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+Project Gutenberg's Countess Erika's Apprenticeship, by Ossip Schubin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Countess Erika's Apprenticeship
+
+Author: Ossip Schubin
+
+Translator: A. L. Wister
+
+Release Date: March 8, 2011 [EBook #35531]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COUNTESS ERIKA'S APPRENTICESHIP ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provide by Google Books
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+ 1. Page scan source:
+ http://books.google.com/books?id=1hUtAAAAYAAJ
+
+ 2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ MRS. A. L. WISTER'S
+
+ Popular Translations from the German.
+
+ 12mo. Attractively Bound in Cloth.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ "O THOU, MY AUSTRIA!" By Ossip Schubin. $1.25
+ ERLACH COURT. By Ossip Schubin. 1.25
+ THE ALPINE FAY. By E. Werner. 1.25
+ THE OWL'S NEST. By E. Marlitt. 1.25
+ PICKED UP IN THE STREETS. By H. Schobert. 1.25
+ SAINT MICHAEL. By E. Werner. 1.25
+ VIOLETTA. By Ursula Zöge von Manteuffel. 1.25
+ THE LADY WITH THE RUBIES. By E. Marlitt. 1.25
+ VAIN FOREBODINGS. By E. Oswald. 1.25
+ A PENNILESS GIRL. By W. Heimburg. 1.25
+ QUICKSANDS. By Adolph Streckfuss. 1.50
+ BANNED AND BLESSED. By E. Werner. 1.50
+ A NOBLE NAME. By Claire von Glümer 1.50
+ FROM HAND TO HAND. By Golo Raimund 1.50
+ SEVERA. By E. Hartner 1.50
+ THE EICHHOFS. By Moritz von Reichenbach. 1.50
+ A NEW RACE. By Golo Raimund. 1.25
+ CASTLE HOHENWALD. By Adolph Streckfuss. 1.50
+ MARGARETHE. By E. Juncker. 1.50
+ TOO RICH. By Adolph Streckfuss. 1.50
+ A FAMILY FEUD. By Ludwig Harder. 1.25
+ THE GREEN GATE. By Ernst Wichert. 1.50
+ ONLY A GIRL. By Wilhelmina von Hillern. 1.50
+ WHY DID HE NOT DIE? By Ad. von Volckhausen. 1.50
+ HULDA; or, The Deliverer. By F. Lewald. 1.50
+ THE BAILIFF'S MAID. By E. Marlitt 1.25
+ IN THE SCHILLINGSCOURT. By E. Marlitt. 1.50
+ AT THE COUNCILLOR'S. By E. Marlitt. 1.50
+ THE SECOND WIFE. By E. Marlitt. 1.50
+ THE OLD MAM'SELLE'S SECRET. By E. Marlitt. 1.50
+ GOLD ELSIE. By E. Marlitt. 1.50
+ COUNTESS GISELA. By E. Marlitt. 1.50
+ THE LITTLE MOORLAND PRINCESS. By E. Marlitt. 1.50
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ _J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY_,
+ _Publishers_,
+ _715 and 717 Market Street, Philadelphia, Pa_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ COUNTESS ERIKA'S
+
+ APPRENTICESHIP
+
+
+
+ TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
+ OF
+ OSSIP SCHUBIN
+ AUTHOR OF "O THOU, MY AUSTRIA!" ETC.
+
+
+
+ BY
+ MRS. A. L. WISTER
+
+
+
+
+ PHILADELPHIA
+ J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
+ 1891
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ * * * * *
+ Copyright, 1891, by J. B. Lippincott Company
+ * * * * *
+ _All rights reserved_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ Printed By J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.
+
+
+
+
+ PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+A friend returning from a stroll round the globe brought back an odd
+volume of my work picked up in San Francisco, translated without my
+leave, but proving by its very existence that the American reading
+world take a certain interest in my show and its puppets.
+
+Though in a certain sense these unauthorized editions are a picking of
+the author's pocket, yet I must confess that I felt rather flattered.
+
+Every one possessing any feeling for modernism must highly prize what
+American art and American literature have done and are doing for the
+directness, vividness, and intensity of presentation to our eyes or our
+imagination either of outward objects or the silent workings of
+character and inner sensations.
+
+The rapidity and intensity of picturing frequently remind us of an
+electric shock.
+
+We Old World folk take life, to a certain degree, more at our leisure,
+but nevertheless every real artist follows the great direction that has
+seized all our contemporary being.
+
+Directness of truth, vividness and intensity of presentation, exact
+rendering of impression, are the means by which we seek to produce
+life; life itself is the object, but I am afraid that to the end the
+life-giving spark will defy analysis.
+
+Let me hope that the figures whose woes and weal my reader will follow
+through these pages may be half as alive to him as they have been to
+me; and let me hope, likewise, that when he closes the volume we may
+have become fast friends.
+
+I cannot let this opportunity pass without thanking Mrs. Wister most
+heartily for her faithful and picturesque rendering of my story.
+
+What a rare delight it is to an author to find himself so admirably
+rendered and so perfectly understood only those can feel that have
+undergone the acute misery of seeing their every thought mangled, their
+every sentence massacred, as common translations will mangle and
+massacre word and thought.
+
+Therefore let every writer thank Providence, if he find an artist like
+Mrs. Wister willing to put herself to the trouble of following his
+intentions, and of clothing his ideas in so brilliant a garb.
+
+It is only natural, therefore, that, having been lucky enough to find
+so rare a translator, I should authorize the translation to the
+absolute exclusion of any other.
+
+So, hoping it may find favour in the eyes of my transatlantic readers,
+I should like to shake hands with them at parting and say good-bye with
+the Old World saw, "_Auf Wiedersehen_."
+
+ Ossip Schubin.
+
+
+
+
+
+ COUNTESS ERIKA'S
+ APPRENTICESHIP.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Baron von Strachinsky reclined upon a lounge in his smoking-room,
+recovering from the last pecuniary calamity which he had brought upon
+himself. The fact was, he had built a sugar-factory in a tract of
+country where the nearest approach to a sugar-beet that could be found
+was a carrot on a manure-heap, and his enterprise had been followed by
+the natural result.
+
+He bore his misfortune with exemplary fortitude, and beguiled the time
+with a sentimental novel upon the cover of which was portrayed a lady
+wringing her hands in presence of a military man drinking champagne. At
+times he wept over this fiction, at others he dozed over it and was at
+peace.
+
+This he called submitting with dignity to the mysterious decrees of
+destiny, and he looked upon himself as a martyr.
+
+His wife was not at home. Whilst he reposed thus in melancholy
+self-admiration, she was devoting herself to the humiliating occupation
+of visiting in turn one and another of her wealthy relatives, begging
+of them the loan of funds necessary for the furtherance of her
+husband's brilliant scheme.
+
+"It is very sad, but 'tis the fault of circumstances," sighed the Baron
+when his thoughts wandered from his book to his absent wife, and for a
+moment he would cover his eyes with his hand.
+
+It was near the end of August, and the asters were beginning to bloom.
+Cheerful industry reigned throughout the village. The Baron indeed
+complained of the failure of the harvest, but this he did of every
+harvest the proceeds of which were insufficient to cover the interest
+of his numerous debts: the peasantry, who by no means exacted so high a
+rate of profit from their meadows and pasture-lands, were happy and
+content, and the stubble-fields were already dotted with hayricks.
+
+Outside in the garden a little girl in a worn and faded frock was
+playing funeral: she was interring her canary, which she had found
+dead in its cage. She was very sad: the bird had been her best friend.
+No one paid her any attention. Her mother was away, and the
+Englishwoman whose duty it was to superintend her education was just
+now occupied in company with the bailiff, an ambitious young man
+desirous of improving his knowledge of languages, in studying the
+working of a new mowing-machine. From time to time the child glanced
+through the open door of the principal entrance to the castle into a
+rather bare hall, its floor paved with red tiles and its high vaulted
+walls whitewashed and adorned with stags' horns of all sizes. The Baron
+von Strachinsky had bought these last in one lot at an auction, but he
+had long cherished the conviction that they all came from his forest.
+He had a decided taste for fine, high-sounding expressions, always
+designating his wood as his 'forest,' his estate as his 'domain,' and
+his garden as his 'park.'
+
+A charwoman with a flat, red, perspiring face, and a knot of thin
+bristling hair at the back of her head, from which her yellow cotton
+kerchief had slipped down upon her neck, was shuffling upon hands and
+knees, her high kilted skirts leaving her red legs quite bare, over the
+tiles of the hall, rubbing away at the dirt and footmarks with a wisp
+of straw, while the steam of hot soapy water rose from the wooden
+bucket beside her.
+
+The little girl outside had just planted a row of pink asters upon the
+grave, which she had dug with a pewter spoon, and had filled up duly,
+when the scratching of the wisp of straw suddenly ceased.
+
+A young fellow was standing in the hall,--very young, scarcely sixteen,
+and with a portfolio under his arm. His garb was that of a journeyman
+mechanic, but his bearing had in it something of distinction, and his
+face was delicately modelled, very pale, with large dark eyes, almost
+black, gleaming below the brown curls of his hair. The same class of
+countenance is frequently seen among the Neapolitan boys who sell
+Seville oranges in Rome; but such eyes as this lad had are seen at most
+only two or three times in a lifetime.
+
+The child in the garden looked with evident satisfaction at the young
+fellow. Apparently he had come into the castle through the back
+entrance,--the one used by servants and beggars.
+
+The charwoman wiped her red hands upon her apron and knocked at one of
+the doors opening into the hall. She was a new-comer, and did not know
+that the Baron von Strachinsky was never disturbed upon any ordinary
+pretext.
+
+She knocked several times. At last a sleepy, ill-humoured voice said,
+"What is it?"
+
+"Your Grace, a young gentleman: he wants to speak to your Grace."
+
+With eyes but half open, and the pattern of the embroidered cushion
+upon which he had been sleeping stamped upon his cheek, the Baron von
+Strachinsky came out into the hall.
+
+He was of middle height; his face had once been handsome, but was now
+red and bloated with excessive good living; he was slightly bald, and
+wore thick brown side-whiskers. His dress was a combination of
+slovenliness and foppery. He wore scarlet Turkish slippers, trodden
+down at heel, gray trousers, and a soiled dark-blue smoking-jacket with
+red facings and buttons.
+
+"What do you want?" he roared, in a rage at being disturbed for so
+slight a cause.
+
+The young fellow shrank from him, murmuring in a hoarse, tremulous
+voice, the voice of a very young man growing fast and but scantily
+nourished, "I am on my way home."
+
+"What's that to me?" Strachinsky thundered, not without some excuse for
+his indignation.
+
+The youth flushed scarlet. Shyly and awkwardly he held out his
+portfolio to the sleepy Baron. Evidently it contained drawings, which
+he would like to sell but had not the courage to show.
+
+"Give him an alms!" Herr von Strachinsky shouted to the cook, who,
+hearing the noise, had hurried into the hall; then, turning to the
+scrubbing-woman, who was standing beside her steaming bucket, her
+toothless jaws wide open in dismay, he went on: "If you ever again dare
+for the sake of a wretched vagabond of a house-painter's apprentice to
+deprive me of the few moments of repose which I contrive to snatch from
+my wretched and tormented existence, I'll dismiss you on the spot!"
+With which he retired to his room, banging to the door behind him.
+
+The cook offered the lad two kreutzers. His hand--a long, slender,
+boyish hand, almost transparent--shook, as he angrily threw the money
+upon the floor and departed.
+
+The little girl in the garden had been watching the scene attentively.
+Her delicate frame trembled with indignation, as she rose, and, with
+arms hanging at her sides and small fists clinched in a somewhat
+dramatic attitude, fixed her eyes upon the door behind which the Baron
+had disappeared. She had very bright eyes for a child of nine years,
+and a very penetrating glance, a glance by no means friendly to the
+Baron. Thus she stood for a minute gazing at the door, then put her
+arms akimbo, frowned, and reflected. Before long she shrugged her
+shoulders with an air of precocious intelligence, deserted the
+newly-made grave, and hurried into the house, and to the pantry.
+
+The door was open. She looked about her. By strict orders of the Baron,
+in his wife's absence all remains of provisions were hoarded in the
+pantry, although they were seldom of any use. As a consequence of this
+sordid housekeeping the child found a great store of dishes and bowls
+filled with scraps of meat and fish, stale cakes, and fermenting stewed
+apricots. It took her some time to discover what satisfied her,--a cold
+roast pheasant, and some pieces of tempting almond-cake left over from
+the last meal. These she packed in a basket with a flask of wine that
+had been opened, a tumbler, knife and fork, and a clean napkin. She
+decorated the basket with pink asters, and hurried out of the back
+door, intent upon playing the part of beneficent fairy.
+
+Deep down in her heart there was a vein of romance which contrasted
+oddly with the keen good sense already gleaming in her bright childish
+eyes.
+
+She ran until she was quite out of breath, searching vainly for her
+handsome vagabond. Should she inquire of some one if a young man with a
+portfolio under his arm had passed along the road? Her heart beat; she
+felt a little shy. From a distance the warm summer breeze wafted
+towards her the notes of a foreign air clearly whistled, and she
+directed her steps towards the spot whence it seemed to proceed.
+
+There! yes, there----
+
+Beside the road rippled a little brook on its way to the rushing stream
+beyond the village, a brook so narrow that a twelve-year-old school-boy
+could easily have jumped across it. Nevertheless the Baron von
+Strachinsky had thought best to span it with a magnificent three-arched
+stone bridge. In the shade thrown by this monumental structure, for the
+erection of which the Baron had vainly hoped to be decorated by his
+sovereign, the lad was crouching. He was even paler than before, and
+there were traces of tears on his cheeks, but all the same he whistled
+on with forced gaiety, as one does whistle when one has nothing to eat
+and hopes to forget his hunger.
+
+The little girl felt like crying. He looked up and directly at her.
+Overcome by sudden shyness, she stood for a moment as if rooted to the
+spot; then, awkwardly offering her basket, she stammered, "Will you
+have it?" When he did not answer she simply set the basket down before
+him, and in her confusion would have avoided all explanations by
+running away.
+
+But a warm young hand detained her firmly and kindly. "Did you come
+from there?" the lad asked, pointing to the castle. "Who sent you?"
+
+His voice was agreeable, and his address that of a well-born youth.
+
+"No one knows that I came," she answered, in confusion, and seeing that
+he frowned discontentedly at this, she added hastily, by way of excuse,
+"But if mamma had been at home she certainly would have sent me; she
+never lets a beggar leave the house without giving him something to
+eat."
+
+At the word 'beggar' he turned away, whereupon she began to cry loudly,
+so loudly that he had to laugh. "But what are you crying for?" he
+asked; and she replied, in desperation, "I am crying because you will
+not eat anything."
+
+"Indeed! is that all you are crying for?"
+
+"Yes. Oh, do eat something,--do!" she sobbed.
+
+"Well, since it is to gratify you so hugely," he replied, in a
+bantering tone; "but sit down beside me and help me." He looked full
+into her eyes with his careless, merry smile, then took her tiny hand
+in his and pressed his full, warm lips upon it twice.
+
+She was greatly pleased by this courteous homage, and perhaps by the
+caress, for it was seldom that anything of the kind fell to her share.
+She had fully decided that the young fellow was no mechanic, but a
+prince in disguise, and in this exhilarating conviction she sat down
+upon the grass beside him and unpacked her basket. How he seemed to
+enjoy its contents, and how white his teeth were! There were also
+various indications of refinement and good breeding about his manner of
+eating, which would have given a more experienced observer than the
+little enthusiast beside him matter for reflection with regard to his
+rank in life. His portfolio lay beside him. She thrust a slender
+forefinger between its pasteboard covers tied together with green
+cotton strings, and whispered, gravely, "May I look into it?"
+
+"If you would like to," he replied.
+
+With great precision, as if the matter in hand were the unveiling of a
+sacred relic, she untied the strings and opened the portfolio. Her eyes
+opened wide, and an "Oh!" of enthusiastic admiration escaped her lips.
+A wiser critic than the little girl of nine would scarcely have
+accorded the sketches so much approval. They were undoubtedly stiff and
+unfinished. Nevertheless, no genuine lover of art would have passed
+them by without notice, for they indicated a high degree of talent. The
+hand was unskilled, but the lad had eyes to see.
+
+The little girl gazed in rapt admiration. After a while she looked
+gravely up at her new friend, her compassion converted into awe. "Now I
+know what you are,--an artist!"
+
+"Do you think so?" the lad rejoined, flattered by the reverential tone
+in which the word was uttered: meanwhile, he had finished the pheasant,
+and was considerably less pale than before.
+
+"Can you paint everything you see?" she asked, after a short pause.
+
+"I cannot paint anything," he answered, with a sort of merry discontent
+which, now that his hunger was satisfied, characterized his every look
+and movement. "I cannot paint anything," he repeated, with a little
+nod, "but I try to paint everything that I like."
+
+They looked in each other's eyes, he suppressing a laugh, she in some
+distress. At last she blurted out, "Do you not like me at all, then?"
+
+"Shall I paint you?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"What will you give me for it?"
+
+She put her hand in her pocket, and took out a very shabby
+porte-monnaie, a superannuated possession of Herr von Strachinsky's
+which he had given her in a moment of unwonted generosity, and in which
+were five bright silver guilders. "Is that enough?" she asked.
+
+"I will not take money," he replied.
+
+She had been guilty of another stupidity. She was bitterly conscious of
+it, and so, to justify herself, she put on an air of great wisdom. "You
+are a very queer artist," she admonished him, "not to take money for
+your pictures. No wonder you nearly starve."
+
+He took the hand which held the five despised silver coins, and kissed
+it three times.
+
+"I do take money for my pictures," he declared, "but not from you: I
+will draw your picture with all my heart."
+
+"For nothing?"
+
+"No: you must give me a kiss for it. Will you?" He watched her without
+seeming to look at her. Again the insinuating, roguish smile hovered
+upon his lips,--a charming smile, which he must have inherited from
+some kind, light-hearted woman.
+
+She was not quite sure of the rectitude of her conduct, her heart
+throbbed almost as if she were on the verge of some compact with Satan,
+but finally, "If you will not do it without," she said, with a sigh,
+plucking at her hands,--very pretty hands, neglected though they were.
+
+He nodded gaily. "All right."
+
+Then he made her sit down on the grass opposite him, unpacked his tin
+colour-case, fastened a piece of rough gray paper upon the cover of his
+portfolio, and began.
+
+She sat very still, very grave, her feet stretched out straight in
+front of her, supporting herself upon both hands. Around them breathed
+the soft August air, the glowing summer sunshine sparkled on the
+translucent waters of the little brook above which the stone bridge
+displayed its pompous proportions, while upon the banks grew hundreds
+of blue forget-me-nots, and yellow water-lilies bloomed among the
+trunks of the old willows, which here and there showed gaping wounds in
+their bark, from which meadow daisies were sprouting and, with the
+silvery willow leaves, showing softly gray against the green background
+of the gentle ascent of the pasture-land. The brook murmured dreamily,
+and from the distance came the rhythmic beat of the threshers' flails.
+Steam threshing-machines were not then in general use.
+
+Both were mute,--he in the warmth of his youthful artistic enthusiasm,
+she with expectation.
+
+Suddenly the shrill tinkle of a bell broke the quiet. "That is the
+dinner-bell!" the little girl exclaimed, springing up with an impatient
+shrug. She knew that there could be no more pleasure and liberty for
+her; she would be missed, looked for, and found.
+
+"I must go home," she cried. "Have you finished it?"
+
+"Very nearly, yes."
+
+She ran and looked over his shoulder, breathless with astonishment at
+what she saw upon the gray paper,--a little girl in a very short, faded
+gown, and long red stockings, also much faded, a very slender figure, a
+little round face, a delicate little nose, two grave bright eyes that
+looked out into the world with a startled expression, a short upper
+lip, a round chin, a very fair skin, and shining reddish-brown hair
+which waved long and silky about the narrow childish shoulders and was
+tied at the back of the head with a blue ribbon.
+
+He had unfastened the sketch from the portfolio, and she held it in her
+hands, examining it narrowly. "Is it like?" she asked, and then,
+looking down at herself, she added, "The gown is like, and the
+stockings are like, but the face,--is that like?" She looked up at him
+eagerly.
+
+"I cannot do it any better," he replied, rather ambiguously.
+
+"Oh, you must not be vexed," she made haste to say. "I only wanted to
+know if--how can I tell--if--well, it looks too pretty to me, this
+picture of yours."
+
+He gave her a comical side-glance. "Every artist must flatter a little
+if he wishes to please a lady," was his reply.
+
+"And you give me the picture?" she asked, shyly, after a little pause.
+
+"Why, you ordered it," he replied.
+
+"I--I--thank you," she stammered, then turned away and would have run
+off.
+
+But he was by no means inclined to let her off so easily. "And my pay?"
+he cried, catching her in his arms and clasping her so tightly that her
+little feet were lifted off the daisy-sprinkled turf. "Traitress!" he
+exclaimed, reproachfully.
+
+She blushed scarlet, although she was but just nine years old; she put
+her arm around his neck and kissed him directly upon the mouth; his
+lips were still the lips of a girl. Then she walked away, but she could
+not hasten from the spot; something seemed to stay her steps. She
+paused and looked back.
+
+The lad was busied with packing up his small belongings: all the gaiety
+had vanished from his face, he looked pale and sad again. With her
+heart swelling with pity, she ran back to him.
+
+"You come for your basket," he said, good-naturedly, holding it out to
+her.
+
+"No, it isn't that," she replied, shaking her head, as she put down the
+basket on a willow stump and came close up to him.
+
+In some surprise he smiled down at her. "Something else to ask, my
+little princess?"
+
+"No,--that is----" She plucked him by the sleeve. "See here," she
+began, confused and yet coaxingly, "do not be vexed,--only--I thought
+just now how bad it would be if before you get home you should be
+treated by somebody else as that man treated you,"--she pointed to the
+castle,--"and then--and then--oh, I know so well how dreadful it is to
+have no money. I--please take the guilders: when you are a great artist
+you can give them back to me." And before he knew what she was doing
+she had slipped the porte-monnaie into his coat-pocket.
+
+The tears stood in his eyes; he put his arm around her, and looked at
+her as if to learn her face by heart.
