reaches two-thirds of the way down the second page, where Felix lets his pen run loose as he condemns a society that allows this travesty to take place.

At last, Joachim looks up. He crumples the pages in his fist.

It is just a tiny loss, but a loss nonetheless.

“No,” Joachim says. He shakes his head. “I do not know why he even considered it.”

“Can you explain your decision?”

Joachim cocks his head to the side. “Are you a messenger or an interested party?”

“An interested party.”

Joachim looks at him and his forehead creases into a question. “Ah, this has become a family affair, has it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Has Mama gone back to the shtetl and adopted a stray maiden?”

“No,” Felix says stiffly. My aunt came back from Turkey with a stray maiden. He says nothing. If he were more of a society man, more polished, less uptight, he’d be able to treat the man as a friend. For now, he’s simply glad that he never gained him as a brother-in-law. Although these sentiments will not help him smooth the way to receiving the man’s permission.

Joachim walks over to the writing desk that sits under a huge oil painting of his father. He unrolls the top of the desk and takes out a letter. From where he stands, Felix can merely see that it is covered in large script. A woman’s hand.

“A missive received, interestingly enough, this morning. From none other than your sister.”