+
+"It might be," he muttered; "perhaps you will bring me luck; I may
+still come to be something; and if you then should be as dear and
+pretty as you are now----" He kissed her upon both eyes.
+
+"Rika!" a shrill voice called from a distance.
+
+"Is that your name?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And what is your last name?"
+
+"My step-father's is Strachinsky. I do not know mine."
+
+"Rika!" the shrill tones sounded nearer.
+
+"And what is your name?" she asked him.
+
+Before he could reply, the fluttering skirts of the English governess
+came in sight: suddenly aroused to a consciousness of her neglected
+duties, she was looking along the road for her charge.
+
+The little girl clasped her picture close and fled.
+
+
+When she reached the house she ran up-stairs to put her precious
+portrait safely away, and then she allowed a clean apron to be put on
+over her faded frock by the agitated Englishwoman,--whose name was in
+fact Sophy Lange, and who had been born in Hamburg of honest German
+parents,--after which she presented herself in the dining-room with an
+assured air as if unconscious of the slightest wrong-doing.
+
+Her step-father received her with a stern reproof, and instantly
+inquired where she had been. She replied, curtly, "To the village;"
+upon which he read her a tremendous lecture upon the enormity of idly
+wandering about the country, addressing at the same time a few
+annihilating remarks to the Englishwoman from Hamburg. He had exchanged
+his bright-blue morning coat for a light summer suit, in which he
+presented a much better appearance. But he was no more pleasing to his
+step-daughter in his light-brown costume than in the blue coat with red
+facings. She paid very little attention to his discourse, but quietly
+went on eating. Miss Sophy, however, shed tears. The Baron von
+Strachinsky impressed her greatly; nay, more, she honoured him as a
+being from a higher sphere. He was popular with women of all ranks,
+from the lowest to the highest,--why, it would be difficult to tell. He
+possessed a certain amount of personal magnetism, but it had no effect
+upon his step-daughter.
+
+They were extraordinarily antipathetic, Strachinsky and his clear-eyed
+little step-daughter. What she took exception to in him was of so
+complex and delicate a nature as to defy explanation in words. What
+annoyed him in her was principally the fact that, in spite of her
+tender age, she saw through him, was quite free of all illusions with
+regard to him.
+
+It always increases our regard for our neighbour if he will but view us
+with flattering eyes. Some few illusions in our behalf we require from
+those around us; they are absolutely necessary to the pleasure of daily
+intercourse. But the demands of Herr von Strachinsky in this respect
+were beyond all reason, while his step-daughter's capacity to comply
+with them was unusually limited.
+
+Dinner progressed as usual: the gentleman continued to admonish, Miss
+Sophy to weep, and little Rika to maintain strict silence, until
+dessert, when Herr von Strachinsky, for whom eating was one of the
+most important occupations in life, inquired after an almond-cake of
+which, as he assured the servant, five pieces had been left from
+breakfast,--yes, five pieces and a little broken one: he had counted
+them.
+
+The servant repaired to the kitchen for information: the cook could
+give none, save that she herself had put the cake away in the pantry,
+whence it had vanished, without a trace, since the morning. Herr von
+Strachinsky was indignant; he accused every servant in the
+establishment of the theft, from the foremost of those employed in the
+house to the lowest stable-boy, and talked of having bars put up at the
+windows. Little Rika let him give full sweep to his anger; she fairly
+gloated over his irritation; at last she remarked, indifferently, "What
+would be the use of bars on the windows, when any one can walk in at
+the door? It is never locked."
+
+"Silence! what do you know about it?" thundered her step-father.
+
+"Oh, I know all about it," the child quietly replied, "and I know what
+became of the cake."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I took it. I carried it out to the painter whom you turned out of the
+house."
+
+Herr von Strachinsky's eyebrows were lifted to a startling extent at
+this confession. "You--ran--after--that house-painter fellow down the
+road?" he asked, with a gasp at each word.
+
+"Yes," the child replied, composedly; "and he was not a house-painter
+fellow, but a young artist, although I should have run after him all
+the same if he had been a house-painter fellow."
+
+"Indeed! And why?" he asked, with a sneer.
+
+She looked him full in the face. "Why? Because you treated him so
+badly, and I was sorry for him."
+
+For a moment he was speechless; then he arose, seized the child by the
+arm, and thrust her out of the door. Without making the least
+resistance, carelessly humming to herself, she ran up the staircase,--a
+staircase that turned an abrupt corner and the worn steps of which
+exhaled an odour of damp decay,--whilst Strachinsky turned to the
+Englishwoman from Hamburg and groaned, "My step-daughter is a positive
+torment. I am firmly persuaded that she will end at the galleys."
+
+The galleys were tolerably far removed from the sphere of the Austrian
+penal code, but Herr von Strachinsky had a predilection for what was
+foreign, and had recently read a novel in which the galleys played a
+prominent part.
+
+Meanwhile, little Erika had betaken herself to the drawing-room, a
+spacious but by no means gorgeous apartment, the furniture of which
+consisted principally of bookcases and a piano. She seated herself at
+this piano, and instantly became absorbed in the study of one of
+Mozart's sonatas, with which she intended to celebrate her mother's
+return. She had a decided talent for music; her slender little fingers
+moved with incredible ease over the keys, and her cheeks, usually
+rather pale, flushed with enthusiasm. It was going very well; she
+stretched out her foot to touch the pedal,--an act which in her opinion
+lent the crowning glory to her musical performance,--when suddenly she
+became aware of a kind of uproar that seemed to fill the house. Dogs
+barked, servants hurried to and fro, a carriage drove up and stopped
+before the castle door. Frau von Strachinsky had returned unexpectedly.
+
+The child hurried down-stairs, just in time to see Strachinsky take his
+wife from the carriage. They kissed each other like lovers,--which
+seemed to produce a disagreeable impression upon the little girl;
+moreover, it occurred to her that she did not know whether she might
+venture forward under existing circumstances. Then she heard her mother
+say, "And where is Rika?"
+
+Without awaiting her step-father's reply, she rushed into her mother's
+arms.
+
+"You look finely, darling," the mother exclaimed, patting her little
+daughter's cheeks. "Have you been a good girl?"
+
+Rika made no reply. Frau von Strachinsky's face took on a sad, troubled
+expression. Strachinsky frowned, and shrugged his shoulders. His wife
+looked from him to the child, who had taken her hand and was about to
+kiss it. "What has she been doing now?" she asked, turning to her
+husband.
+
+"Not to speak of her behaviour towards myself,--behaviour that
+is perfectly unwarrantable,--I repeat, unwarrantable," said
+Strachinsky,--"not to speak of that, the girl has again so far
+forgotten herself as----well, I will tell you about it by and by."
+
+"Tell now!" the child exclaimed. "I'd rather you would tell now!"
+
+"Hush, Miss Impertinence!" Strachinsky ordered her; then, turning to
+his wife, he asked, "Do you bring good news? Is your uncle willing?"
+
+Fran von Strachinsky shook her head sadly. "Unfortunately, no,--not
+quite," she murmured; "but he was very kind; he was enchanted with
+Bobby." Bobby was Rika's step-brother, whom the poor mother had carried
+with her upon her distressing journey, perhaps as some consolation for
+herself, perhaps to soften the hearts of her relatives. He did, indeed,
+seem admirably adapted to this latter purpose, for he was a charming
+little fellow, with a lovely pink-and-white face crowned by brown
+curls, and plump bare arms. His hands at present were filled with toys,
+which he carried to his sister to console her, since he instantly
+perceived that she was in disgrace.
+
+"I cannot understand that," Strachinsky murmured. "I should have
+credited Uncle Nick with a more generous spirit." And he looked sternly
+at his wife, as if she were responsible for the ill success of her
+mission.
+
+She laid her hand gently on his arm and said, "You are an incorrigible
+idealist, my poor Nello: you judge all men by yourself."
+
+And Strachinsky passed his hand over his eyes, and sighed forth
+sentimentally, "Yes, I am an idealist, an incorrigible idealist, a
+perfect Don Quixote."
+
+
+The rest of the afternoon was passed by the pair in the large
+drawing-room, trying to obtain some clear understanding of the state of
+Strachinsky's financial affairs,--a very difficult task.
+
+She, pencil in hand, did the reckoning. He paced the room to and fro
+with a tragic air, and smoked cigarettes. From time to time he uttered
+some effective sentence, such as, "I am unfit for this world!" or, "Of
+course a Marquis Posa like myself!"
+
+She sat quietly contemplating the figures with which the sheet before
+her was filled. Her face grow sad, while her husband's, on the
+contrary, brightened. Since he was succeeding in casting all his cares
+upon her shoulders, he felt quite cheerful.
+
+"I never had the least idea of this ten thousand guilders which you
+tell me you owe," the tortured woman exclaimed, in a sudden access of
+anger.
+
+"No?" her husband rejoined, with easy assurance. "I surely wrote you
+about it; or could the trifle have slipped my memory? Yes, now I
+remember you were with the children at Johannisbad. Löwy came and
+pestered me with its being such a splendid chance,--told me I had no
+right to hold back; and so I bought a hundred shares of Schönfeld.'
+Good heavens! what do I understand of business?--how is such knowledge
+possible for a gentleman? In the army one never learns anything of the
+kind, and what can one do save follow advice? I trust others far too
+readily,--you have always told me so; it is the natural result of the
+magnanimity of my nature. I blame myself for it. I am an Egmont,--a
+perfect Egmont. Poor Egmont! There is nothing left for me but to sigh
+with him, 'Ah, Orange! Orange!'"
+
+Strachinsky imagined that this confession, uttered with an
+indescribably tragic emphasis, would quite reconcile his wife to his
+unfortunate speculation. But, to his great surprise, the anticipated
+result did not ensue. Frau von Strachinsky pushed her thick dark hair
+back from her temples, and exclaimed, "I cannot understand you; you
+promised me so faithfully not to speculate in stocks again."
+
+"But, my dear Emma, the opportunity seemed to me so brilliant a one,
+that I should have thought myself a very scoundrel not to try at
+least----"
+
+"And you see the result."
+
+"When a man acts conscientiously and with the best intentions, he
+should not be reproached, even although his efforts result in failure,"
+he said, pompously. "No, my dear Emma, not a word; do not speak now:
+you will only be sorry for it by and by."
+
+But Emma Strachinsky was not on this occasion to be thus silenced: she
+was indignant, and almost in despair. "You have always acted with the
+'best intentions'!" she exclaimed, hoarse with agitation, "and the
+result of your good intentions will be to beggar my children. Can you
+take it ill if I withhold from you my few farthings, that there may be
+some provision for the children in the future?"
+
+Jagello von Strachinsky looked her over from head to foot. "_Your_ few
+farthings!" he said, with annihilating severity. "What indelicacy!
+Well, I shall steer my course accordingly. Do as you choose in future.
+I have nothing more to say." And, with head haughtily erect, cavalier
+and martyr every inch of him, he stalked from the room.
+
+She looked after him: she had gone too far; again her impulsiveness had
+led her astray. Her heart throbbed; she felt sore with agitation,
+shame, and remorse.
+
+When Erika, towards evening, was playing hide-and-seek with her little
+brother in the garden, she saw her mother and her step-father strolling
+affectionately along the gravel path between the hawthorn bushes. He
+was already rather bald; his limbs were loosely knit; he wore full
+whiskers, and there was a languishing glance in his eyes, but he was
+still handsome, in spite of a dissipated air; she was tall, slender,
+and erect, with large dark eyes, and a pale, noble countenance, that
+could never, however, have been beautiful. They walked close together,
+and to a casual observer presented an ideal picture of happy wedded
+life. And yet when one observed more narrowly--his arm was thrown
+around her shoulder, and he leaned upon her instead of supporting her;
+the swing of his heavy frame, the languishing, sentimental expression
+of his face, everything about him, bespoke a self-satisfied, luxurious
+temperament; while she----in her eyes there was restless anxiety, and
+her figure looked as though it were slowly being bowed to the ground by
+a burden which she was either unable or afraid to shake off.
+
+She walked with a patiently regular step beneath her heavy load.
+Suddenly she seemed uneasy: she shivered.
+
+"What is it, darling?" Strachinsky asked her, clinging still closer to
+her.
+
+"Nothing," she murmured, "nothing," and walked on.
+
+They were passing the spot where the little brother and sister were
+playing, and in the gathering twilight Emma Strachinsky became aware of
+a pair of clear dark-brown childish eyes that seemed to ask, "How can
+she love that man?"
+
+Those childish eyes were positively uncanny!
+
+
+The child's dislike dated from far in the past; it was in fact the
+first clearly formulated emotion of her little heart. During the first
+years of her second marriage the mother, prompted by an exaggerated
+tenderness, had concealed from her little daughter as long as possible
+the fact that Strachinsky was not her own father: the child had learned
+the truth by accident. When she rushed to her mother to have what she
+had heard confirmed, she was received with the tenderest caresses, as
+though she were to be consoled for a great grief, while she was
+entreated not to be sad, and was told that "'papa' was far too good and
+kind to make any difference between herself and his own children, that
+he loved her dearly," etc.
+
+The mother's caresses were highly prized by the child, all the more
+that they were rather rare, but on this occasion she could not even
+seem to enjoy them, since she could not endure to be pitied and soothed
+for what brought her in reality intense relief.
+
+Her mother perceived this, and it angered her, although at the same
+time the child's evident though silent dislike made a deep impression
+upon her. Perhaps the consciousness of its existence in so frank and
+childish a mind first gave occasion to distrust of the terrible
+infatuation to which the gifted woman's entire existence had fallen a
+sacrifice.
+
+
+Frau von Strachinsky was wont to go herself every evening to see that
+all was as it should be in the large airy apartment where both the
+children slept. She hovered noiselessly from one bed to the other,
+signing the cross upon the brow of each,--an old-fashioned custom to
+which she still clung although she had long since adopted very
+philosophical views with regard to religion,--and giving each sleeping
+child a tender good-night kiss.
+
+The evening after her return she went to the nursery at the usual hour,
+but lingered only by the crib of the sleeping boy, passing her
+daughter's bed with averted face. Rika sat up and looked after her; her
+mother had reached the door without once looking back. This the child
+could not endure. She sprang out of bed, ran to her mother, and seized
+her by her skirt. "Mother! mother!" she cried, in a frenzy, "you will
+not go without bidding me good-night?"
+
+"Let go of my gown," Frau von Strachinsky replied, in a cold voice,
+which nevertheless trembled with emotion.
+
+"But what have I done, mother?" the child cried, clinging to her
+passionately.
+
+"Can you ask?" her mother rejoined, sternly.
+
+"Why should I not ask? How should I know what he has told you? I was
+not by when he accused me."
+
+"Erika! is that the way to speak of your father?" her mother said,
+angrily.
+
+The little girl frowned. "He is not my father," she declared,
+defiantly.
+
+Frau von Strachinsky sighed. "Your ingratitude is shocking," she
+exclaimed, and then, controlling herself with an effort, she added,
+"But that I cannot alter: you are an unnatural, hard-hearted, stubborn
+child. I cannot soften your heart, but I can insist that you conduct
+yourself with propriety, and I forbid you once for all to run after
+vagabonds in the street. And now go to bed."
+
+"I will not go to bed until you bid me good-night!" cried the child.
+She stood there with naked little feet, in her white night-gown, over
+which her long reddish-brown hair hung down. "And I was not so naughty
+as you think. You ought not to condemn me without giving me time to
+defend myself."
+
+The child was so desperately reasonable, her mother could not think her
+wrong, in spite of her momentary anger. She paused. An idea evidently
+occurred to the little girl. "Only wait one minute!" she exclaimed, as
+she flew across the room to a drawer where she kept her toys, and,
+returning with her _protégé's_ water-colour sketch, held it up
+triumphantly before her mother's eyes. "Look at that!" she cried.
+
+Involuntarily Emma looked. "Where did that come from?" she exclaimed,
+forgetting her vexation in freshly-aroused interest.
+
+"Do you know who it is?" asked Erika, stretching her slender neck out
+of the embroidered ruffle of her night-gown.
+
+"Of course; it is your picture. It is charming. Who did it?"
+
+"The vagabond whom I ran after, the house-painter fellow," Erika
+replied. "At least you can see he was not _that_, but a young artist."
+
+Her mother was silent.
+
+"Ah, if you had only been at home!" the child's bare feet were growing
+colder, and her cheeks hotter with excitement, "you would have done
+just as I did. If you had only seen him! He was very handsome, and so
+pale and thin and weary with hunger,--why, _I_ could have knocked him
+down,--and he never begged,--he was too proud,--only held out the
+portfolio to papa, and his hand trembled----" Suddenly the excitable
+temperament which the girl had inherited from her mother asserted
+itself, and she began to sob, her whole childish frame quivering with
+emotion. "And papa turned him out of doors, and told the cook--to
+give--to give him two kreutzers. He threw them away--and then--then I
+ran after him!"
+
+Frau von Strachinsky had grown very pale; the child's agitated story
+had evidently made an impression upon her, but she did her best to
+preserve a severe demeanour. "But it is very improper to run after
+strangers in the street; you are too old."
+
+Erika hung her head, ashamed. "But I should not have done it if papa
+had not abused him," she declared, by way of excuse. "I did it out of
+pity for him."
+
+"Pity is a very poor counsellor." Her mother said these words with an
+emphasis which Erika never forgot, and which was to echo in her soul
+years afterwards. Then she extricated herself from the child's embrace
+and left the room, closing the door behind her.
+
+A few minutes afterwards she reopened the door. Little Erika was still
+standing where she had left her.
+
+"Go to bed," said her mother, in a far more gentle tone, stooping down
+to kiss her, "and be a better girl another time."
+
+The child clasped her slender little arms tightly about her mother's
+neck in a strangling embrace, crying, "Oh, mother, mother, you do love
+me still?" The pale woman did not answer the question, save by a kiss;
+she waited until the little girl had crept back to bed, and then tucked
+in the coverlet about her shoulders, and once more left the room.
+
+Erika, precocious child that she was, was a prey to emotions of
+a very mingled character. She had won a great victory over her
+step-father,--of this she was well aware,--but then she had grieved her
+mother sorely. All at once she was seized with profound remorse in
+recalling to-day's stroke of genius. Beneath her mother's severity she
+had been sure of having right on her side; now a great uncertainty
+possessed her. "It is very improper to run after strangers in the
+street; you are too old," she repeated, meekly, and she grew hot. "What
+would my mother think if she knew that I had kissed him?"
+
+In the midst of her distress she was overpowered by intense fatigue:
+her eyelids drooped above her eyes, and with her nightly prayer still
+on her lips she fell asleep.
+
+
+Emma von Strachinsky did not sleep; she sat in the bare room adjoining
+the nursery, the room where she taught Erika her lessons. She wrote two
+very difficult letters to her husband's creditors, and then proceeded
+to sew upon a gown for her daughter. She was proud of the child's
+beauty as only the mother can be who has all her life long been
+conscious of being obliged to forego the gift of beauty for herself.
+She loved her daughter idolatrously,--the daughter whom she often
+treated with a severity verging upon injustice, and whom she sometimes
+avoided for days because the glance of those clear eyes troubled her.
+
+The windows of the room were open, and looked out upon the road. The
+fragrance of ripened grain was wafted in from the earth outside,
+resting from its summer fruitfulness and saturated with the August
+sunshine. A song floated up through the silent night: the reapers were
+working by moonlight. The low murmur of the brook accompanied the song,
+and now and then could be heard the soft swish of the grain falling
+beneath the scythe. A cricket chirped.
+
+Emma dropped her hands in her lap and gazed into vacancy.
+
+Suddenly she started; a step approached the door of the room, and
+Strachinsky, smiling sentimentally, entered. "Emma," he said, tenderly,
+"have you written to Franks and Ziegler?"
+
+"Yes," she replied, and her voice sounded hoarse. "There lie the
+letters. Read them, and see if they are what you wish."
+
+"Not at all," her husband exclaimed, gaily. "I have implicit confidence
+in your tact. H'm! the perusal of such letters is a sorry amusement."
+
+"Do you suppose that it was a pleasure to write them?" Emma asked, with
+some bitterness.
+
+Strachinsky immediately assumed an injured air. "You are irritable
+again. One cannot venture upon the slightest jest with you. Do you
+suppose that I enjoy being forced to ask you to write the letters? Good
+heavens! it is hard enough, but--circumstances will have it so." He
+passed his hand over his eyes, and stroked his whiskers with an air of
+great dignity.
+
+She was silent. He watched her for a while, and then said, "That
+eternal sewing is very bad for you. Come to bed."
+
+"I cannot. I am not sleepy," she replied, plying her needle; "and,
+moreover, I must finish this frock; let me go on with it." She bent
+over her work with the air of one determined to complete a task.
+
+Strachinsky stood beside her for a while longer, hesitating and
+uncertain: he picked up each small article upon the table, looked at it
+and laid it down again after the fashion of a man who does not know
+what to do with himself, then he sighed profoundly, yawned, sighed
+again, and without another word left the room with heavy, lagging
+footsteps.
+
+When he was gone she laid aside her sewing, and went to the open window
+to breathe the fresh air. The bluish moonlight shone full upon the
+whitewashed walls of the peasants' cots crowned with their dark clumsy
+thatch; in the distance twinkled the little stream winding its plashing
+way directly across the village towards the river, its banks bordered
+with curiously-distorted willows that looked like crouching lurking
+gnomes, and spanned by the huge useless bridge. Bridge, willows, and
+cots all threw pitch-black shadows out into the glaring splendour of
+the moonlit night, which was absolutely free from mist and damp. Beyond
+the village stretched fields of grain and stubble in endless
+perspective, a surface of tarnished dull gold.
+
+The song was still informing the silence.
+
+At last it ceased, and shortly afterwards heavy, regular steps were
+heard passing along the road. The reapers were going home. They passed
+by Emma's windows, a little dark gray crowd of men; the scythes over
+their shoulders glimmered in the moonlight; then came a couple of
+women, bowed and weary, almost dropping asleep as they walked; and last
+of all the overseer, a young fellow whose hand clasped that of a girl
+at his side. How he bent over her! A low tender whispering sound
+reached Emma's ears through the dry August air which the night had
+scarcely cooled. She turned away, frowning. "How happy they look! and
+why?" she murmured to herself. Suddenly she smiled bitterly. Had she
+any right to sneer thus at others?--she? Surely if ever a woman lived
+who had believed in love and had married for love, she was that woman.
+
+And whom had she loved? A poor weakling, who had never been worthy to
+unloose the latchet of her shoe!
+
+Not only little precocious Erika, every sensible human being who had
+ever come in contact with the married pair had asked how such a union
+had been possible. And yet it was so simple a story,--so simple and
+commonplace,--the story of a woman lacking beauty, but gifted,
+enthusiastic, prone to romantic exaggeration, whose longing for
+affection had wrought her ruin.
+
+
+Her parents belonged to the most ancient if not the most illustrious of
+the native Bohemian nobility; he was of doubtful descent. She had
+always been wealthy; he possessed nothing save a scheming brain and a
+soaring self-conceit that bore him triumphantly aloft through all the
+annoyances of life.
+
+He was not entirely without talent, had had a good education, and was,
+previous to his marriage with Emma Lenzdorff, neither idle nor
+inactive, but possessed of a certain desire for culture, the secret
+springs of which, however, were to be found in an eager social
+ambition. At eighteen he entered the army: too poor to join the
+cavalry, and too arrogant to content himself among the infantry, he
+joined a Jäger corps. He had risen to the rank of captain when he was
+wounded in the Schleswig-Holstein campaign. He made his wife's
+acquaintance in a private hospital in Berlin, which she had arranged in
+her own house for the martyrs of the aforesaid campaign.
+
+She was very young, very enthusiastic, and a widow,--widow of a cold,
+unloved northern German whom in accordance with family arrangements she
+had married while she was yet only a visionary child. The memory of her
+formal marriage inspired her with horror.
+
+Before meeting Strachinsky she had given scope to her romantic
+tendencies by all sorts of exaggerated charitable schemes, and by a
+fanatical devotion to art and poetry. She had long been convinced that
+her thirst for affection could never be satisfied. No one had ever
+shown her any passionate devotion, and, conscious of her lack of
+beauty, she had sadly resigned herself to swell the ranks of those
+women whom reason might prompt a suitor to woo, but who could never
+hope to be wooed in defiance of reason.
+
+The Pole had an easy task. That he was handsome even his enemies could
+not deny. And he knew how to make the most of his personal advantages:
+a century earlier he might have been taken for a Poniatowski, with a
+direct claim to the throne of Poland. His uniform was very becoming,
+and a wounded soldier is always interesting. As soon as he divined the
+young widow's weakness he wooed her with verses,--with passionate
+declarations of love.
+
+Poor Emma! Her thirsty heart thrilled with the sudden bursting into
+bloom of its spring so long delayed! Her parents, who might have warned
+her of what she was bringing upon herself, were dead; she paid no heed
+to her mother-in-law, who strenuously opposed her second marriage. When
+Emma, with burning cheeks, and trembling to her finger-tips with
+emotion, repeated to her the Pole's exaggerated expressions of
+devotion, the elder woman rejoined, coldly, "And you believe the
+coxcomb?"
+
+The words were to Emma like the sting from a whip-lash. "And why should
+I not believe him?" she asked, sharply. "Because, perhaps, you think me
+incapable of inspiring a man with affection?"
+
+"Nonsense!" replied the sensible mother-in-law. "You could inspire
+affection in any honest man with a heart in his bosom, but not in that
+shallow Pole, that second-rate dandy."
+
+"Perhaps you think him an adventurer, who wooes me for the sake of my
+money?" Emma exclaimed, indignantly.
+
+"No, I think him a superficial man who, flattered by having made an
+impression upon a woman of rank, is trying to better his condition.
+Adventurer! Nonsense! He has not wit enough. An opportunity offers
+itself, and he embraces it: _voilà tout_. He is not to blame, but his
+suit is unworthy of you, and a marriage with him would be a misfortune
+for you, apart from the fact that you would disgrace your family by
+it."
+
+When a patient is to be persuaded to take a dose of medicine it ought
+not to be offered him in an unattractive shape.
+
+The old lady's representations were correct, but they were humiliating.
+Emma turned away, stubborn and indignant, and a month afterwards
+married Strachinsky and parted from her mother-in-law forever.
+
+Eight years had passed since then. First came a few months during
+which Emma revelled in the sensation of loving and being loved, and
+then--well, the bliss was still there, but a slight shadow had fallen
+upon it, dimming it, chilling it, a gnawing uneasiness, in the midst of
+which memory would suddenly suggest the sensible mother-in-law's
+unsparing predictions.
+
+His marriage put an end to all exertion on Strachinsky's part: it had
+at a single stroke, as it were, lifted him so far above all for which
+his ambition had thirsted that he had nothing left to desire, save to
+enjoy life in distinguished society as far as was possible. With his
+wife's money he purchased an estate in Bohemia where the soil was the
+poorest, so great in extent that it made a show in the map of the
+country, and developed a brilliant talent for hospitality: all the
+land-owners in the vicinity, all the cavalry-officers from the nearest
+garrison, were habitués of Luzano, as the estate was called. With his
+wife's unceasing attentions Strachinsky's self-importance increased,
+and his regard for her declined. She existed simply to insure his
+comfort,--for nothing else. The household was turned topsy-turvy when
+the master's guests appeared, whether invited or unannounced.
+Strachinsky entertained them with exquisite suppers, at which champagne
+flowed freely, but at which his wife did not appear. After supper cards
+were produced, and it was frequently four in the morning before the
+gentlemen were heard driving away from the castle; sometimes they
+remained until the next night.
+
+But the day came when Luzano ceased to be a branch of the military
+casino at K----. The life there suddenly became very quiet, and various
+disagreeable facts came to light which had been disregarded in the
+whirl of gaiety. Then first little Erika saw her mother, pencil in
+hand, patiently adding up her husband's debts, while Strachinsky, his
+hands clasped behind him, and a cigarette between his teeth, paced the
+room, dictating amounts to her.
+
+In addition to losses at play and in unfortunate speculations, he had
+magnanimously put his name to various notes of his distinguished
+friends.
+
+Emma did not even frown, but exerted herself in every way,--sold her
+trinkets and almost every valuable piece of furniture, that her husband
+might meet his liabilities, treating him all the while with the
+forbearance traditional in model wives, in order to save him from any
+depressing consciousness of his position.
+
+Was he conscious of it? If he were, he was entirely successful in
+concealing any consequent depression. The morning after the first
+painful revelation of his indebtedness, he skipped with the gayest air
+imaginable into the dining-room, where the family were already
+assembled at the breakfast-table, and exhorted all present to
+economize, and especially not to put too much butter on their bread,
+afterwards discoursing wittily upon 'poverty and magnanimity.'
+
+To lighten his burden,--perhaps to disguise his insensibility from her
+own heart,--Emma persuaded him that his course had been the result
+solely of warm-hearted imprudence and an exaggerated nobility of
+character.
+
+This view of the case was eagerly adopted by his vanity. He paraded his
+martyr's nimbus, and with a self-satisfied sigh styled himself a Don
+Quixote.
+
+Nothing could really be farther from Don Quixote's idealistic and
+unselfish craze than his utter egotism, in its thin veil of
+sentimentality. And as for his martyrdom, it was easily seen through.
+None of the misfortunes brought upon himself by himself did he ever
+allow to affect his existence. He possessed a kind of cunning
+intelligence that never forsook him, and that enabled him in the midst
+of ruin to insure his own personal ease.
+
+But how could Emma have borne at that comparatively early period to see
+him as he really was? She seized upon every excuse for him; she patched
+up her damaged illusions; she would support, restrain him, develop all
+that was really noble in him.
+
+In her jealous ambition to make his home so delightful that he would
+never look for entertainment elsewhere, she exerted herself to the
+utmost, pandered to his love of eating, even cooked herself when they
+were no longer able to bear the expense of such a cook as he had been
+accustomed to, tried to conform her intellectual interests to his lack
+of any such,--in short, did everything to strengthen the tie between
+herself and him. She succeeded completely: she made the tie so strong
+that no loosening of it was possible.
+
+She tried to withdraw him from all outside influences, to win him
+wholly to herself, and she succeeded; her presence, her tenderness,
+became an absolute necessity of existence to him; he had never so
+adored her even during their honeymoon.
+
+Good heavens! now she would have given everything in the world for any
+breach between them that could be widened beyond all possibility of
+healing. It was too late; she must drag on the burden with which she
+had laden herself; it was her duty; she could not sink beneath it; she
+had no right to.
+
+But in spite of all her efforts her nerves at length gave way. She
+became irritable. At times she grieved over the change which she saw in
+him; at other times the thought would suggest itself that this change
+was merely superficial, that he had never really been any other than at
+present. Then her blood would seem to run cold; she could have
+screamed. No, no, she would not see!
+
+There is nothing sadder in this world than the dutiful, tortured life
+of a woman with a husband whom she has ceased to love.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Full four years had passed by since Erika had kissed the young artist.
+She recalled the little adventure, which had taken upon itself quite
+magnificent dimensions in her lively imagination, with secret delight
+and a vague sense of shame.
+
+Emma was bearing her cross as best she might, but at every step she
+well-nigh fell exhausted. Her wretchedness not unfrequently found vent
+in angry words, for which she was sure to repent and apologize.
+
+Her relation with her daughter, now a tall, slender, and unusually
+clever girl of fourteen, suffered from her general wretchedness. She
+still loved the child tenderly, but the girl's clear, observant gaze
+pained her. It had grown much clearer and more penetrating with years.
+
+A certain weight, an oppression, seemed to brood over Luzano like the
+sense of an impending catastrophe.
+
+The only ray of sunshine in the unhappy wife's gloomy lot was her
+little son. Out of several children by her second marriage he alone had
+survived. He was strong and healthy, the darling of all, his sister's
+idol. Then--he had hardly passed his seventh birthday when he too died.
+
+The little fellow had sickened in the midst of his play, had run to his
+sister and had fallen asleep with his head in her lap. The girl sat
+still, not to disturb him, and enjoined silence upon Miss Sophy, who
+was in the room. The twilight stole gray and vague in upon the bare
+apartment. The maid-servant--there were no longer any men-servants at
+Luzano--brought in a lamp, and a plate of rosy-cheeked apples for the
+children's supper. The boy opened his eyes, but closed them again with
+a low moan and turned his head away from the light.
+
+His mother appeared, saw at a glance how matters stood, and put the
+little fellow to bed. She did not come down to supper, and when Erika
+went, as was her wont, to say good-night to her brother, she was not
+allowed to enter his room. The next morning the doctor was sent for.
+
+Whilst he was in the sick-room Erika was taking her daily lesson in
+English with Miss Sophy, with no thought of any trouble. She was
+learning by heart her scene from Shakespeare, when her mother suddenly
+put her head in at the door and said, "Diphtheria!" The tone of her
+voice and the expression of her face were such as to terrify the girl.
+But when Erika, trembling with dread, ran towards her, she waved her
+off and vanished.
+
+Miss Sophy was established in the sick-room, which Erika was not
+allowed to enter. No one paid her any attention, and she spent hours
+forlornly watching at the end of a long gloomy corridor the door behind
+which so much that was terrible was going on. If she was seen she was
+sent away; but before long the entire household was too anxious to pay
+her the slightest heed.
+
+It was about eleven in the forenoon of the fifth day since the first
+symptoms of the disease had appeared. Erika stood listening eagerly
+near the door, trembling with a sense of something vaguely terrible
+going on behind it. Suddenly it opened, and her mother staggered out,
+her dress disordered, her face distorted with agony, and supported by
+the little boy's nurse. Behind her came Strachinsky, his handkerchief
+at his eyes.
+
+In absolute terror Erika looked after her mother, who passed her by,
+even brushing her with her skirt, without seeing her. Then she entered
+the room which the wretched woman had just left. The bed was covered
+with a white sheet, which revealed the outline of the little form
+beneath it. The girl's heart throbbed almost to bursting. She lifted a
+corner of the sheet: there lay her little brother, dead, so white, and
+with his sweet face unchanged by disease. The little hands lay half
+open upon the coverlet, as though life had just slipped from them. A
+grace born of death hovered above the entire form. His sister gazed in
+tearless distress. She could not cry; she felt no definable pain, only
+a terrible heaviness in her limbs, and a weight upon her heart that
+almost choked her. She bent over the corpse to kiss it, when Miss Sophy
+rushed into the room, seized her by the arm, and thrust her out of the
+door.
+
+Of course the first thing Erika did was to look for her mother. She
+found her in the morning-room, seated in a large arm-chair, quivering
+in every limb. Minna, the nurse, was moistening her forehead with
+cologne, but she seemed entirely unconscious. Her hands were folded in
+her lap, and her gaze was fixed on vacancy. Erika could not summon the
+courage to approach her.
+
+Meanwhile, Strachinsky was pacing the room in long strides: his tears
+were already dried; every now and then he would pause and heave a
+profound sigh. At first Emma seemed not to notice him, but on a sudden
+she roused from her apathy, and, passing her hand over her brow, with a
+feeble, wailing cry, she said, "For God's sake, stop, Nello!"
+
+He paused, cleared his throat several times, took an English penknife
+from his pocket, began to pare his nails, and then went to his wife and
+stroked her cheek. She shrank from him involuntarily.
+
+He groaned feelingly, left her, and went to the window: with one hand
+he stroked his whiskers, with the other he jingled the keys in his
+pocket.
+
+After a while he began in an undertone, probably with the foolish
+expectation of distracting the wretched mother's thoughts, to detail
+what was going on outside, all in a melancholy, sentimental monotone,
+that would have set healthy nerves on edge. "Ah, see that little
+sparrow with a straw in its beak! it must be fitting up its winter
+nest."
+
+Poor Emma sat bolt upright, except that her head inclined somewhat
+forward, and gazed at the man at the window.
+
+Suddenly she uttered a short, shrill scream, and, pressing both hands
+to her temples, rushed out of the room.
+
+When she had gone Strachinsky shrugged his shoulders, sighed as if
+gross injustice had been done him, and retired to his room to make a
+list of the names of all those whom he wished notified of the death.
+
+
+The funeral took place the third day afterwards.
+
+On that day they assembled at the dinner-table as on other days. The
+poor mother ate nothing, and Erika could scarce swallow a morsel. The
+tears which had refused to come at first were falling fast upon her new
+black gown.
+
+Strachinsky ate, but after a while he too pushed his plate away. For
+the first time in her life his stepdaughter was conscious of an emotion
+of compassion for him. She thought that his grief had made eating
+impossible, when he cleared his throat, and, "This is intolerable," he
+whined; "at best I have no appetite, and here is tomato sauce! You know
+I never eat tomato sauce."
+
+His wife made no reply: she only looked at him with her strange new
+gaze, with eyes from which the last veil had fallen, and which were
+pained by the light. The look in those eyes would have made one
+shudder.
+
+The clock in the castle tower struck one quarter of an hour after
+another, bringing ever nearer the time for the interment. The little
+body was already laid in the coffin. The coffin-lid leaned up against
+the wall. A fierce restlessness, the strained expectation of a certain
+moment which was to be the culmination of an intolerable misery,
+possessed Erika: she hurried from place to place, and at last ran after
+her mother, who had gone into the garden.
+
+It was cold and stormy. The autumn had come late and suddenly. Some
+bushes had kept all their leaves, but they were blackened and
+shrivelled; others had retained only a few red and yellow leaflets that
+fluttered in the wind. The trees, on the other hand, were almost
+entirely bare. The naked boughs showed dark gray or purplish brown
+against the cloudy sky: the birches alone could still boast some
+golden-coloured foliage. On the moist gravel paths and the sodden
+autumn grass lay wet brown leaves mingled with those but lately fallen.
+The asters and chrysanthemums, nipped by the first frost, hung their
+heads, and among all the autumnal decay the poor mother wandered about,
+seeking a few fresh flowers to lay in her dead child's coffin. With
+faltering steps, tripping now and then over the skirt of her gown, she
+tottered from one ruined flower-bed to another. The sharp autumn wind
+fluttered her dress and outlined her emaciated limbs. From her lips
+came a low moaning mingled with caressing words. She kissed the few
+poor flowers, frost-touched, which she held in her hand. Erika walked
+close behind her. Once or twice she stretched out her hand to grasp her
+mother's skirt, but withdrew it hastily, as if fearing to hurt her by
+even the gentlest touch.
+
+Ten minutes afterwards the sharp strokes of a hammer resounded through
+the castle, and the unhappy woman was crouching in the farthest corner
+of her room, her hands held tightly to her ears.
+
+In the night following the funeral Erika was waked from sleep by a low
+moan. She started up. By the vague light of early dawn, in which the
+windows were defined amid the darkness, she saw something dark lying
+upon the floor beside her bed. She cried out in terror, and then it
+stirred. It was her mother lying there upon the hard floor, where
+she must have been for some time, for when Erika touched her she was
+icy-cold. The girl took her in her arms and drew her into the soft warm
+bed beside her. Neither spoke one word, but their hearts beat in
+unison: all discord between them had vanished.
+
+
+She had thrown off her burden; she breathed anew; she would stand erect
+once more. Then she discovered that a heavier burden yet, a fresh tie,
+bound her to the husband whom now, stripped of all illusion, she
+detested. The consciousness of this misfortune crept over her slowly;
+at first she would not believe it, and when she could no longer doubt,
+it seemed to her that her reason must give way.
+
+Erika soon perceived that her mother's misery was not due alone to the
+loss of her child. No, that pain brought with it a tender and gentle
+mood. Another burden oppressed her, something against which her entire
+nature angrily rebelled, and under the weight of which she displayed a
+gloomy severity from which her daughter alone never suffered. Towards
+her since the boy's death Emma had shown inexpressible tenderness, and
+the girl, thirsting for affection, was never weary of nestling close in
+her mother's arms, receiving her caresses with profound gratitude,
+almost with devout adoration. Sometimes the mother would smile in the
+midst of her grief as she stroked the gold-gleaming hair back from her
+child's pale face with its large dark eyes. "They do not see it," she
+would murmur, "but I see how pretty you are growing. Poor little Erika!
+you have had a sad youth; but life will atone to you for it when I am
+no longer here."
+
+"Do not say that!" cried the girl, clasping her mother in her arms. "As
+if I could endure life without you! Mother! mother!"
+
+"You do not dream of what can be endured," her mother said, bitterly.
+"One submits. Learn to submit; learn it as soon as may be. Do not ask
+too much from life; ask for no complete happiness: it is an illusion.
+You, indeed, are justified in claiming more than your poor, ugly mother
+had any right to, my beautiful, gifted child!" She uttered the words
+almost with solemnity. Something of the romantic strain which had
+characterized her through every stage of her prosaic, humiliating
+existence came to light now in her worship of her daughter.
+
+She strongly impressed Erika with the idea that she was an exceptional
+creature, and, although she was always admonishing her to expect
+nothing of life, she nevertheless gave her to understand that life was
+sure to offer something extraordinary for her acceptance. On the whole,
+in spite of the girl's grief at the loss of her little brother, she
+would have been happier than ever before had it not been for a growing
+anxiety with regard to her mother, whose health had entirely given way.
+Whereas she had been wont from early morning until late at night to
+make her presence felt throughout the household and on the estate,
+grasping with a firm and skilled hand the reins which her husband had
+idly dropped, now she took an interest in nothing.
+
+Erika was tortured by anxiety, an anxiety all the more distressing from
+the fact that she could not define her fears.
+
+Towards her husband Emma displayed a daily increasing irritability. But
+his easy content was not at all disturbed by it. Thanks to a fancy
+which was ever ready to devise means for sparing and nourishing his
+self-conceit, he discovered a hundred reasons other than the true one
+for his wife's attitude towards him. Her irritability was all due, so
+he informed Miss Sophy, to her situation. And in receiving Miss Sophy's
+admiring and compassionate homage he found, and had found for some
+time, his favourite occupation.
+
+Emma now lived apart in a large room, which, besides her bed and
+wash-stand, was furnished only with a couple of book-shelves, two
+straight-backed chairs covered with horsehair, and a round tiled stove
+decorated with a rude bas-relief of a train of mad Bacchantes and
+bearing on its level top a large funeral urn. The boards of the floor
+were bare, and in a deep window-recess there was an arm-chair. In this
+chair the miserable woman would sit for hours, her elbows resting upon
+its arms, her hands clasped, staring into vacancy.
+
+In the garden upon which this window looked the snow lay several feet
+deep; upon the meadow beyond, which sloped gently to the broad frozen
+river, and upon its icy surface, it was so deep that meadow and river
+were undistinguishable from each other; upon the dark pine forest
+that bounded the horizon--upon everything--it lay cold and heavy. All
+cold!--all white! Huge drifts of snow; no road definable; never a bird
+that chirped, never a leaf that stirred; all cold and white, without
+pulsation, without breath, dead,--the whole earth a lovely stark
+corpse.
+
+And the wretched woman's gaze could fall upon naught outside save this
+white monotony.
+
+Spring came. The dignified repose of death dissolved in feverish
+activity, in the restless change of seasons, vibrating between fair and
+foul, between purity and its opposite.
+
+The earth absorbed the snow, except where in dark hollows it lingered
+in patches, to disappear slowly in muddy pools.
+
+Emma still sat for hours daily in her room with hands clasped in her
+lap, but her eyes were no longer fixed on vacancy; they had found an
+object upon which to rest. Among the tender green of the meadows so
+lately stripped of their snowy covering, glided the river, dark and
+swollen. How loudly it exulted in its liberation from its icy fetters!
+"Freedom!" shouted its surging waves,--"Freedom!"
+
+Upon this river her gaze was now riveted.
+
+Days passed,--weeks; the air was warm and sweet; the window by which
+she sat was open, and the voice of the river was clear and loud.
+
+One afternoon at the end of April the ploughs were creaking over the
+road, there was an odour of freshly-turned earth in the air, and the
+fruit-trees were already enveloped in a white mist.
+
+The sun had set, and in the west the crescent moon hung pale and
+shadowy.
+
+Erika was standing at the low garden wall, looking down across the
+meadow. Her youthful spirit was oppressed by anxiety so vague that she
+could neither define it nor struggle against it: she seemed to be
+blindly dragged along to meet the inevitable.
+
+Her mother had to-day been especially tender to her, but sadder than
+ever before. She had talked as if her death were nigh at hand, and had
+spent a long time in writing letters.
+
+On a sudden the girl perceived a dark object moving rapidly along in
+the warm damp evening air,--a tall figure in a black gown which
+fluttered in the south wind. It was her mother.
+
+How quickly she strode through the high rank grass! how strange was her
+gait! Erika had never before seen any one hasten thus, with long
+strides, and yet falteringly as though borne down by weariness, on--on
+towards the dark-flowing river.
+
+Suddenly the girl divined what her mother intended to do. She would
+have screamed, but for an instant her voice failed her, and in the next
+she was silent from presence of mind, the clear-sight of terror.
+
+She clambered over the low wall and flew after her mother, her feet
+scarcely touching the ground, her breath coming in painful gasps.
+
+The dark figure had reached its goal, the river-bank; it leaned
+forward,--when two nervous, girlish hands clutched the black folds of
+her gown. "Mother!" shrieked Erika, in despair.
+
+She turned round. "What do you want?" she said, harshly, almost
+cruelly, to her daughter. Then she shuddered violently, and burst into
+a convulsive sobbing which it seemed impossible to her to control.
+
+Her daughter put her arm around her, nestled close to her, and kissed
+the tears from her cheeks. "Mother," she cried, tenderly, "darling
+mother!" and without another word she gently led the wretched woman
+away from the water. The mother made no resistance; she was mortally
+weary, and leaned heavily upon the slender girl of fourteen.
+
+They slowly returned to the house. A white translucent mist was rising
+from the fields, and flying through it with drooping wings, so low that
+they almost stirred the grass, a flock of hoarsely-croaking ravens
+passed them by.
+
+
+In the night Erika suddenly aroused from sleep, without knowing what
+had wakened her. She rubbed her eyes, and turned to sleep again, when
+just outside of her door she heard a voice exclaim, "Ah, God of
+heaven!" In an instant, barefooted and in her nightgown, she was in the
+corridor, where she saw the cook hurrying in the direction of her
+mother's room. "What is the matter?" the girl cried, in terror. The
+cook looked round, shrugged her shoulders, and hurried on.
+
+Erika would have followed her, but Strachinsky appeared at the turning
+of the corridor where the cook had vanished. He looked as if just
+roused from sleep; he had on a flowered dressing-gown, and carried a
+lighted candle. Beside him Minna walked, pale as ashes.
+
+Strachinsky set the candlestick down upon a long low table in the
+passage. "Have the horses harnessed immediately," he ordered, "and send
+the bailiff to K---- for the doctor."
+
+"Will not the Herr Baron go himself? People are not always to be relied
+upon," said Minna, with a significant glance at the master of the
+house.
+
+"Oh, no; the bailiff will attend to it perfectly, and then--you can
+understand that I do not wish to be away at this time from my wife, who
+will of course ask for me----" Minna's eyes still being fixed upon him
+with a very strange expression in them, he added, snapping out his
+words in childish irritation, "And then--then--it is no business of
+yours, you stupid fool!" And, turning on his heel, he left her.
+
+Minna shrugged her shoulders, and turned towards the staircase to give
+the necessary orders.
+
+Neither she nor Strachinsky had noticed Erika. The girl ran to the
+nurse and plucked her by the sleeve. "Minna," she asked, in dread,
+"what is the matter? Is my mother ill?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What is the matter with her? Tell me, Minna! oh, tell me!"
+
+But the nurse shook off her clasping hands. "Let me alone, child. I am
+in a hurry," she murmured.
+
+Erika advanced a step, hesitated, and then returned to her room,
+where she found Miss Sophy in great distress, her head crowned with
+curl-papers, which she cut out of the _Modern Free Press_ every evening
+and which made her look half like Medusa and half like a porcupine.
+
+"Where are you going?" she asked, seeing that Erika began to dress
+hurriedly. "To my mother; she is ill."
+
+Miss Sophy gently detained her. "Do not go," she said, softly: "they
+would not let you in; you would only be in the way, now. Wait a little.
+Your mother does not want you there." And she wagged her porcupine head
+with melancholy solemnity as she added, "I believe--I think you will
+perhaps have a little brother, or sister."
+
+Erika stared at her. This it was, then!
+
+
+Among the many sad experiences that were to fall to Erika's lot there
+were none to equal the dull restlessness, the mortal dread mingled with
+a mysterious, inexpressible emotion, of these hours.
+
+She went on dressing, striving only to be ready quickly, as one dresses
+when the next house is on fire. Then she seated herself opposite Miss
+Sophy, at a tottering round table upon which stood a guttering candle.
+
+For a while all was silent; then there was a noise outside the door.
+The girl sprang up and hurried out, to see a stout, elderly woman in a
+tall black cap, with the phlegmatic flabby face of a monk, going
+towards her mother's room. Erika recognized her as the needy widow of a
+stone-mason; she was wont to doctor both men and cattle in the village.
+Her name was Frau Jelinek. The scullery-maid who had brought her was
+just behind her.
+
+They passed Erika without heeding her, and the girl looked after them
+in a fresh access of dread.
+
+Two hours passed. Miss Sophy was asleep; Erika still waked and watched.
+A light rain had begun to fall; the drops pattered against the
+window-panes.
+
+Once more Erika arose and crept out into the corridor. Trembling in
+every limb, she stood at the door of the room through which her
+mother's sleeping-apartment was reached. It was ajar, and light
+streamed through the crack. She looked in. Strachinsky was seated at a
+table, playing whist with three dummies. It had for some time past been
+his favourite occupation. A maid stood in a corner, arranging a pile of
+linen. Erika was about to address her, when Frau Jelinek, her black
+leathern bag on her arm, came out of her mother's bedroom.
+
+"May I not go to mamma,--just for a moment?" the girl asked, in an
+agitated whisper.
+
+The bedroom door opened again, and Minna appeared. "Is it you, child?"
+
+"Yes, yes," Erika made answer.
+
+"Do not disturb your mother. Stay in your room till you are called,"
+Minna said, authoritatively.
+
+And from the room came the poor mother's weary, gentle voice: "Go lie
+down, my child; don't sit up any longer; go to bed, dear."
+
+For a while Erika stood motionless; then she kissed the hard cold door
+that would not open to her, and went back to her room. She lay down on
+the bed, dressed as she was, and this time she fell asleep. On a sudden
+she sat upright. The candle on the table was still burning, and by its
+light she saw that Miss Sophy, who had been sleeping on the sofa, was
+sitting up, awake, and listening, with a startled air.
+
+Erika hurried out; Minna met her in the corridor, and at the same
+moment a vehicle rattled into the courtyard.
+
+"The doctor!" exclaimed Minna. "Thank God!"
+
+The bailiff appeared on the staircase.
+
+"Where is the doctor?"
+
+"He was not at home," the man made answer.
+
+"Did you not ask where he was and go after him?" Minna asked,
+impatiently.
+
+"No," replied the bailiff, twirling his straw hat in his hands. "But I
+left word for him to come as soon as he got home."
+
+"Fool!" Strachinsky, who had now come into the corridor, exclaimed,
+shaking his fist at the man. "You are dismissed," he added,
+grandiloquently. Then, turning to Minna, he said, "Good heavens, if I
+had a horse I could ride to K----."
+
+Without heeding him, Minna hurried down the staircase, and a few
+moments later a carriage again left the court-yard.
+
+Minna had herself gone for the doctor, before her departure beseeching
+Erika to keep quiet: she should be summoned as soon as it would be
+right for her to see her mother.
+
+The girl obeyed, and sat in her room, rigid and motionless, at the
+table where the candle was burning down into the socket. At first, to
+shorten the time, she tried to knit, but the needles dropped from her
+fingers.
+
+Miss Sophy sat opposite her, with elbows upon the table, and her head
+in her hands, listening.
+
+In the distance there was a sound of wheels; it came nearer and nearer.
+Thank God! It was Minna, and she brought the doctor. There was a
+hurried running to and fro, and then all was still, still as death.
+
+The dawn crept in at the window. The flame of the candle burned red and
+dim. The rain had ceased, and through the misty window-panes could be
+seen a glimmer of white blossoms, and behind them a pale-blue sky in
+which the last stars were slowly fading.
+
+Then the door opened, and Minna entered. "Come, Erika," she said, in a
+low voice.
+
+Erika arose hastily. "Have I really a little brother?" she asked,
+anxiously.
+
+Minna shook her head. "It is dead."
+
+"And my mother?"
+
+"Ah, come quickly."
+
+She drew the girl along with her through the long whitewashed corridor.
+In the room leading to the dying woman's chamber Strachinsky was
+standing with the physician. The latter stood with bowed head;
+Strachinsky was weeping.
+
+Erika went directly to her mother's bedside. The dying woman's hair was
+brushed back from her temples; her lips were blue. Erika kneeled down
+and buried her face in the bedclothes. Her mother laid her hand upon
+her head and stroked it--ah, how feebly! But how soothing was the
+touch!
+
+In one corner old Minna kneeled, praying.
+
+Outside, the world was brightening; there was a golden splendour over
+all the earth. The birds twittered, at first faintly, then loudly and
+shrilly. The dying woman stirred among the pillows: Erika was to hear
+the dear voice once more.
+
+"My child, my poor, dear child, I have been a poor mother to you----"
+
+"Oh, mother, darling----"
+
+"My death will make it all right. Write to----"
+
+At this moment Strachinsky knocked at the door. "Emma!" he whispered.
+
+The dying woman's face expressed positive horror. "Do not let him come
+in!" she exclaimed.
+
+Erika flew to the door and turned the key; when she returned to the
+bedside her mother was struggling for breath.
+
+Evidently most anxious to impart some information to her daughter, she
+had not the strength to do so. Once more she passed her hand over
+Erika's head,--it was for the last time; then the hand grew heavier; it
+no longer lavished a caress; it was a mere weight.
+
+Erika moved, and looked at her mother. The tears stood in her eyes
+unshed, so wondrous was her mother's face. The battle was won.
+
+All the pain of life--the sweet pain of supreme rapture hinting to us
+of that heaven which we cannot attain, and that other bitter pain
+pointing to the grave at which we shudder--was for her extinct.
+
+
+Erika threw herself upon the body and covered it with kisses. With
+difficulty could she be induced to leave it; but when they led her from
+the room, as soon as the door closed behind her she was docile and
+gentle. She seemed bewildered, and walked slowly with bowed head beside
+Minna. Once only she looked back when a thin, melancholy wail resounded
+through the quiet morning air. It was the bell in the little tower of
+the castle, tolling restlessly.
+
+
+Years afterwards she could not bring herself to recall in memory the
+terrible days that followed,--the dreary burden that she dragged about
+with her from morning until night, the sleep born of utter exhaustion,
+the slow pursuance of daily custom as in a dream, the awakening with
+nerves refreshed by forgetfulness, and then the sudden consciousness of
+misery, the sensation of soreness in every limb, a sensation
+intensified by every motion, by a word spoken in her presence, the
+restlessness which drove her hither and thither until in some dim
+corner she would crouch down and cry,--cry until the very fount of
+tears seemed dry and her burning eyes would close again in the leaden
+sleep which still had to yield to the terrible awakening.
+
+She felt the most earnest desire to do something, to perform some
+office of love for her mother; but scarcely for one moment was she left
+alone with the body.
+
+Strangers prepared the loved one for the tomb, the coachman and the
+gardener lifted her into the coffin. Shortly before it was closed,
+Strachinsky remembered that his wife had once expressed a wish to be
+buried in the dress and veil she had worn at her marriage with him. But
+neither could be found. The cabinet where she was wont to hoard her
+treasures was empty, except for a lock of hair of her dead boy, and
+this they laid beneath her head.
+
+Her husband bestowed but little thought upon the circumstance. He
+honestly regretted the dead, and lost his appetite for two days; but as
+the time for the funeral drew near, he worked himself into an exalted
+frame of mind, which found vent in solemn pomposity.
+
+He had ordered a hearse from the city. Erika was standing at a window
+of the corridor when, with nodding plumes, it rattled into the castle
+court-yard, and her misery reached the point of despair.
+
+Until then she had not quite comprehended it all. She heard the men
+stagger down the stairs beneath the weight of the coffin, heard it
+knock against the wall at a sharp turn.
+
+She followed it to the grave. All walked behind the hearse, the shabby
+splendour of which suited so ill with the rural landscape.
+
+Most of the gentry of the surrounding country, who had long since
+ceased to visit at Luzano, assembled to pay the last honours to the
+poor woman, but they were only a speck in the endless funeral train.
+Behind the few black coats and high hats following close upon the
+hearse came a swarming crowd. All the peasants, day-labourers, and
+beggars from Luzano and the surrounding estates paid the last token of
+respect to the martyr gone to her eternal rest: she had been good and
+kind to all.
+
+It was the first of May. The fields were clothed in a light green, and
+the apple-trees showed pink with half-open blossoms. A reddish smoke
+curled upward to the skies from the flames of the torches. And there
+was a flutter of sighs among the blossoming boughs of the trees and
+above the meadows,--the breath of the freshly-born spring.
+
+Through the new life strode death.
+
+Noiselessly the funeral train moved on. Erika walked almost
+mechanically, looking neither to the right nor to the left, only moving
+forward. On a sudden something attracted her gaze. On a little
+elevation by the roadside, between two apple-trees, stood a young
+peasant woman with a child in her arms,--a child who stared at the long
+procession with large eyes of wonder.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER III.
+
+
+The day after the funeral Strachinsky, in melancholy mood, paced to and
+fro in the room where his wife had died. From time to time he walked to
+the window and looked out,--then he would turn again towards the
+interior of the chamber. Suddenly his eyes fell upon a sheet of
+blotting-paper left upon the writing-table.
+
+His wife's handwriting had been remarkably large, and the words which
+were of course imprinted backwards upon the sheet attracted his notice.
+With very little trouble he deciphered them: "My last will."
+
+He frowned. "So she has made a fresh will," he said to himself. In
+spite of his enormous self-conceit, he did not doubt that it could
+hardly be in his favour. The blood rushed to his head. Where was the
+will? Probably in her writing-table. But where were the keys? The
+shrewdness which, in spite of his intellectual deterioration, stood him
+in stead whenever he feared personal inconvenience came to his aid. He
+remembered that his wife had been wont to keep her keys in the drawer
+of a small table at her bedside, and he reflected that, in the sad
+confusion ensuing upon her death, it was hardly likely that they had as
+yet been removed. In fact he found them there, and with them he opened
+the middle drawer of her writing-table. It contained a large sealed
+envelope inscribed "My last will." Strachinsky slipped the document
+into his pocket, and returned the keys to their place.
+
+At that moment the door opened, and Erika entered. She looked
+wretchedly pale and wan, with dark rings around her weary eyes. She
+wore a black gown which her mother had made hastily for her when her
+little brother died, and which she had outgrown during the winter.
+Although the day was warm and sunshiny, she looked cold, and in all her
+movements there was something of the timorous hesitation that a dog
+will display after losing his master, when he seems uncertain where to
+creep away and hide himself. The resolute attitude she had been wont to
+maintain when with her step-father was all gone; heart, mind, and soul
+seemed alike crushed.
+
+"What do you want here?" Strachinsky asked, suspiciously.
+
+She looked at him in what was almost surprise, and a tremor of pain
+passed through her. "What should I want?" she murmured, in a hoarse
+whisper. "I want to go to my mother!" She said it to herself, not to
+him; she seemed to have forgotten his presence. Her chin trembled, her
+lips twitched, the tears rushed to her eyes.
+
+No, that pitiable creature never could have come to look for a will.
+Strachinsky, always ready to be sentimental, gave a sigh of relief, put
+his hand over his eyes, and left the room. Scarcely had he gone when
+Erika's sad eye fell upon the bed: it had been stripped of all its
+coverings and looked like some couch in a lumber-room that had been
+unused for years. With a shudder the girl turned away. Yes, what could
+she want here? She asked herself the question now. But on a sudden she
+perceived hanging on the wall a black skirt, the hem soiled with mud.
+It was the gown her mother had worn when she hurried across the fields,
+the day before her death. Erika clutched it as if it had been a living
+thing, and with a low wail buried her face in its folds, about which
+some aroma of her dead mother seemed to cling.
+
+Meanwhile, Strachinsky had locked himself into his room, where he
+walked to and fro, lost in reflection, the portentous will in his
+pocket, with the seal as yet unbroken. The only legal document of the
+kind, in his opinion, was the will made by his wife eleven years
+previously, shortly after their marriage, by which she constituted him
+her sole heir and the guardian of her daughter. Any later testamentary
+disposition he could not possibly regard otherwise than as the result
+of an aberration of mind, of which she had for some time shown
+symptoms, and which had, shortly before her death, come to be
+distinctly developed.
+
+Poor Emma! There was no doubt that her intellect, once so clear and
+strong, had been clouded of late years.
+
+So soon as he had entirely convinced himself of this fact, he broke the
+seal of the will.
+
+Even in his rascality he was a thorough sentimentalist. He never could
+have committed a crime without first skilfully contriving to exalt in
+his own eyes both himself and his motives.
+
+Whilst reading the document he changed colour several times. When he
+had finished he sighed thrice consecutively: "Poor Emma!" Then, after
+pacing the room thoughtfully, he said to himself, "She would be indeed
+distressed if this paper--worthless legally in view of her mental
+condition, and throwing so false a light upon our marriage--should ever
+be made public; she--to whom the tie between us was so sacred!" A flood
+of proofs of his wife's devotion to him, interrupted but temporarily,
+overwhelmed Strachinsky's soul. He lit a candle and burned Emma's last
+will.
+
+And then, without the slightest pricking of conscience, he betook
+himself to his beloved lounge. He had the sensation of having performed
+an act of exalted devotion.
+
+"No need, dearest Emma," he said, apostrophizing his wife's portrait
+which hung above his couch, "to say that I never shall let your child
+want. No legal document is necessary to insure that. Poor Emma!" And,
+remembering the extract-books which he had devised at a former period
+of his existence, he moaned, drearily, "Oh, what a noble mind was there
+o'erthrown!"
+
+When, a few hours afterwards, he encountered his step-daughter, he felt
+it incumbent upon him to be especially kind to her. He patted her
+shoulder, with the insinuating tenderness people are apt to show
+towards those whom they have wronged, and said, solemnly, "Poor little
+Rika! Your loss is great. Your mother is gone; but never forget that
+you still have a father."
+
+
+Weeks passed,--months; everything in the house went on as best it
+could. Strachinsky lay on the sofa from morning until night, reading
+novels most of the time. In the pauses of this edifying occupation he
+roused himself to an unedifying activity; that is to say, he scolded
+all the servants, without assigning any grounds for his displeasure. No
+one minded it much: every one knew that after such an episode he would
+betake himself to his sofa again and to his sentimental romances.
+
+With regard to his step-daughter's education, he showed the same
+tendency to vehement attacks of zeal. He would suddenly go to the
+school-room, inspect her written exercises, question her as to some
+historical date which he had quite forgotten himself, and conclude by
+asking her to play something upon the piano.
+
+During her performance he would pace the room with a face expressive of
+the gravest anxiety.
+
+At first she took pains to play for him, but when she discovered that
+he had determined beforehand to find fault, she rattled away upon the
+keys of her old instrument like a perfect imp of waywardness, whenever
+required to show what progress she had made.
+
+Almost before her fingers had left the key-board the scolding began. "I
+see no improvement; no, not the slightest improvement do I perceive!
+And to think of all that has been done for your education! I fairly
+work my fingers to the bone to give you every advantage that a princess
+could claim, while you--you do nothing!" And then would follow a long
+dramatic summary of the sacrifices that had been made for her. He
+always talked to her like the father addressing a worthless daughter in
+some popular melodrama, ending upon every occasion with, "What is to
+become of you? Tell me, what--what will become of you?" Then he would
+bring down both fists upon the top of the piano, to emphasize the
+horror inspired by the thought of her future, shake his head for the
+last time, and leave the room with a heavy stride. Afterwards he was
+sure to complain of the injury the agitation had caused him, and to
+betake himself to his sofa.
+
+The girl was left more and more to herself. About six months after her
+mother's death Miss Sophy was dismissed. She was a thoroughly capable
+woman, personally much attached to her pupil, trustworthy and practical
+as a housekeeper, but prone to fall in love with every man, and to find
+a rival and foe in every woman who refused to be the confidante of her
+morbid and distorted sentimentality.
+
+During Emma's lifetime she had been able to conceal most of her
+eccentricities in this respect, but afterwards she became positively
+intolerable,--perhaps because there was no one to restrain or
+intimidate her. Without a single personal attraction, she was
+inordinately vain, forever striving by her dress and conduct to invite
+attention from the other sex. In the forenoons she gave Erika lessons,
+in the afternoons she mended and made her clothes,--she was a skilled
+needlewoman,--and the evenings she devoted to music.
+
+She sang. Her répertoire was limited, consisting principally of the
+soprano part of Mendelssohn's duet "I would that my love could silently
+flow in a single word," which she shrieked out as a solo, and in
+Schumann's "I'll not complain,"--which last always caused her to shed
+copious tears.
+
+At last her love of self-adornment as well as her musical enthusiasm
+passed all bounds. She cut off her hair, dressed it in short curls, and
+purchased two new silk gowns. She also bought an old zither, and every
+evening, with her hair freshly curled, and in a rustling silk robe, she
+betook herself to the drawing-room, where Strachinsky, in pursuance of
+his boasted activity, was wont to finish the day by endless games of
+patience.
+
+Her manner, the languishing looks cast at him over her instrument, left
+no doubt as to her sentiments towards him.
+
+At first the master of the house took but little heed of these
+demonstrations. Her performance upon the zither he found rather
+agreeable: the whining drawl of the tones she evoked from it soothed
+his melancholy. But one evening when he had requested her to play for
+him "The Tyrolean and his Child," and also to repeat "May Breezes," she
+was so carried away by triumphant vanity that she attempted to sing
+with her instrument, accompanying her shrill notes with such
+languishing glances that their object could no longer ignore their
+meaning.
+
+The next morning Strachinsky sent for his stepdaughter. Clad in his
+dressing-gown, as he reclined upon his lounge, with all the romantic
+drawling indifference in his air and voice which he had learned from
+his favourite hero "Pelham," he asked her as she stood before him,--
+
+"The Englishwoman's behaviour must have struck you as extraordinary?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+He passed his hand thoughtfully across his brow. She did not speak, and
+he went on playing the English nobleman to his own entire satisfaction.
+His left hand, in which he held a French novel, hanging negligently
+over the arm of the lounge, he waved his right in the air, and said,
+"Of course I pity the poor creature, but she bores me. Rid me of the
+fool, I pray,--rid me of her!"
+
+He then inclined his head towards the door, and buried himself in the
+perusal of his novel.
+
+From that time Erika ceased to spend the evenings with Miss Sophy in
+the drawing-room; she withdrew after supper to the solitude of the old
+school-room, which in fact she greatly preferred.
+
+Of course Miss Sophy suspected some plot of Erika's in Strachinsky's
+altered demeanour, and lost every remnant of sense still left in her
+silly head. She employed all her leisure moments in writing to her hero
+letters which she bribed the maid to lay upon the table in his
+dressing-room.
+
+This would all have been ridiculous, if the affair had not taken a
+tragic turn.
+
+One morning Miss Sophy did not appear at the breakfast-table, and when
+Minna went to call her she found the wretched woman in bed, writhing in
+agony. In despair at Strachinsky's insensibility she had poisoned
+herself with the tips of some old lucifer matches. The physician,
+summoned in haste, was barely able to save her life; and of course she
+left Luzano as soon as she was able to travel.
+
+Strachinsky was much flattered that the poor woman's love for him had
+ended in madness, and he invested her memory with an ideal excellence,
+recalling her as brilliantly gifted by nature and endowed with many
+personal attractions.
+
+
+Erika was now left without instruction. Her step-father decided that a
+young girl of her age needed no further supervision, and that the
+daughter of a poor farmer could lay no claim to any personal luxury.
+
+When he spoke of himself only, it was always as an 'impoverished
+cavalier;' when he alluded to himself as her father, he was always
+degraded to simply 'a poor farmer.'
+
+All through the summer she was alone, and during a long dreary winter,
+followed by another summer and another winter, she was still alone.
+Another girl in her place might have fallen into gossip with the
+servants to pass the time; another, again, might have married the
+bailiff out of sheer ennui: assuredly any one else would have grown
+stupid and uncouth. She did nothing of the kind.
+
+She had occupation enough. She learned long pages of Goethe and
+Shakespeare by heart, and declaimed them, clad in improvised costumes,
+before a tall dim mirror; she played on the piano for hours daily, and
+made decided progress, despite certain bad habits unavoidable in the
+lack of instruction. The rest of her time was spent in building
+numberless castles in the air, and in taking long walks about the
+neighboring country.
+
+But when three years had gone by since her mother's death, without the
+least alteration in her circumstances, the poor child began to be
+impatient and to look eagerly about for some relief from so sordid an
+existence. Why could she not be an artist?--an actress, a singer, or a
+pianist?
+
+On a cold spring morning towards the end of April she seated herself at
+the big table in her former school-room and indited a letter to the
+director of the Castle Theatre at Vienna,--a letter in which she
+partially explained to him her position and requested him to make a
+trial of her dramatic talent, with a view to an engagement at his
+theatre. She declared herself ready to go to Vienna if he would promise
+her an audience. She had finished the clearly-written document, but
+when about to sign her name she hesitated. Erika Lenzdorff she signed
+at last. "Lenzdorff," she repeated, thoughtfully,--"Lenzdorff." What
+possessed her to write to the director of a theatre--an utter
+stranger--explaining her circumstances? Would it not be much better to
+turn to her father's relatives? To be sure, she knew nothing about
+them,--not even their address; but that, she thought, might be
+procured. Her mother had never spoken of them; she had always abruptly
+changed the subject when Erika asked about her father and his
+relatives. Why?
+
+Strachinsky and his wife had often spoken of the parents of the latter,
+but never of those of her first husband.
+
+"Lenzdorff." She wrote the name again and again on a sheet of paper. It
+looked distinguished. Perhaps they were wealthy people, who could do
+something for her; but----
+
+Emma had told her daughter that her name was Lenzdorff the day after
+the adventure with the young painter, when the child, mortified at not
+having been able to tell it, had asked what it was. But when she had
+precociously repeated, in a questioning tone, "_Von_ Lenzdorff?" her
+mother had replied, sternly, "What is that to you? It is of no
+consequence whatever."
+
+Erika began to ponder. Her mother's parents had died long since; must
+not her father's parents be dead also? If they were still living, it
+was difficult to see why Strachinsky had not cast upon them the burden
+of her maintenance. Still, there were reasons why he should not have
+done so.
+
+If her father's relatives were people of integrity and refinement, any
+business discussion or explanation with them would have been most
+distressing; no wonder that he avoided it, especially since Erika's
+maintenance cost him little or nothing.
+
+Thus far she had arrived in her reflections, when Minna entered and
+asked her to go immediately to the drawing-room, where a visitor
+awaited her.
+
+A visitor at Luzano? Such an event was unheard of.
+
+In some distress Erika looked down at her shabby gown, made out of an
+old dressing-gown of her mother's, black, with a Turkish border. There
+was a hole in the elbow of the left sleeve.
+
+"What sort of a gentleman is it, Minna?" she asked, irritably,
+suspecting him to be some business acquaintance of Strachinsky's.
+
+"A foreign gentleman."
+
+"Old or young?"
+
+"An elderly gentleman."
+
+"Well, if he is elderly, and has no lady with him," she murmured, "I
+can go just as I am." She knew from books, whence she derived all her
+worldly wisdom, that ladies were much more critical than gentlemen.
+
+"What in the world can he want of me?"
+
+She went up to the mirror, smoothed her hair, drew together with a
+black thread the hole in her sleeve, and hurried down to the
+drawing-room. The apartment to which this name was still given was on
+the ground-floor, as large as a riding-school, and almost as empty.
+
+Besides the piano it still contained two huge bookcases, a shabby sofa
+behind a rickety table, and a round piano-stool. The rest of the
+furniture had disappeared. Some chairs had been banished as unsafe; the
+other things had been sold piece by piece, under stress of various
+pecuniary embarrassments, to the Jew broker of the village.
+
+Strachinsky had several times attempted to dispose thus of the books
+also, but Solomon Bondy had no market for them. Once the Pole had tried
+to sell the piano. But Solomon had curtly refused to find a purchaser
+for it, knowing that with the piano the last remnant of enjoyment would
+be snatched from the poor lonely girl vegetating in the castle. The Jew
+had shown more mercy than the Christian. And then her dead mother had
+been dear to him, as she was to all around her.
+
+She had been dear to Strachinsky also, but he never allowed his
+affection to stand in the way of his ease.
+
+In consequence of the total lack of furniture, Strachinsky, when Erika
+entered the room, was sitting beside the stranger on the sofa,--which
+looked comical.
+
+The stranger, a man of middle age, tall, broad-shouldered, and erect in
+bearing, rose to receive her.
+
+"May I beg you to present me to the Countess?" he said, turning to
+Strachinsky.
+
+"Countess!" It thrilled her. Had she heard aright?
+
+"Herr Doctor Herbegg--my daughter," with a wave of the hand.
+
+"Your step-daughter," the stranger corrected him, with cool emphasis.
+
+"I have never made any difference between her and my own children, dead
+in their early youth," said the other; and he was right, for he had
+taken very little interest in his own children. "You know that, my
+child," he added, in a caressing tone that in his stepdaughter's ears
+was like an echo of his old love-making to his wife, and which offended
+her. He would have taken her hand, but she withdrew it hastily from his
+flabby warm touch.
+
+Since there was no other scat to be had, she turned to the piano to get
+the piano-stool. Doctor Herbegg arose and took it from her.
+
+Then Strachinsky started up with incredible activity, and a positive
+struggle for the stool ensued, a mutual "Pray, pray, Herr Baron--Herr
+Doctor!"
+
+Erika calmly looked on at their strange behaviour. Had she suddenly
+become of such importance that each was striving to show her courtesy?
+Through her youthful soul the word 'Countess' echoed again with
+thrilling fascination.
+
+Strachinsky finally gained the day: he placed the piano-stool for his
+step-daughter, panting as he did so, so unused was he to the slightest
+physical exertion.
+
+Erika seated herself upon the stool, although each gentleman offered
+her a place on the sofa, assumed a dignified air, or what she supposed
+to be such, and calmly surveyed the situation and the stranger.
+Something told her that his visit was an important event for her and
+hinted at a turning-point in her life. She was not mistaken. Doctor
+Herbegg was her grandmother's legal adviser.
+
+He began to converse upon indifferent topics, watching her narrowly the
+while.
+
+Her step-father, who had become utterly unaccustomed to the reception
+of guests, wriggled about on the sofa as if stung by a tarantula. He
+had always been restless in his demeanour when he was not awkwardly
+stiff, but formerly his good looks had compensated for his defective
+training. They no longer existed: the self-indulgent indolence to which
+he had given himself over, so soon as all social contact with the world
+was at an end for him, had done its part in effecting their decay.
+
+"A bottle of wine! Bring a bottle of wine!" he ordered the young girl,
+forgetting the suavity of speech he had just before adopted, and
+falling into his usual tone.
+
+"Pray do not trouble the Countess on my account," Doctor Herbegg
+interposed. "I can take nothing. My time is limited, since I must catch
+the next train for Berlin."
+
+"Surely, Herr Doctor, you will take a glass of Tokay," Strachinsky
+persisted, and, perceiving that his manner of addressing his
+step-daughter had offended the lawyer, he was amiable enough to add,
+"Do not trouble yourself, my dear Rika; I will attend to it." He arose,
+and as he was leaving the room he went on, "The Herr Doctor will inform
+you, meanwhile, as to the change in your prospects."
+
+The lawyer made no attempt to detain him. He cared very little about
+the glass of Tokay, but very much about an interview with the young
+girl. When Strachinsky had left the room he approached Erika, and in a
+short time had explained matters to her.
+
+The title of Countess, which her mother had concealed from her,
+apparently because in the circumstances in which she was forced to
+educate her child it would have been more of a hinderance than a help,
+was hers of right. Her mother's first marriage had been with the only
+son by a second marriage of Count Lenzdorff: he had held office under
+the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and two years after his marriage had
+been killed in a railroad accident. By her second marriage Frau von
+Strachinsky had alienated her mother-in-law. Meanwhile, the two sons of
+Count Lenzdorff's first marriage had died, childless, and finally the
+Count himself had died, at a very advanced age,--so old that he had
+persuaded himself that he had outlived death, and had therefore never
+taken the trouble to make a will; consequently his entire estate
+devolved upon his grand-daughter.
+
+The lawyer had just imparted this intelligence to the grand-daughter in
+question, when Strachinsky re-entered the room, very much out of breath
+and excited, and followed by Minna, tall, gaunt, with the bearing of a
+grenadier and the gloomy air of an energetic old maid whom it behooves
+to be upon the defensive with the entire male sex. She carried a
+waiter, which she placed upon the table before the sofa.
+
+"One little glass, Herr Doctor,--one little glass!" cried Strachinsky.
+
+The Doctor bowed his thanks, and touched the glass distrustfully with
+his lips.
+
+"The Tokay is excellent," he remarked, in evident surprise at finding
+anything of Strachinsky's genuine.
+
+"Yes, yes," his host declared; "you can't get such a glass of wine as
+that everywhere, Herr Doctor. I purchased it in Hungary by favour of an
+intimate friend, Prince Liskat,--_les restes des grandeurs passées_, my
+dear Doctor."
+
+After a first glass Strachinsky became tenderly condescending: he
+patted the lawyer on the shoulder. "Pray don't hurry, my dear Herbegg;
+you'll not easily find another glass of such Tokay."
+
+Erika observed that Doctor Herbegg bit his lip and did not touch his
+second glass. He looked at his watch and said, "Unfortunately,
+Countess, I have but little time left, but I should like to inform
+myself upon several points, in accordance with your grandmother's wish.
+Where and with whom have you been educated?"
+
+"At home, and with my mother."
+
+"Exclusively with your mother?"
+
+"Yes; she even gave me lessons in French and upon the piano."
+
+She was burning to rehabilitate her mother in his eyes.
+
+"My wife was an admirable performer, an artist, a pupil of Liszt's,"
+Strachinsky interposed.--"Play something to the Doctor; be quick!" he
+ordered, grandiloquently, dropping again his _rôle_ of tender parent.
+His imperious tone provoked Erika unutterably: she would have liked to
+rush from the room and fling to the door behind her, but she conquered
+herself for her mother's sake and--out of vanity.
+
+She opened the piano, and played the last portion of Beethoven's
+Moonlight Sonata,--the last thing that she had studied with her mother.
+Her execution was still rude and unequal, like that of an ardent
+youthful creature whose musical aspirations have never been toned down
+by culture, but an unusual amount of talent was evident in her
+performance.
+
+"Magnificent, Countess!" exclaimed the lawyer, rising and going towards
+her as she left the piano.
+
+"Very well; but you missed that last chord once," Strachinsky said,
+pompously.
+
+Doctor Herbegg paid him not the least attention. "Now I am forced to
+go," he said to the young girl; "and you must not smile, Countess, if I
+tell you that I leave you with a much lighter heart than the one I
+brought with me. Your grandmother sent me here to reconnoitre, as it
+were: I find a gifted young lady, where I had feared to encounter an
+untrained village girl."
+
+Then suddenly Erika's overstrained nerves gave way. "My grandmother had
+no right to allow of such a fear on your part; no one who had ever
+known my mother could have supposed anything of the kind."
+
+He looked her full in the face more steadily, more searchingly than
+before, and his cold, clear eyes suddenly shone with a genial light.
+"Forgive me," he said, kissing the hand she held out to him; then,
+turning, he would have left the room with a brief bow to Strachinsky.
+
+His host, however, made haste to disburden himself of a fine speech.
+"You will have something to tell in Berlin, will you not? You have at
+least seen how a Bohemian gentleman lives. No lounging-chairs in the
+drawing-room, but Tokay in the cellar. Original, at all events, eh?"
+
+"Extremely original," the lawyer assented.
+
+On the threshold he paused. "One question more, Herr Baron," he began,
+bending upon his condescending host a look of keenest scrutiny. "Did
+the late Frau von Strachinsky leave no written document by which she
+provided for her daughter's future?"
+
+Strachinsky listened to this question with a scarcely perceptible
+degree of embarrassment. "Not that I know of," he said, shifting
+uneasily from one foot to the other.
+
+Erika suddenly remembered that her mother had been busily engaged in
+writing a few days before her death.
+
+Meanwhile, her step-father, having gained entire control of his
+features, continued, "Moreover, in this case any testamentary document
+would have been entirely superfluous. My wife knew well that should she
+die I should care for her daughter as for my own."
+
+"H'm!" the Doctor ejaculated. "And did Frau von Strachinsky never speak
+to you of her Berlin relatives, Countess?"
+
+"No," Erika replied, thoughtfully. "She was very restless for some
+weeks before her death, and often told me that as soon as we were quite
+sure of being uninterrupted she had an important communication to make
+to me. But she never did so: death closed her lips."
+
+The Doctor reflected for a moment, and then said, "I am rather
+surprised, Herr von Strachinsky, that you did not advise old Countess
+Lenzdorff of your wife's death."
+
+Strachinsky assumed an injured air. "Permit me to ask you, Herr
+Doctor," he said, with lofty emphasis, "why I should have informed
+Countess Lenzdorff of my adored wife's death? Countess Lenzdorff was my
+bitterest enemy. She opposed my wife's union with me not only openly,
+but with all sorts of underhand schemes, and when she could not succeed
+in severing the tie that united our hearts, she dismissed my wife and
+her daughter without one friendly word of farewell. Since she entirely
+ignored my wife while she lived, how was I to suppose that she would
+take any interest in the death of my idolized Emma?"
+
+"But the announcement of her death would have seriously influenced your
+step-daughter's destiny," Doctor Herbegg observed.
+
+"My wife considered me the guardian of her child," Strachinsky
+declared, with pathos. "Another man might have refused to accept a
+burden entailing upon him sacrifice of every kind. But I am not like
+other men. My wife evidently supposed that her child would be best
+cared for under my protection; and I was not the man to betray her
+confidence. You look surprised, Doctor. Yes, no doubt you think it
+strange for a man nowadays to vindicate his chivalry and
+disinterestedness, to his own ruin. But such a man am I,--a Marquis
+Posa, a Don Quixote, an Egmont----"
+
+"Pardon me, Herr Baron, I shall be late for the train," said the
+Doctor, and, with a bow to Erika, he left the room.
+
+Strachinsky ran after him with astonishing celerity, expatiating upon
+his chivalrous disinterestedness. Shortly afterwards a carriage was
+heard driving out of the courtyard; and Strachinsky returned to the
+bare drawing-room, which his step-daughter had not yet left.
+
+His face beamed with satisfaction; rubbing his hands, he cried out,
+"Now we shall lack for nothing!" Then, turning to Erika, he continued,
+"I shall see to it that your German relatives do not squander your
+property. This lawyer-fellow seems to me a schemer, a sly dog. But I
+shall do my best to watch over your interests. In fact, it is my duty
+as your guardian to administer your affairs. Moreover, in three years
+you will be of age, and then we can avail ourselves of your money to
+free Luzano from its weight of debt."
+
+This delightful scheme made him extremely cheerful. After pacing the
+apartment for a while, lost in contemplation of its feasibility, he
+went to the table, and, taking up the Doctor's untouched second glass
+of Tokay, he poured its contents back into the bottle. This he called
+economy. Then with the bottle in his hand, apparently with a view of
+re-sealing it, he went towards the door, saying, "The affair has
+greatly agitated me. I am so very sensitive. But when one has had to
+wait upon fortune so long---!"
+
+He had settled it with himself that he was the person principally
+interested; his step-daughter was quite a secondary consideration, at
+most the means to an end. But circumstances shaped themselves after
+what was to him a most unexpected and undesirable fashion. Erika
+received a brief and rather formal letter from Countess Lenzdorff, in
+which the old lady requested her to repair as soon as possible to
+Berlin, but upon no account to allow Strachinsky to accompany her; in
+short, the old Countess refused to have any personal intercourse with
+him whatever.
+
+By the same post came a letter from Doctor Herbegg to Strachinsky,
+formally advising him to resign his guardianship voluntarily. Should he
+comply, the Countess would refrain from closer examination of his
+administration of the property of her daughter-in-law and of her
+grandchild. But if, on the other hand, he made the slightest attempt to
+interfere in the management of his step-daughter's German estate, she
+would, as the guardian appointed by the late Count, resort to legal
+means for relieving herself of such interference.
+
+Had Strachinsky's conscience been perfectly clear he would probably
+have set himself in opposition, but as it was he contented himself with
+gnashing his teeth and raging for two days, indulging freely in
+vituperation of old Countess Lenzdorff. Then he made a final tender
+attempt to work upon Erika's feelings and to induce her to espouse his
+cause with her grandmother. When this failed, he wrapped himself in his
+martyr's cloak and submitted with much grumbling. Dulled as his nature
+was, he bore his disappointment with comparative ease. At first he
+assumed an air of magnanimous renunciation towards his step-daughter,
+but after a while he overwhelmed her with good advice, and groaned for
+her whenever she lifted any weight or stooped in her packing. Erika
+herself, meanwhile, was in a state of tremendous excitement.
+
+On the morning of her departure, when her trunks were all packed she
+took a walk. She first visited her mother's grave for the last time,
+and then went into the garden, pausing in all her favourite haunts, and
+avoiding with a shudder even a glance towards the spot by the low
+garden wall whence she had seen her mother hurrying across the fields
+towards the river.
+
+Still, in whatever direction she turned she felt the presence of the
+stream: she heard its voice loud and wailing as it rushed along swollen
+by the winter's snows. A soft breeze swept above the earth, mingling
+its sighs with the graver note of the water. Everything trembled and
+quivered; every tree, every sprouting plant, throbbed; all nature
+thrilled with delicious pain,--the fever of the spring. And on a sudden
+she felt herself carried away by a like thrill of excitement; a
+nameless yearning, ignorant of aim, possessed her, transporting her to
+the skies, and yet binding her to the earth in the fetters of a languor
+such as she had never before experienced.
+
+Once more there arose in her memory the figure of the young artist who
+had drawn her picture there beside the brook as it rippled dreamily on
+its way to the river. She saw him distinctly before her: her heart
+began to throb wildly.
+
+She hurried on to the spot where he had sketched her. The swollen brook
+murmured far more loudly over the pebbles than it had done on that hot
+day in midsummer; the reddish boughs of the willows began to show
+silver-gray buds, and on the bank there gleamed something blue,--the
+first forget-me-nots. She stooped to pluck them.
+
+At that moment she heard Minna's voice calling, "Rika! where are you?"
+
+She started, and, tripping upon the wet slippery soil, all but fell
+into the brook. With difficulty she regained her footing, and without
+her flowers; they grew too far below her. She looked at them longingly
+and went her way.
+
+When she reached the house she found the carriage already in the
+court-yard,--a huge, green, glass coach, that clattered and jingled
+at the slightest movement. It was lined with dark-brown striped
+awning-stuff,--the shabbiest vehicle that ever ran upon four wheels.
+
+Beside the carriage stood a clumsy cart, in which the luggage was to be
+piled. Herr von Strachinsky was ordering about the servants carrying
+the trunks. Everything in the house was topsy-turvy. Breakfast had been
+hurriedly prepared, and was waiting--a most uninviting repast--upon the
+dining-room table. Erika could not eat. She ran to her room and put on
+her bonnet.
+
+"Hurry, hurry!" Minna called up from below.
+
+She ran down and crossed the threshold. The air was warm and damp, and
+a fine rain was falling. Strachinsky helped her into the carriage with
+pompous formality. "I shall not accompany you to the station," he said.
+"I do not like driving in a close carriage. Adieu!" He had nothing more
+affectionate to say to her, as he shook her hand. The carriage door
+clattered to; the horses started. Thus Erika rattled out of the
+court-yard, with Minna beside her. The servant looked tired out; her
+face was very red, and she had a hand-bag in her lap, and a bandbox and
+two bundles of shawls on the seat opposite her. The carriage was very
+stuffy, and smelled of old leather. Erika opened one of the windows.
+They were driving along the same road by which she had followed her
+mother's coffin; there beyond the meadow she could see the wall of the
+church-yard. She leaned far out of the window. The driver whipped up
+his horses; the church-yard vanished. The young girl suddenly felt as
+if the very heart were being torn from her breast, and she burst into
+tears, sobbing convulsively, uncontrollably.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+On the evening of the same day an old lady was walking to and fro in a
+large, tastefully-furnished apartment looking out upon a little front
+garden in Bellevue Street, Berlin. Both furniture and hangings in the
+room, in contrast with the prevailing fashion, were light and cheerful.
+The old lady's forehead wore a slight frown, and her air was somewhat
+impatient, as of one awaiting a verdict.
+
+At the first glance it was plain that she was very old, very tall,
+broad-shouldered, and straight as a fir. In her bearing there was the
+personal dignity of one whose pride has never had to bow, who has never
+paid society the tribute of the slightest hypocrisy, who has never had
+to lower a glance before mankind or before a memory; but it was at the
+same time characterized by the unconscious selfishness, disguised as
+love of independence, of one who has never allowed aught to interfere
+with personal ease. Upon the broad shoulders, so well fitted to support
+with dignity and power the convictions of a lifetime, was set a head of
+remarkable beauty,--the head, noble in every line, of an old woman who
+has never made the slightest attempt to appear one day younger than her
+age. Oddly enough, there looked forth from the face--the face of an
+antique statue--a pair of large, modern eyes, philosophic eyes, whose
+glance could penetrate to the secret core of a human soul,--eyes which
+nothing escaped, in the sight of which there were few things sacred,
+and nothing inexcusable, because they perceived human nature as it is,
+without requiring from it the impossible.
+
+Such was Erika's grandmother, Countess Anna Lenzdorff.
+
+After she had paced the room to and fro for a long time, she seated
+herself, with a short impatient sigh, in an arm-chair that stood
+invitingly beside a table covered with books and provided with a
+student-lamp. She took up a volume of Maupassant, but a degree of
+mental restlessness to which she was entirely unaccustomed tormented
+her, and she laid the book aside. Her bright eyes wandered from one
+object to another in the room, and were finally arrested by a large
+picture hanging on the opposite wall.
+
+It represented an opening in a leafy forest, dewy fresh, and saturated
+with depth of sunshine. In the midst of the golden glow was a strange
+group,--two nymphs sporting with a shaggy brown faun. The picture was
+by Böcklin, and the forest, the faun, and the white limbs of the nymphs
+were painted with incomparable skill: nevertheless the picture could
+not be pronounced free from the reproach of a certain meretriciousness.
+
+It had never occurred to Countess Lenzdorff to ponder upon the picture;
+she had bought it because she thought it beautiful, and certainly an
+old woman has a right to hang anything that she chooses upon her walls,
+so long as it is a work of art. To-night she suddenly began to attach
+all sorts of considerations to the picture.
+
+Meanwhile, an old footman, with a duly-shaven upper lip, and very bushy
+whiskers, entered and announced, "Herr von Sydow."
+
+"I am very glad," the old lady rejoined, evidently quite rejoiced,
+whereupon there entered a very tall, almost gigantic officer of
+dragoons, with short fair hair and a grave handsome face.
+
+"You come just at the right time, Goswyn," she said, cordially,
+extending her delicate old hand. He touched it with his lips, and then,
+in obedience to her gesture, took a seat near her, within the circle of
+light of the lamp.
+
+"How can I serve you, Countess?" he asked.
+
+"You are acquainted with my small gallery," she began, looking around
+the large airy room with some pride.
+
+"I have frequently enjoyed your works of art," the young officer
+replied. The phrase was rather formal; in fact, he himself was rather
+formal, but there was something so genial behind his stiff North-German
+formality that one easily forgave him his purely superficial
+priggishness,--nay, upon further acquaintance came to like it.
+
+"Rather antiquated in expression, your reply," the old lady rejoined.
+"My small collection thanks you for your kindly appreciation; but that
+is not the question at present. You know my Böcklin?"
+
+"Yes, Countess."
+
+"What do you think of it?"
+
+He fixed his eyes upon it. "What could I think of it? It is a
+masterpiece."
+
+"H'm! that all the world admits," the old lady murmured, impatiently,
+as if vexed at the want of originality in his remark; "but is it a
+picture that one would leave hanging on the wall of one's boudoir when
+one was about to receive into one's house as an inmate a grand-daughter
+of sixteen? Give me your opinion as to that, Goswyn."
+
+Again Goswyn von Sydow fixed his eyes upon the picture. "That would
+depend very much upon the kind of grand-daughter," he said, frowning
+slightly. "If she were a young girl brought up in the world and
+accustomed from childhood to works of art, I should say yes. If she
+were a young girl educated in a convent or bred in the country, I
+should say no."
+
+The old lady sighed. "I knew it!" she said. "My Böcklin is doomed. Ah!"
+she exclaimed, wringing her hands in mock despair. "Pray, Goswyn,"--she
+treated the young officer with the affectionate familiarity an old lady
+would use towards a young fellow whom she has known intimately from
+early childhood,--"press that button beside you."
+
+The dragoon, evidently perfectly at home in the house, stretched out a
+very long arm and pressed the button.
+
+The footman immediately appeared. "Lüdecke, call Friedrich to help you
+take down that picture."
+
+"Friedrich has gone to the station, your Excellency," Lüdecke permitted
+himself to remark.
+
+"Yes, of course everything is topsy-turvy; nothing is as it has been
+used to be. 'Coming events cast their shadows before.' It will always
+be so now," sighed the Countess.
+
+"I will help you take down the picture, Lüdecke," Herr von Sydow said,
+quietly, and before the Countess could look around there was nothing
+save a broad expanse of light cretonne and two hooks upon the wall
+where the Böcklin had hung.
+
+Lüdecke's strength sufficed to carry the picture from the room.
+
+"Bring in tea," the Countess called after him. "You will take a cup of
+tea with me, Goswyn?"
+
+"Are you not going to wait for the young Countess?" Sydow asked, rather
+timidly.
+
+"Oh, she will not be here before midnight. I don't know why Friedrich
+has gone at this hour to the station; probably he is in love with the
+young person at the railway restaurant; else I cannot understand his
+hurry. However, I thank you for your admonition."
+
+"But, my dear Countess----" exclaimed the young man.
+
+"No need to excuse yourself," she cut short what he was about to say.
+"I am not displeased: you have never displeased me, except by not
+having arranged matters so as to come into the world as my son.
+Moreover, I should seriously regret the loss of your good opinion. Pray
+forgive me for not driving myself to the railway station to meet my
+grand-daughter and to edify the officials with a touching and effective
+scene. Consider, this is my last comfortable evening."
+
+"Your last comfortable evening," Goswyn von Sydow repeated,
+thoughtfully.
+
+"Now you disapprove of me again," the old Countess complained,
+ironically.
+
+"Disapprove!" he repeated, with an ineffective attempt to laugh at the
+word. "Really, Countess, if I did not know how kind-hearted you are, I
+should be sorry for your grand-daughter."
+
+Ho cleared his throat several times as he spoke; he always became a
+little hoarse when speaking directly from his heart.
+
+"Kind-hearted,--kind-hearted," the old lady murmured, provoked; "pray
+don't put me off with compliments. What sort of word is 'kind-hearted'?
+One has weak nerves just as one has an aching tooth, and one does all
+that one can to spare them; all the little woes one perceives one
+relieves, if possible,--of course it is very disagreeable not to
+relieve them,--but the intense misery with which the world is filled
+one simply forgets, and is none the worse for so doing. You know it is
+not my fashion to deceive myself as to the beauty of my own character.
+You are sorry for my grand-daughter."
+
+He would have assured her that he spoke conditionally, but she would
+not allow him to do so. "Yes, you are sorry for my grand-daughter," she
+said, decidedly, "but are you not at all sorry for me?"
+
+"Upon that point you must allow me to express myself when I have made
+acquaintance with the young Countess."
+
+"That has very little to do with it," rejoined the old lady. "Let us
+take it for granted that she is charming. Doctor Herbegg says she is a
+jewel of the purest water, lacking nothing but a little polish;
+between ourselves, I do not altogether believe him. He exaggerated my
+grand-daughter's attractions a little to make it easy for me to receive
+her. He is a good man, but, like two-thirds of the men who are worth
+anything,"--with a significant side-glance at Sydow,--"a little of a
+prig. But let us take for granted that my grand-daughter is the
+ph[oe]nix he describes, it is none the less true that on her account I
+must, in my old age, alter my comfortable mode of life, and subject
+myself to the thousand petty annoyances which the presence of a young
+girl in my house is sure to bring with it. Do you know how I felt when
+my indispensable old donkey"--the Countess Lenzdorff was wont
+frequently to designate thus her old footman Lüdecke--"carried out my
+Böcklin?" She fixed her eyes sadly upon the bare place on the wall. "I
+felt as if he were dragging out with it all the comforts of my daily
+life! Ah, here is the tea."
+
+"It has been here for some time," Sydow said, smiling. "I was just
+about to call your attention to the kettle, which is boiling over."
+
+She made the tea with extreme precision. It was delightful to see the
+beautiful old lady presiding over the old-fashioned silver tray with
+its contents. She wore on this evening a white tulle cap tied beneath
+the chin, and over it an exquisite little black lace scarf. A refined
+Epicurean nature revealed itself in her every movement,--in the
+delicate grace with which she handled the transparent teacups and
+measured the tea from its dainty caddy,--in the gusto with which she
+inhaled the aroma of this very choice brand of tea.
+
+"There!" she said, handing the young officer a cup, "you may not agree
+with my views of life, but you must praise my tea, which is in fact
+much too good for you, who follow the vile German custom of spoiling it
+with sugar."
+
+She herself had put in the sugar for him, taking care to give him just
+as much as he liked; she handed him a plate, and offered him the
+delicate wafers which she knew he preferred. She was excessively kind
+to him, and he valued her; he was cordially attached to her; she had
+been his mother's oldest friend; she had spoiled him from boyhood, and
+had, as she said, "thought the world of him." This could not but please
+any man. He appreciated so highly her kindness and thoughtfulness that
+until to-night the selfishness of which she boasted, and by which she
+had laid down the rules of her life, had seemed to him little more than
+amusing eccentricity. But to-night her attitude towards her grandchild
+grieved him. Not that he regarded this grandchild from a romantic point
+of view. He was no unpractical dreamer, nor even what is usually called
+an idealist, which means in German nothing except a muddled brain that
+deems it quite improper to hold clear views upon any subject or to look
+any reality boldly in the face. On the contrary, he had a very calm and
+sensible way of regarding matters. Consequently he thought it probable
+that the poor, neglected young girl, left for three years to the care
+of a boorish step-father, awkward and tactless as she must be under the
+circumstances, would be anything but a suitable addition to the
+household of the Countess Lenzdorff; but, good heavens! the girl was
+the old lady's flesh and blood, a poor thing who had lost her mother
+three years previously and had had no one to speak a kind word to her
+since. If the poor creature were ill-bred and neglected, whose fault
+was it, in fact? It passed his power of comprehension that the old lady
+should feel nothing save the inconvenience and annoyance of the
+situation, that she should be stirred by no emotion of pity.
+
+Perhaps she guessed his thoughts,--she was skilled in divining the
+thoughts of others,--but she cared nothing about shocking people; on
+the contrary, she rather liked to do so.
+
+When he picked up one of the books on her table she said, "None of your
+namby-pamby literature, Goswyn, but a bright, witty book. Tell me, do
+you think that in my grand-daughter's honour I ought to lock up all my
+entertaining books and subscribe to the 'Children's Friend'?"
+
+"Let us take for granted that your grand-daughter has not contracted
+the habit of dipping into every book she sees lying about," Goswyn
+observed.
+
+"Let us hope so," she said, with a laugh; "but who knows? For three
+years she has been without any one to look after her, and probably she
+has already devoured her precious step-father's entire library."
+
+"Oh, Countess!"
+
+"What would you have? Such cases do occur. Look at your sister-in-law
+Dorothea: she told me, with an air of great satisfaction, that before
+her marriage she had read all Belot."
+
+"She avowed the same thing to me just after she came home from her
+wedding journey, and she seemed to think it very clever," replied
+Goswyn, slowly.
+
+"H'm! the wicked fairy always asserts that you were in love with your
+sister-in-law," the old lady said, archly menacing him with her
+forefinger.
+
+"Indeed? I should like to know upon what my aunt Brock founds her
+assertion," the young man rejoined, coldly.
+
+"Why, upon the intense dislike you always parade for your pretty
+sister-in-law," the Countess said, with a laugh.
+
+"I do not parade it at all."
+
+"But you feel it."
+
+Goswyn von Sydow had risen from his chair. "It is very late," he said,
+picking up his cap.
+
+"I have not driven you away with my poor jests?" the old lady inquired,
+as she also rose.
+
+"No," he replied,--"at least not for long: if you will permit me, my
+dear Countess, I will call upon you in the autumn."
+
+"And until then----?"
+
+"I shall not have that pleasure, unfortunately; I leave with the
+General to-morrow for Kiel, and came to-night only to bid you good-bye.
+When I return I shall hardly find you still in Berlin."
+
+"Indeed? I am sorry," she replied, "first because I really like to see
+you from time to time, although you entertain antiquated views of life
+and always disapprove of me, and secondly because I had hoped you would
+help me a little in my grand-daughter's education. Of course if she has
+already perused all Belot----"
+
+"It would suit you precisely, Countess," he said, rallying her, "for
+then you could--h'm--hang up your Böcklin in its old place."
+
+"What an idea!" cried the Countess. "But you are quite mistaken: I
+should be furious if my grand-daughter should be found to have read all
+Belot's works."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Of course; because then there would be absolutely no hope of your
+taking the child off my hands."
+
+He frowned.
+
+"Do you understand me?" the old lady asked, gaily.
+
+"Partly."
+
+"Unfortunately, you seem to have very little desire for matrimony."
+
+"I confess that for the present it is but faint."
+
+"Let us hope that this mysterious Erika will be charming enough to----"
+
+Suddenly she turned her head: a carriage was rolling along Bellevue
+Street, already deserted at this hour because of the lateness of the
+season. It stopped before the house. The old lady started, grew visibly
+paler, and compressed her lips.
+
+The hall door opened; the servants ran down the staircase.
+
+"Good night, Countess!" Goswyn touched the delicate old hand with his
+lips and hurried away.
+
+On the staircase he encountered a tall slender girl in the most
+unbecoming mourning attire that he had ever seen a human being wear,
+and with gloves so much too short that they revealed a pair of
+slightly-reddened wrists. He touched his cap, and bowed profoundly.
+
+He carried into the street with him an impression in his heart of
+something pale, slender, immature, pathetic, concealing the germ of
+great beauty.
+
+He could not forget the distress in the eyes that had looked out from
+the pale oval face. He recalled the coldly-sneering old woman in the
+room he had left, with her disdain of all emotion. He knew how she
+would be repelled by the red wrists and the disfiguring gown. "Poor
+thing!" he said to himself.
+
+In thoughtful mood he walked along a path in the Thiergarten. All
+around reigned silence. The sweet vigour of the spring-time was wafted
+from the soil, from the trees, from every tender soft unfolding leaf.
+In the gentle light of countless sparkling stars the feathery young
+foliage gleamed with a ghostly pallor; here and there a lantern shone,
+a spot of yellow light in the dimness, colouring the grass and leaves
+about it arsenic-green.
+
+No people were here who had anything to do; only here and there a pair
+of lovers were strolling in the warm shade of the spring night.
+
+The insistent rhythm of some popular dance interrupted the yearning
+music of spring which was sighing through the half-open leaves and
+blossoms. The noise annoyed him, reminding him unpleasantly of the
+cynicism with which unsuccessful men are wont to vaunt the bitterness
+of their existence.
+
+He had walked far out of his way, into the midst of the Thiergarten.
+
+More lovers; another pair,--and still another.
+
+Except for them the place was deserted, silent: above were the
+glimmering stars, and on the earth below them the tall trees full of
+life, striving upward to the light; everywhere breathed the fragrance
+of fresh young growth, mingled with the aroma of last year's decaying
+leaves; the thrill of life around, with the echo in the distance of the
+vulgar dance-music.
+
+He could not have told how or why it was, but Sydow was more than ever
+conscious to-night of the discord sounding through creation, vainly
+seeking, as it has done for centuries, for its solution.
+
+And in the midst of his discontent there arose within him the memory of
+the haunting distress in the young girl's large eyes, and he was filled
+with warm, eager compassion for the poor, forlorn creature for whom
+there was no one to care. He would have liked to take the child in his
+arms and soothe her distress as one would have petted a bird fallen
+from the nest, or a truant, beaten dog.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER V.
+
+
+The Countess Lenzdorff had gone to meet her granddaughter as far as the
+vestibule, which was hung with Japanese crape and lighted by red
+Venetian lanterns in wrought-iron frames.
+
+She had been convinced from the first that the brilliant description
+which Doctor Herbegg had given of her grand-daughter was not to be
+trusted, and she had consequently moderated her expectations, but yet
+she was startled at what she encountered in the vestibule, the door of
+which the ever-ready Lüdecke had left open. At first she thought that
+the tall spare girl in that gown was her grand-daughter's attendant;
+but since behind the awkward creature whose clothes were all awry
+stalked a broad-shouldered female grenadier with a woollen kerchief on
+her head and a pasteboard bandbox in her hand, she doubted no longer
+which was her grand-daughter: it was not necessary for Doctor Herbegg
+to present the girl to her with, "Here is the young Countess, your
+Excellency."
+
+She advanced a step and touched the girl's forehead with her lips.
+
+"Welcome to Berlin, dear child," she said, coldly. This, then, was her
+grand-daughter,--this angular creature with red wrists and a servant
+who wore a woollen kerchief on her head and carried in her hand an
+archaic pasteboard bandbox. The Countess shuddered. "Will you have a
+cup of tea, my dear Doctor?" she said, turning to her lawyer with the
+hope of putting a little life into the situation. Then, seeing him look
+at her with something of the dismay in his expression which Goswyn von
+Sydow's features had shown when she had complained that this was to be
+her last comfortable evening, she added, hastily, "You will not? Well,
+you are right; it is late; another time, my dear Herbegg, you will do
+me the pleasure; and I--I could hardly remain with you; I am too--too
+desirous of making acquaintance with my grand-daughter."
+
+The last words came with something of a stumble, as if the Countess had
+been obliged to give them a push before they would leave her lips.
+
+The Doctor took a ceremonious leave. Minna, with her bandbox, which she
+refused to allow any one to take from her, was conducted by a footman
+to the servants' hall, the Countess Lenzdorff having informed her
+that her own maid would attend for this evening to her young
+mistress's wants. Erika followed her grandmother through several
+brilliantly-lighted apartments, the arrangement of which produced upon
+her the impression of a fairy-tale, to an airy little room adjoining
+the old Countess's sleeping-apartment.
+
+"This is your room," said Countess Lenzdorff. "I had your bed put for
+the present in my dressing-room; it is the best arrangement, and--and
+I--I think I would rather have you close at hand. Of course it is all
+provisionary: I do not even know yet what is to be done with you,
+whether--whether you will stay with me, or go for a while to some
+school. At any rate, for the present you must try to feel comfortable
+with me."
+
+Comfortable! It was asking much of the girl that she should feel
+comfortable under the circumstances! She wanted to say something: it
+annoyed her to have to play the part of a dunce,--her poor, youthful
+pride rebelled against it,--but she said not a word; she had to summon
+up all her resolution to keep back the tears that would well up to her
+eyes. With the slow stony gaze of one who is determined not to cry, she
+looked about her upon her new surroundings.
+
+How airy and fragrant, how bright and fresh and inviting, it all was!
+But in the midst of this Paradise she stood, trembling with fatigue,
+sore in soul and body, timid and sad, with but one wish,--that she
+might creep away somewhere into the dark.
+
+â?¢ Her grandmother perceived something of the girl's suffering, but
+still could not overcome her own distaste. "Will you dress first, or
+have some supper immediately?" she asked, with an evident effort to be
+kind. As she spoke, her bright eyes scanned the girl from head to foot.
+Poor Erika! She understood only too clearly that her grandmother was
+disappointed in her, that personally she was in no respect what the old
+lady had hoped for.
+
+"I should like to brush off some of this dust," she stammered, meekly.
+Her voice was remarkably soft and sweet, and her accent brought a
+reminiscence of the Austrian intonation, so much admired in Berlin.
+
+For the first time the Countess's heart was moved in favour of the
+young creature; some chord within her vibrated agreeably. "Well, my
+child, do just as you like," she said, rather more warmly, as she made
+an attempt to unfasten the top button of the ugly black garment that so
+disfigured her grand-daughter. With a shy gesture Erika raised her
+hands and held her poor gown together over her breast. There was
+something in the gesture that touched the old lady. "You may go,"
+she said to the maid, who had meanwhile been unpacking Erika's
+travelling-bag. "I will ring for you when we want you." Then, turning
+to Erika, she added, "I will help you myself to undress."
+
+Erika's sensations can hardly be described. Apart from the fact that in
+consequence of her intense shyness, the shyness of a very strong, pure
+nature bred in solitude, it was terrible to her even to take off her
+gown in the presence of a stranger, it suddenly seemed very hard to her
+(she had not thought of it at first) to expose to her grandmother's
+penetrating gaze the poverty of her wardrobe. She trembled from head to
+foot as her grandmother drew down her gown from her shoulders. But,
+strange to say, it almost seemed as if with the ugly dress some sort of
+barrier of separation between herself and her grandmother were removed.
+The old lady's bright eyes were dimmed by a certain emotion as she
+noticed the coarse, ill-made, but daintily white linen shift that left
+bare a small portion of the young, half-developed shoulders. "Poor
+thing!" she murmured, the words coming for the first time warm from her
+heart. Then, stroking the girl's long, slender, nobly-modelled arm, she
+said, "How fair you are! I only begin now to see what you look like."
+She lifted the heavy knot of shining hair from the back of Erika's
+neck, and, in an access of that absence of mind for which she was noted
+in the Berlin world of society, exclaimed, "_Mais elle est
+magnifique!_--In three years she will be a beauty!--Turn your head a
+little to the left."
+
+Her grand-daughter's stare of dismay recalled her. "What would Goswyn
+say if he heard me?" she thought, and smiled.
+
+Erika had only bathed her face and hands, and slipped on a long white
+dressing-gown of her grandmother's, when the maid brought in a waiter
+with her supper. In spite of her continued sense of discomfort, youth
+demanded its rights. She was decidedly hungry, and it was long since
+she had seen anything so inviting as this dainty repast. She sat down
+and began to eat.
+
+The old Countess observed her narrowly, but saw nothing to displease
+her. Her grandchild's manner of eating and drinking, of holding her
+fork, her glass of water,--all was just as it should be.
+
+The whole thing seemed odd to the Countess Lenzdorff: she delighted in
+everything odd.
+
+Not to disturb the girl at her repast, she looked away from her,
+glancing at the contents of the shabby old travelling-bag which the
+maid had unpacked. How poverty-stricken it all looked, in almost
+ridiculous--no, in positively pathetic--contrast with the young
+creature who in spite of her awkwardness had a regal air. "_Mais elle
+est superbe!_ Where were my eyes?" the Countess thought, as she
+casually picked up a book from among Erika's belongings. It was a
+volume of Plutarch. "'Tis comical enough," she thought, "if I am to
+have a little blue-stocking in the house."
+
+As she turned over the leaves rather absently, she noticed that
+passages here and there were encircled by thick pencil-marks: sometimes
+an entire page would be thus marked, sometimes only a few lines.
+
+"What does that mean?" she asked.
+
+"My mother always used to mark so in my books the parts that I must not
+read," Erika said, simply.
+
+The Countess's eyes flashed. How sure a way to lead a child to taste
+the forbidden fruit!--or was it possible that girls growing up in the
+country under the exclusive influence of a mother might be differently
+constituted from girls in cities and boarding-schools?
+
+"And you really did not read those portions?" she asked, half smiling.
+
+The girl's face grew dark. "How could I?" she exclaimed, almost
+angrily.
+
+"Brava!" cried her grandmother, patting her grandchild's shoulder. "You
+are an honourable little lady,--a very great rarity. We shall get along
+very well together."
+
+But, far from the girl's expressing any pleasure at this frank
+recognition of her excellence, her face did not relax one whit.
+
+
+Erika had gone to bed. Countess Lenzdorff was still up and pacing her
+chamber to and fro. She thoroughly understood the full significance of
+her granddaughter's being with her; she was neither heartless nor
+complaining, but, where emotion was concerned, a sensitive old woman
+who studiously avoided everything that could agitate her nerves. But at
+present she could not control her emotion; feeling awoke within her as
+from a long sleep. At first she was conscious only of a vague
+discomfort,--a strange sensation which she ascribed to nervousness that
+must be controlled; but, far from being controlled, it increased,
+growing stronger until it became a positive hunger of the heart.
+
+The self-dissatisfaction which had begun to torment her when she
+learned that Erika after her mother's death had been entirely uncared
+for, left alone with her step-father, now increased tenfold. It was the
+fault of the Pole, who had not notified her of his wife's death. But
+this excuse did not content her. How could she blame him? What had he
+done save follow her example in caring only for his own personal ease?
+
+The unkindness with which she had treated her daughter-in-law now
+troubled her more than her loveless neglect of her grandchild. Had she
+any right to despise and cast her off because of her weakness? Good
+heavens! she was a rare creature in spite of everything; she had shown
+herself so in her child's education. What an influence she must have
+exercised over the girl to preserve her from deterioration through
+those terrible three years. Poor Emma! The old Countess's heart grew
+heavy as she recalled her. Her injustice to the poor woman dated from
+years back. She could not deny it.
+
+She had never been fond of her daughter-in-law: each differed too
+fundamentally from the other. On the one hand was Anna Lenzdorff, with
+her keenly observant mind, self-interested even in her strict morality
+which in her arrogance she regarded as the necessity of her nature for
+moral purity and independence, something for which she claimed no
+merit, since she practised it solely for her private satisfaction;
+good-natured, but without enthusiasm, endlessly but lovelessly
+indulgent to humanity, and rather of opinion that life is nothing but a
+farce with a tragic conclusion, something out of which the most
+advantage may be gained by observing it from a safe, comfortable
+corner, without ever making an attempt to mingle in its activities,
+firmly convinced that the best conduct of life consists in
+acknowledging its glaring contradictions, its lack of harmony, in
+making use of palliatives where they are of use, and in postponing for
+as long as possible the facing of the huge deficit sure to appear
+at the close of every human existence. And on the other hand was
+Emma,--Emma, who had a positive horror of the philosophy of life,
+which her mother-in-law with easy indifference denominated "my
+laughing despair,"--Emma, who believed in everything, in God and in
+humanity,--yes, even, as her mother-in-law maintained, in the cure
+of leprosy and the disinterestedness of English politics,--Emma, for
+whom an existence in which she could take no active part was devoid
+of interest, and who looked upon a loveless life as worse than
+death,--Emma, whose unselfishness bordered upon fanaticism, blinding
+her conscience for a moment now and then, when she would have given to
+one person what she had no right to take from others,--Emma, utterly
+unable to appreciate proportion and moderation, and who, scorning all
+the palliatives and make shifts with which one eases existence,
+demanded from life absolute happiness, and consequently, dazzled by an
+illusion, plunged blindly into an abyss.
+
+Ah, if it had been only an abyss! but no, it was a slough, and Anna
+Lenzdorff could not traverse it.
+
+It certainly was strange that she, who found an excuse for every
+criminal of whom she read in the papers, had never been able to forgive
+her daughter-in-law when, thanks to her inborn thirst for the romantic,
+she forgot herself so far as to adore that Polish nonentity. What in
+the world could a woman of sense find in romance?
+
+When Anna von Rhödern, at twenty-two, had married Count Ernst
+Lenzdorff, her views of life were in great measure the same that she
+had since elaborated so perfectly. She was of Courland descent, and the
+daughter of a prominent diplomat in the Russian service. Unlike her
+daughter-in-law, she had been a courted beauty, but at two-and-twenty
+she had turned her back upon all the sentimental possibilities to which
+in virtue of her great charm she had a right, and had married Count
+Lenzdorff, whose entire part in her existence she afterwards summed up
+in declaring that he really had bored her very little. And that, she
+maintained, was a great deal in a husband.
+
+She had become acquainted with him in Paris, where he was secretary to
+the Prussian legation, and she married him there; afterwards he took up
+his abode in Berlin, where he held a distinguished position in the
+Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In moments of insolent frankness she was
+wont to describe him as an automaton whose key was in the possession of
+whoever might be Minister of Foreign Affairs. Once wound up, he could
+perform all the duties of his office during the few hours in which they
+were required of him; when they were over he was a lifeless wooden
+figure-head--nothing more. A wooden figure-head whom one is obliged to
+drag after one in life conduces but little to one's comfort, especially
+when the wooden figure-head is of the dimensions of Count Ernst
+Lenzdorff, and of this his wife shortly became aware. With great
+courtesy and skill she removed him from her life as soon as possible,
+placing him somewhere in the background upon a suitable pedestal,--the
+best place for wooden figureheads, and one where they can be made to
+look very effective.
+
+The Countess's only son was the very image of his father, and quite as
+imposingly wooden.
+
+If Emma, following her mother-in-law's example, could have courteously
+and respectfully put him upon a pedestal in some corner where he would
+not have been in her way, she might have led a very tolerable life with
+him. The mistake was that she attempted to make him happy.
+
+Poor Emma! As if one possibly could make a wooden figure-head happy!
+Young Count Lenzdorff was extremely uncomfortable in view of his wife's
+exertions to make him happy. What ensued was of a very unedifying
+character: from being simply a state of contented indifference, the
+marriage became a decidedly irksome bond. Nevertheless it was most
+unfortunate for Emma when Edmund Lenzdorff, two years after their
+marriage, lost his life in a railway accident. Had he lived, her
+existence might at least have been a quiet one; in time she would have
+relinquished her ill-judged attempts to make him happy, and have found
+an object in life in the education of her child; while, as it was, he
+was no sooner dead than her existence began to totter uncertainly, like
+a ship from which the ballast has been removed.
+
+At first she sickened, as her mother-in-law expressed it, with an
+attack of acute philanthropy. She haunted the most disreputable corners
+of Berlin in search of cases of misery to be relieved, never allowing a
+servant to accompany her, because, as she explained, it might humiliate
+the poor. Upon one of her excursions her watch was snatched from her,
+and another time she caught spotted fever. This was very annoying to
+the Countess Anna, but she forgave her, with--as she was wont to
+declare--praiseworthy courage, in view of the terrible disease.
+
+Six months afterwards Emma married Strachinsky; and this her
+mother-in-law did not forgive her.
+
+Since then fourteen years had passed, fourteen years during which she
+had had nothing whatever to do with poor Emma. And now she was sorry.
+
+Again and again did the Countess Anna revert to the education given to
+the young girl asleep in the next room.
+
+A woman who could so educate her child, and who could continue so to
+influence her after her death, was no ordinary character.
+
+Of course she had had fine material to work upon. And the old Countess
+was conscious of an emotion never awakened within her by her son, yet
+now aroused by her grand-daughter,--pride in her own flesh and blood.
+"A splendid creature!" she murmured to herself once or twice, then
+adding, with a sneer at her own lack of perception, "and I was fool
+enough to think her ugly at first. Whom does she resemble? she is not
+in the least like her mother,--nor like my son!" Still pondering, she
+paused in her monotonous pacing to and fro, strangely thrilled. Going
+to an antique buhl cabinet with a multitude of drawers, she opened one
+of them,--a secret drawer, which had long been undisturbed,--and began
+to look through its contents. At last she found what she sought, a
+lithograph representing a young girl, _décolletée_, and with the huge
+sleeves in fashion in 1830. A very charming young girl the picture
+portrayed,--Countess Lenzdorff when she was still Anna von Rhödern.
+
+The little faded picture trembled in the old lady's hand: it worked
+upon her like a spell, carrying her back to a time long forgotten,--a
+time when life had been to her something different from a farce with a
+tragic ending, by which one might be vastly entertained, but in which
+one should scorn to play a part. She was suddenly deeply pained at
+sight of the beautiful, grave, proud young face: it suggested to her
+something that had begun very finely and ended in unutterable
+bitterness, something through which the best and most genial part of
+her had been destroyed, or at least paralyzed. Hark! What was that? A
+low, suppressed sob! another! They came from the adjoining room. The
+old Countess dropped the little picture, and, with a candle in her
+hand, went to her grand-daughter's bedside. When she heard her
+grandmother coming, Erika closed her eyes, feigning sleep, but she had
+not time to wipe away the tears from her cheeks.
+
+Her grandmother set the candle upon the table, and then, bending over
+the girl, whispered, softly, "Erika!" Erika did not stir. How pathetic
+she looked!--pale and thin, and yet so noble and charming in spite of
+the traces of tears.
+
+The Countess sat down upon the edge of the bed and stroked the girl's
+wet cheeks. "Erika, my darling, what is the matter? Are you homesick?"
+
+Then Erika opened her large eyes and looked gloomily at her
+grandmother. She answered not a word, but compressed her lips. How
+could her grandmother ask her if she was homesick, when all that she
+had of home was a grave?
+
+For one moment the old Countess hesitated; then, lifting the reluctant
+girl from the pillows, she clasped her to her breast, pressing her lips
+upon the golden head, and murmuring softly, "Forgive me, my child,
+forgive me!" For one moment Erika's obstinate resistance was
+maintained; then she began to sob convulsively; and then--then her
+grandmother felt the slender form nestle close within her arms, while
+the weary young head fell upon her shoulder and a sensation of sweet,
+young warmth penetrated to the Countess's very heart, which suddenly
+grew quite heavy with tenderness.
+
+Erika was soon sound asleep, but her grandmother still felt no desire
+to retire to rest. "I will write to Goswyn," she said to herself. "I
+must tell him she is charming, and that I will make her happy."
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Nine months had passed since Erika's arrival in Berlin. She had
+travelled much with her grandmother, passing the time in Schlangenbad,
+Gastein, and the Riviera. As soon as she had become further acquainted
+with her, Countess Anna had relinquished all thoughts of sending her
+grand-daughter to a boarding-school. "What could you gain from a
+boarding-school?" she said. "H'm! Have your corners rubbed off? In my
+opinion that would be matter of regret. And as for your education,
+there's too much already in that head of yours for a girl of your age;
+but that we can't alter, and must make allowance for." And she tapped
+Erika on the cheek, and looked at her with eyes beaming with pride.
+
+Erika had come to be the centre of her existence, her idol, the most
+entertaining toy she had ever possessed, the most precious jewel she
+had ever worn. Moreover, she was the late-awakened poetry of her life,
+the transfigured resurrection of her own youth. That was all very
+natural: she was not the first grand-mother in the world who had
+thought her grand-daughter a phenomenon; and it would have mattered
+little in any wise if she had not thought it necessary to impress her
+grand-daughter with the high opinion she entertained of her. Everything
+that she could do to turn the young girl's head she did, all out of
+pure inconsequence and love of talking, because never in her life had
+she been able to keep anything to herself. For in fact she was as
+unwise as she was clever: her cleverness was an article of luxury,
+something with which she entertained herself and others, with which she
+theoretically arranged the most complex combination of circumstances,
+but which never helped her over the simplest disturbance of her daily
+life. She was thoroughly unpractical, and was aware of it, without
+understanding why it was so. Since she could not alter it,--indeed, she
+never tried to,--she evaded every difficult problem of existence, with
+the Epicurean love of ease which was her only enduring rule of conduct.
+Her affection for Erika was now part of her egotism. She was never
+weary of exulting in the girl's beauty and brilliant qualities; she
+felt every annoyance experienced by her grand-daughter as a personal
+pang, every triumph as homage paid to herself; but she never thought of
+the responsibility she had assumed towards this lovely blossom
+unfolding in such luxuriance. She was convinced that Erika's life would
+develop of itself just as her own had done, and in this conviction she
+felt not the slightest compunction in spoiling the girl from morning
+until night, and in absolutely forcing her to consider herself the
+centre of the universe.
+
+With almost equal impatience grandmother and grand-daughter awaited the
+moment when Erika should enchant the world of Berlin society.
+
+And now it was the beginning of February, and the first
+Wednesday-afternoon reception of Countess Anna Lenzdorff after her
+return from Italy. She, whose social indolence had long been
+proverbial, had sent out numerous cards, many of them to people who had
+long since supposed themselves forgotten by her. All this, too, without
+any idea of as yet introducing her grand-daughter to society, but
+simply that people "might have a glimpse of her."
+
+As a result of the Countess Anna's suddenly developed amiability
+towards Berlin society, this reception was largely attended. Erika
+presided at the tea-table in a toilette of studied simplicity and with
+a regal self-consciousness due to the enthusiasm which her grandmother
+displayed for her various charms, but which the girl had the good taste
+to conceal beneath an attractive air of modesty. She did not rattle her
+teacups awkwardly, she upset no cream, she never pressed a guest to
+take what had once been declined; in short, she committed none of the
+blunders so frequently the consequence of shyness in young novices; and
+she was, as her grandmother expressed it, simply "wonderful." Full
+forty times the old lady had presented "my grand-daughter," with the
+same proud intonation, observing narrowly the impression produced upon
+each guest,--an impression almost sure to be one of pleased surprise;
+whereupon Countess Lenzdorff--the same Countess Lenzdorff who had been
+always ready to ridicule, and to ridicule nothing more unsparingly than
+the mutual admiration characteristic of German families--would begin,
+in a loud whisper of which not one word escaped Erika's ears, to
+enumerate her grandchild's unusual attractions: "What do you think of
+this child who has dropped from the skies into my house to brighten my
+old age? 'Tis my usual luck, is it not? A charming creature; and what a
+carriage! Just observe her profile,--now, when she turns her head,--and
+the line of the cheek and throat. And to think that I was actually
+reluctant to receive the child! Oh, I treated her shamefully; but I am
+atoning to her for the past. I spoil her a little; but how can I help
+it? I thought it would be such a bore to have a young girl in the
+house, but, on the contrary, she makes me young again. No need to stoop
+to her intellectually: she is interested in everything. At first I was
+going to send her to school. H'm! there is more in that golden head of
+hers than behind the blue spectacles of all the school-mistresses in
+Germany. And that is not what interests me most: she has a certain
+frank honesty of nature that enchants me. Oh, she certainly is
+remarkable."
+
+There the Countess Lenzdorff was right,--Erika was remarkable,--but she
+was wrong in parading the child before her acquaintances: first because
+it bored her acquaintances,--when are we ever entertained by listening
+to the praises of somebody whom we hardly know?--and again because her
+exaggerated laudation of her grandchild excited the antagonism of her
+listeners. On this first reception-day she laid the foundation of the
+unpopularity from which Erika was to suffer long afterwards.
+
+The afternoon was nearing its close; the lamps were lit; three
+or four ladies only, all in black,--the court was in mourning at the
+time,--were still sitting in the cosiest corner of the drawing-room.
+Close by the hearth sat a tiny old lady, Frau von Norbin, _née_
+Princess Nimbsch, with a delicately chiselled face framed in
+silver-gray curls, a face the colour of a faded rose-leaf, and with a
+thin clear voice that sounded like an antique musical clock and seemed
+to come from far away. She was about ten years older than Countess
+Anna, but had been one of her most intimate friends from childhood,
+belonging also to an old Courland family, which had given the Vienna
+Congress a good deal of trouble. She had known Talleyrand in her youth,
+and had corresponded with Chateaubriand. Countess Lenzdorff had a
+water-colour sketch of her as a young girl with a wreath of vine-leaves
+on her head, her hair hanging about her shoulders in Bacchante fashion,
+and with very bare arms holding aloft a tambourine. The rococo
+sentiment of the faded sketch contrasted strangely with the old lady's
+dignified decrepitude and poetically softened charm.
+
+Opposite her, and evidently very desirous to stand well with her, sat a
+certain Frau von Geroldstein, wife of a wealthy merchant who had
+purchased a patent of nobility in one of the petty German states,
+without, as he learned too late, acquiring any court privileges for his
+wife. Indignant at the pettiness of the German sovereign in duodecimo,
+he had established himself in Berlin, where his wife hoped to find a
+suitable stage for her social efforts. She had been there three years
+without finding any aristocratic coigne of vantage for her pretensions;
+in despair she had fallen back upon celebrities, artists, professors,
+politicians (even democrats), to lend a certain splendour to her
+_salon_. After at last finding her aristocratic vantage-ground at a
+watering-place in the shape of a General's widow, with debts, and a
+daughter of forty whom she alleged to be twenty-four, she annoyed her
+old acquaintances extremely. It was the business of her life to extort
+forgiveness from society for having once invited Eugene Richter to her
+house. Society never forgives, but it sometimes forgets if it be
+convenient to do so. It began to find it convenient to forget all sorts
+of things about Frau von Geroldstein, not only her political
+acquaintances, but also that her husband had made his fortune by
+furnishing army-supplies of doubtful quality.
+
+Frau von Geroldstein was so available, and was besides so ready to make
+any concessions required of her. She threw Eugene Richter overboard,
+and developed a touching enthusiasm for the court chaplain Dryander.
+She bombarded society with invitations to dinners which were excellent,
+and at which one was sure to meet no undesirable individuals. She paid
+endless visits, and possessed in fullest measure the article most
+indispensable to the career of social aspirants,--a very thick skin.
+
+She was about twenty-five years old, and was gifted by nature with a
+very small waist, which she pinched in to the stifling-point, and with
+a face which would have been pretty had it not given the impression, as
+did everything else about her, of artificiality. Of course her court
+mourning was trimmed with three times as much crape as that of any
+other lady present; and today she had made it her special business to
+win the favour of little Frau von Norbin. She had offered her three
+things already,--her riding-horse for Frau von Norbin's daughter, her
+lawn-tennis ground (she had a wonderful garden behind her house, which
+no one used), and her opera-box; but Frau von Norbin's manner was still
+coldly reserved. At last Frau von Geroldstein discovered from a remark
+of Countess Lenzdorff's that the old lady's principal interest lay in a
+children's hospital of which she was the chief patroness. Frau von
+Geroldstein instantly declared that the improvement of the health of
+the children of the poor was positively all that she cared for in life:
+when might she visit the hospital? Countess Lenzdorff smiled somewhat
+maliciously when Frau von Norbin, caught at last by this benevolent
+birdlime, plunged into a conversation with Frau von Geroldstein upon
+the most practical mode of nursing children.
+
+Meanwhile, Countess Lenzdorff turned for amusement to a young maid of
+honour, a charming person, whose delicate sense of humour had been
+uninjured by the debilitating atmosphere of the court, and who was now
+detailing the latest misfortunes of a certain Countess Ida von Brock.
+
+This Countess Brock was a notorious figure in Berlin society. She was
+usually called the twelfth fairy, since she was frequently omitted in
+the invitations to some social 'high mass' (the word was of Countess
+Lenzdorff's invention) and was then sure to appear uninvited and to do
+all kinds of mischief by her malicious gossip. Every winter she looked
+out for fresh lions for her menagerie, as her _salon_ was called in
+familiar conversation,--for artists sufficiently well bred to consort
+with men of fashion, and for men of fashion sufficiently intelligent to
+appreciate artists. Since, thanks to her numberless eccentricities and
+indiscretions, she had quarrelled with all sorts of people, she was
+always obliged to entreat a few influential friends to procure for her
+her anthropological curiosities. Some time ago she had applied to
+Countess Lenzdorff to provide her with 'twelve witty Counts,'--an order
+which Countess Lenzdorff had declined to fill, upon the plea that the
+supply was just then exhausted.
+
+During the previous winter the glory of her _salon_ had been a
+hypnotizer, a young American for whom the Countess Ida had been wildly
+enthusiastic.
+
+Mr. Van Tromp was his name; he had a dome-like forehead, and he cost
+nothing; he was quite ready to sacrifice his time without pay for the
+pleasure of mingling in good society,--a pleasure more highly prized by
+an American, as is well known, than by any European aspirant. At the
+close of the season the Countess's footman had unfortunately put
+aqua-fortis in the chambermaid's tea, and, as the Countess ascribed the
+crime to the influence of Van Tromp, she straightway relinquished her
+hypnotic pastime, the more willingly as most of her other guests
+considered it a rather dangerous game.
+
+Van Tromp was informed of this when he next visited the Countess. He
+acquiesced in her decision, and amiably and unselfishly hoped that
+without any further exercise of his peculiar talent she would allow him
+to visit her 'as a friend.' Countess Brock, however, wrote him a note
+thanking him for his great kindness, but at the same time insisting
+that she could not possibly allow him to waste his time at her house;
+the people frequenting it were in fact quite too insignificant to
+associate with so great a man as himself.
+
+This mode of turning out of doors people whom she could no longer make
+use of she called treating them with delicacy and tact. What Mr. Van
+Tromp thought of it is not known: he revenged himself, however, by
+writing a book upon Berlin society, which, as it was full of scandalous
+stories and appeared anonymously, lived through twenty-five editions.
+
+With a view of making her Thursday evenings attractive this year,
+Countess Brock had determined to have some one of her favourite modern
+dramas read aloud at each of them, and had engaged the services of a
+handsome young actor with a broad chest and a strong voice as reader.
+The readings had begun the previous week with a German translation of
+Dumas' "_Femme de Claude_."
+
+The young maid of honour had been present, and she declared it "comical
+beyond description."
+
+There were several young girls among the audience, and scarcely had the
+handsome young actor with the powerful voice reached the middle of the
+second act when there was a rustling in the assembly, caused by a
+mother's conducting her daughter from the room. This went on all
+through the evening. Whilst the reader pursued his way with enthusiasm,
+each scene frightened away some two or three delicate-minded
+individuals, until the hostess found herself left almost entirely alone
+with the handsome young actor and a few gentlemen. "I persisted in
+remaining," the maid of honour continued, amid the laughter of her
+audience, "but I assure you----"
+
+At this moment the servant announced "Frau Countess Brock," and there
+entered a woman of medium height, in a large high-shouldered seal-skin
+coat, for which departure from the prescribed court mourning a long
+crape veil atoned, a wonder of a veil, draped picturesquely over a Mary
+Stuart bonnet and hanging down over a slightly-bent back. Her grizzled
+hair was arranged above her forehead in curls, and her face, which must
+once have been handsome, was disfigured by affected contortions,
+sometimes grotesque, sometimes malicious, often both together.
+
+Countess Lenzdorff immediately presented her niece to the new-comer,
+but the 'wicked fairy' paid no heed, and Erika made her a graceful
+courtesy which she did not see. She gave additional proof of
+near-sightedness by almost sitting down upon Frau von Norbin, and by
+mistaking Frau von Geroldstein for a distinguished authoress aged
+seventy.
+
+Frau von Norbin smiled good-naturedly, and Frau von Geroldstein
+declared the blunder delicious. Privately she was furious, not at being
+mistaken for an aged woman, but at being supposed to be an authoress.
+However, she could endure it, since she had arranged a visit with Frau
+von Norbin to the children's hospital for the next afternoon. That was
+a triumph, at all events.
+
+"H'm! h'm! what were you all laughing at when I came in?" asked the
+'wicked fairy,' taking a seat beside Countess Lenzdorff.
+
+Upon which a rather embarrassed silence ensued, and she went on with a
+sigh: "At my disaster, of course. Yes, yes, I know, Clara,"--this to
+the maid of honour,--"you will tell the _désastre_ to all Berlin. It
+was terrible!--Oh, thanks, no,"--this with a polite grin to Erika, who
+offered her a cup of tea. "That frightful actor!" she wailed, raising
+her black-gloved hands, palms outward,--a gesture peculiarly her own
+and used to express the climax of despair. "I have already denounced
+him to our principal managers: he never will get any position in a
+Berlin theatre. Think of his insolence in reading my guests out of my
+drawing-room and showing me up as a lover of questionable literature."
+
+"Was the drama one of his selection?" asked Countess Lenzdorff.
+
+"No; I chose it myself. But, good heavens! the piece was of no
+importance. The mode of delivery was everything. All he had to do was
+to skip lightly over the questionable parts; instead of which he fairly
+roared them in the faces of my guests."
+
+"Evidently he liked them best," the maid of honour said, with a laugh.
+
+"Of course," the 'wicked fairy' went on, indignantly; "these people
+have neither tact nor sense of decency. Well, I have forbidden the man
+my house for the future."
+
+"Like Mr. Van Tromp," Countess Lenzdorff interposed.
+
+"Oh, I am too easily imposed upon," Countess Brock sighed. "The worst
+of it is that I have nothing now in prospect for my Thursdays."
+
+"I saw in the newspaper that a couple of almehs on their way from Paris
+to Petersburg are to appear at Kroll's," Countess Lenzdorff observed,
+maliciously: "you might hire them for an evening."
+
+"That would be against the law," remarked Frau von Geroldstein, who
+knew about everything and had no sense of humour. Countess Brock, who
+had declared that nothing should ever induce her to receive 'the
+Archduchess,' as she called Frau von Geroldstein, pretended not to
+hear; Frau von Norbin begged to be told what an _almeh_ was. Countess
+Lenzdorff laughed, and was just enlightening her in a low tone, out of
+regard for her grand-daughter, as to this Oriental specialty, when Herr
+von Sydow was announced.
+
+"Goswyn!" exclaimed Countess Anna, evidently delighted. "It is good of
+you to come at last, but not good to have let us wait so long for you."
+
+"I came as soon as I heard of your return," Sydow replied.
+
+"And, as usual, you come as late as possible," his old friend remarked,
+in an access of absence of mind, "in hopes of finding me alone."
+
+"I call that a skilful method of turning people out of doors,"
+exclaimed Frau von Norbin, laughing, and in spite of her hostess's
+protestations she arose and took her leave, accompanied by the young
+maid of honour.
+
+Whilst Erika, with the modest grace which she had learned so quickly,
+conducted the two ladies to the vestibule, where only two or three
+remained of the crowd of footmen that had occupied it early in the
+afternoon, Goswyn's eyes rested on the wall, where, to his great
+surprise, hung the same Böcklin that had been removed upon his former
+visit in view of the expected arrival of the Countess's grand-daughter.
+
+"So you sent the young Countess to boarding-school?" he remarked.
+
+"What?" exclaimed the Countess, indignant at such an idea. "You must
+see that I am far too old to forego the pleasure of having the child
+with me." Then, observing that the young man's eyes were directed
+towards her favourite picture, she suddenly remembered the conversation
+she had had with him in the spring. "Oh, yes; you are thinking of how
+hard it seemed to me to receive the child. It makes me laugh to recall
+it. As for the picture, there was no need to hide it from her: she knew
+the entire Vatican by heart when she came to me, from photographs. She
+looks at everything, and sees beyond it! I am longing to have you know
+her: did you not notice her? though this February twilight, to be sure,
+is very dim. She has just escorted Hedwig Norton from the room."
+
+"Was that your grand-daughter?" Sydow asked, in surprise. "I thought it
+was your niece Odette."
+
+"Where were your eyes?" Countess Lenzdorff asked, in an aggrieved tone.
+"Odette is pretty enough, but a grisette,--a mere grisette,--in
+comparison with Erika. Erika is a head taller; and then, my dear, _un
+port de reine_,--_absolument, un port de reine_. Ah, here she
+comes.--Erika, Herr von Sydow wishes to be presented to you: you know
+who he is,--a great favourite of mine, and the nicest young fellow in
+all Berlin."
+
+Erika inclined her head graciously, and, whilst the young man
+blushed at the old lady's exaggerated praise, said, with perfect
+self-possession, "Of course my grandmother has enlightened you as to my
+perfections. I think we may both be quite content, Herr von Sydow."
+
+He bowed low and took the offered chair beside his hostess. He
+knew that Countess Lenzdorff expected him to say something to her
+grand-daughter, but he could not; he was mute with astonishment. It was
+true that the Countess had written him shortly after the young girl's
+arrival that she was charming, but he had regarded this asseveration as
+a piece of remorse on her part, knowing that remorse will incline
+people to exaggerate, especially kind-hearted, selfish people, for whom
+the memory of injustice done by them is among the greatest annoyances
+of life.
+
+He could not reconcile his memory of the distressed, pale, shy girl
+whom he had seen for an instant with this extremely beautiful and
+self-possessed young lady who seemed expressly devised to act as a
+cordial for her grandmother's Epicurean selfishness. He did not know
+why, but he was half vexed that Erika was so beautiful: the previous
+tender compassion with which she had inspired him seemed ridiculous.
+
+The words for which he sought in vain with which to begin a
+conversation she soon found. "It is strange that you should not have
+recognized me here in my grandmother's drawing-room, where you might
+have expected me to be," she said, gaily. "I should have known you in
+Africa."
+
+"Where have you seen each other before?" the Countess asked, curiously.
+
+"On the stairs, on the evening of my arrival," Erika explained.
+"Evidently you do not recall it, Herr von Sydow: I ought not to have
+confessed how perfectly I remember."
+
+"Oh, I remember it very well," said Sydow, and then he paused suddenly
+with a faint smile, a smile peculiarly his own, and behind which some
+sensitive souls suspected a degree of malice, but which actually
+concealed only a certain agitation and embarrassment, a momentary
+non-comprehension of the situation. He was not very clever, except in
+moments of great danger, when he developed unusual presence of mind.
+
+"After all, 'tis no wonder that you made more impression upon me than I
+did upon you," Erika went on, easily and simply. "In the first place,
+you were the first Prussian officer I had ever met; I had never seen
+anything in Austria so tall and broad: your epaulettes inspired me with
+a degree of awe. And then you bowed so respectfully. You can't imagine
+how much good it did me. I was half dead with terror: you looked as if
+you pitied me."
+
+"I did pity you, Countess," he confessed, frankly. The tone of her
+voice, which had first won over her grandmother, was sweet in his ears.
+Moreover, she seemed very much of a child, now that she was talking.
+The impression of self-possession which she had at first given him was
+quite obliterated.
+
+"You knew that my grandmother was not glad to have me?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, I told him so, and he scolded me for it," Countess Lenzdorff
+declared, with a nod.
+
+"But, my dear Countess!" Sydow remonstrated.
+
+"Oh, I always speak the truth," the Countess exclaimed,--"always, that
+is, if possible, and sometimes even oftener: it is the only virtue upon
+which I pride myself. And you were right, Goswyn. But do you know how
+you look now? As if you were ashamed of your pity. Aha! I have hit the
+nail upon the head, and a very sensitive nail, too. It is human nature.
+There is one extravagance which even the most magnanimous never forgive
+themselves,--wasted compassion. In fact, you must perceive that the
+child has no need of the article."
+
+Goswyn was silent. If at first the Countess had hit the nail upon the
+head, he was by no means convinced of the truth of her last remark.
+Something in the old Countess's manner to her grand-daughter went
+against the grain with him: once while she was talking to him, and
+Erika, sitting beside her, nestled close to her with the innocent grace
+of a young creature to whom a little tenderness is as necessary as is
+sunshine to the opening flower, the grandmother suddenly, with a
+significant glance at Sydow, put her finger beneath the girl's chin and
+turned her face so that he might observe the particularly lovely
+outline of her cheek.
+
+Meanwhile, Countess Brock was defending herself with much ill humour
+and many grimaces from the exaggerated amiability of the 'Archduchess,'
+which found vent especially in the offer of a specific for the cure of
+neuralgia, from which the 'wicked fairy' suffered constantly, and which
+partly explained the peculiar twitching of her features. Extricating
+herself at last with much bluntness from the snare thus spread to
+entrap her favour, Countess Brock turned to the young officer, who,
+strange to relate, was her nephew. Strange to relate; for there
+certainly could be no greater contrast than that of his characteristic
+grave simplicity with her restless affectation.
+
+"My dear Goswyn!" she said, in a honeyed tone, taking a chair beside
+him.
+
+"Well, aunt?"
+
+"You scarcely spoke to me when you came in," she continued,
+reproachfully, in the same sweet tone.
+
+"You seemed very much occupied."
+
+"Occupied? yes, occupied indeed. For the last quarter of an hour I have
+been struggling like a fly in a trap. You come just at the right
+moment, dear boy." And she tapped his epaulette with a caressing
+forefinger.
+
+"Ah? Do you wish me to audit your accounts?" he asked, dryly: he had
+but slight sympathy with her.
+
+"God forbid!" exclaimed the 'wicked fairy,' raising her black-gloved
+hands with her characteristic gesture. "Nothing so prosaic as that this
+time. It was about----"
+
+"About your Thursdays," her nephew interrupted her.
+
+"Rightly guessed, dear boy. I want a new star; and you can help me a
+little. Do you know G----?"
+
+"The pianist?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I have practised with him once or twice." Goswyn played the violin in
+moments of leisure, a weakness to which he did not like to hear
+allusions made.
+
+"There! I thought so. You must bring him to me."
+
+"Pray excuse me," the young man said, decidedly. "I will have nothing
+to do with introducing any artist to you. I know too well what will
+ensue. You will squeeze him like a lemon, and then show him the door on
+the pretence that he outrages your æsthetic sense,--that his manners
+are not to your taste. You should inform yourself on that point before
+making use of him. We all know that artists are not always well bred."
+
+"Too true!" sighed Frau von Geroldstein, edging her chair nearer to the
+speaker.
+
+"All artists are ill-mannered," Countess Lenzdorff maintained, with her
+good-humoured insolence.
+
+"Even the greatest?" asked Erika, shyly. She was thinking of the young
+painter whom she had met by the monster of a bridge, and she could not
+decide whether to resent her grandmother's arrogance or to be ashamed
+of the childish admiration in which she had indulged all these years
+for the handsome vagabond of whom she had never heard since.
+
+As Frau von Geroldstein was gently sighing, "Ah, yes, even the
+greatest," Countess Anna interposed with a laugh, "They are the worst
+of all. Artistic mediocrities acquire a certain drawing-room polish far
+sooner than do the great geniuses who live in a world of their own.
+And, after all, average good manners are only the dress-suit for
+average men: they rarely sit well upon a genius. I care very little for
+them: a little _naïve_ awkwardness does not displease me at all; on the
+contrary, to be quite to my mind an artist must always have something
+of the bear about him: I take no interest whatever in those trim
+dandies, 'gentlemen artists,' who think more of the polish of their
+boots than of their art."
+
+"Nor do I," sighed Frau von Geroldstein.
+
+"H'm! your discourse is always very instructive," the 'wicked fairy'
+declared, "but it does not help me in my trouble." She sighed
+tragically and arose. As she did so, her fur boa slipped from her
+shoulders to the ground. Erika picked it up and handed it to her. The
+'wicked fairy' stared at the young girl through her eye-glass, surprise
+slowly dawning in her distorted features. "You are the grand-daughter
+from Bohemia?" she asked, still with her eye-glass at her eyes.
+
+"Yes, Frau Countess."
+
+"Ah, excuse me: I have been taking you all this time for my dear Anna's
+companion. Now I remember she died last year: I sent some flowers to
+her funeral. Poor thing! she was desperately tiresome, but an excellent
+girl; you must remember her, my dear Goswyn. You used to call her the
+Duke of Wellington, because she was a little deaf and used to go on
+talking without hearing what was said to her. How could I make such a
+mistake! But I am very near-sighted, and very absent-minded." She put
+her finger beneath Erika's chin and smiled an indescribable smile. "And
+you are very pretty, my dear. What is your name?"
+
+"Erika."
+
+"Erika!--Heather Blossom! And you come from Bohemia. How poetic!--how
+poetic! She is positively charming, this grand-daughter of yours, Anna!
+Do you not think so, Goswyn?"
+
+Sydow flushed crimson, frowned, and was silent.
+
+"I must go: I seem to be saying the wrong thing," Countess Brock ran
+on; then, looking towards the window, "Good heavens!" she exclaimed,
+"it is pouring! Pray let them call a droschky."
+
+"Erika, ring the bell," said Countess Lenzdorff.
+
+Before Erika could obey, Frau von Geroldstein extended a detaining arm.
+
+"But, my dear Countess Erika, why send for a droschky, when my carriage
+is waiting below, and it will give me the greatest pleasure to drive
+Countess Brock home?--Surely you will permit me?"--this last addressed
+to the 'wicked fairy.'
+
+"I really cannot. I know you far too slightly to impose such a burden
+upon you," Countess Brock replied, crossly.
+
+"Why call it a burden? it is a pleasure," the other insisted.
+
+"There is no pleasure in driving with me: I am forced to have all the
+windows closed," said the Countess.
+
+Meanwhile, Erika stood uncertain whether or not to ring the bell, when
+suddenly affairs took a turn most favourable for Frau von Geroldstein.
+
+Herr Reichert was announced, and without another word Countess Brock
+vanished with Frau von Geroldstein, in whose coupé she was driven home.
+
+She had private reasons for this hurried retreat. Reichert, a special
+favourite of Anna Lenzdorff's, an animal painter with a lion face and
+an inexhaustible fund of anecdote, was among the '_remords_' of the
+'wicked fairy.' She called her '_remords_' the assemblage of men of
+talent of whom she had made use only to throw them aside remorselessly
+afterwards.
+
+The animal painter's visit was a brief one, and none of the Countess
+Lenzdorff's guests remained save Sydow, who stayed in obedience to the
+Countess's whispered invitation.
+
+"There! now I have had enough," she exclaimed, as the door closed
+behind her beloved animal painter. "Stay and dine, Goswyn: we dine
+early--at six--tonight, and then you can go with us to the Academy.
+Joachim is to play, and I have a spare ticket for you."
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+It is later by four-and-twenty hours. Countess Lenzdorff, with her
+grand-daughter, has just returned from a drive in a close carriage,--a
+drive interrupted by a couple of calls, and by a little shopping in the
+interest of the young girl's wardrobe.
+
+She is now sitting near the fire, a teacup in her hand, and saying,
+"You cannot go out very much this season, especially since you are not
+to be presented until next winter, but you can divert yourself with a
+few small entertainments. It was well to order your gown from Petrus in
+time: people must open their eyes when they see you first."
+
+Meanwhile, Erika has taken off her seal-skin jacket, and is sitting
+beside her grandmother, thinking of the gown that has been ordered for
+her to-day,--a white cachemire, so simple,--oh, so simple! "Nobody must
+think of your dress when they see you," her grandmother had said:
+nevertheless it was a triumph of art, this gown.
+
+"Everything about you must be perfect in style upon your first
+appearance in the world," her grandmother now says. "People must find
+nothing to criticise about you at first: afterwards we may, perhaps,
+allow ourselves a little eccentricity. I have a couple of gowns in my
+head for you which Marianne can arrange admirably, but just at first we
+must show that you can dress like everybody else,--with a slight
+difference. You must produce a certain effect. Give me another cup of
+tea, my child."
+
+Erika hands her the cup. The old lady, pats her arm caressingly.
+"Petrus is quite proud to assist at your début: at first I thought of
+sending to Paris for a dress for you," she adds, and then there is a
+silence.
+
+The old lady has lain back in her arm-chair and fallen asleep. She
+never lies down to take a nap in the daytime, but she often dozes in
+her chair at this hour.
+
+Twilight sets in,--sets in unusually soon and quickly to-night, for the
+winter which had seemed to have bidden farewell to Berlin has returned
+with cruel intensity. The rain which on the previous day had forced
+Countess Brock into Frau von Geroldstein's arms and coupé has to-day
+turned to snow: it is lying a foot deep in the gardens in front of the
+grand houses in Bellevue Street, and is falling so fast that it has no
+chance to grow black: it lies on the trees in the Thiergarten, each
+twig bearing its own special weight, and down one side of each trunk is
+a broad bluish-white stripe; it lies on the roofs, on the palings of
+the little city gardens, yes, even on the telegraph-wires which stretch
+in countless lines against the purplish-gray sky above the white city.
+
+For a while Erika gazes out at the noiselessly-falling flakes: the snow
+still gleams white through the twilight.
+
+The girl has ceased to think of her gown: her thoughts have carried her
+far back,--back to Luzano. That last winter there,--how cold and long
+it had been!--snow, snow everywhere; nothing to be seen but a vast
+field of snow beneath a gloomy sky, the poor little village, the frozen
+brook, the river, the trees, all buried beneath it. The roads were
+obliterated; there was some difficulty in procuring the necessaries of
+existence. The cold was so great that fuel cost "a fortune," as her
+step-father expressed it. Erika was allowed none for the school-room,
+where she was wont to sit, nor for the former drawing-room, where was
+her piano. The greater part of the day she was forced to spend in the
+room, blackened with tobacco-smoke, where Strachinsky had his meals,
+played patience, and dozed on the sofa over his novels. What an
+atmosphere! The room was never aired, and reeked of stale cigar-smoke,
+coal gas, and the odour of ill-cooked food. Once Erika had privately
+broken a windowpane to admit some fresh air. But what good had it done?
+Since there was no glazier to be had immediately, the hole in the
+window had been stuffed up with rags and straw.
+
+Yet the worst of that last winter had been the constant association
+with Strachinsky.
+
+One day, in desperation, she had hurried out of doors as if driven by
+fiends, and had gone deep into the forest. Around her reigned dead
+silence. There was nothing but snow everywhere: she could not have
+got through it but that she wore high boots. Here and there the black
+bough of a dead fir would protrude against the sky. No life was to be
+seen,--not even a bird. The only sounds that at intervals broke the
+silence were the creak of some bough bending beneath its weight of
+snow, and the dull thud of its burden falling on the snow beneath.
+
+As she was returning to her home she was overcome by a sudden weakness
+and a sense of utter discouragement.
+
+Why endure this torture any longer? Who could tell when it would end,
+this intense disgust, this gnawing degrading misery, suffering without
+dignity,--a martyrdom without faith, without hope?
+
+And there, just at the edge of the forest, close to the meadow that
+spread before her like a huge winding-sheet, she lay down in the snow,
+to put an end to it: the cold would soon bring her release, she
+thought. How long she lay there she could not have told,--the
+drowsiness which she had heard was the precursor of the end had begun
+to steal over her,--when on the low horizon bounding the plain she saw
+the full moon rise, huge, misty, blood-red. The outlying firs of the
+forest cast broad dark shadows upon the snow, and upon her rigid form.
+The snow began to sparkle; the world suddenly grew beautiful. She
+seemed to feel a grasp upon her shoulder, and a voice called to her,
+"Stand up: life is not yet finished for you: who knows what the future
+may have in store?"
+
+Hope, curiosity, perhaps only the inextinguishable love of life that
+belongs to youth and health, appealed to her. She rose to her feet and
+forced her stiffened limbs to carry her home.
+
+Good heavens! it was hardly a year since! and now! She looks away from
+the large windows, behind the panes of which there is now only a
+bluish-white shimmer to be discerned, and gazes around the room. How
+cosey and comfortable it is! In the darkening daylight the outlines of
+objects show like a half-obliterated drawing. The subjects of the
+pictures on the walls cannot be discerned, but their gilt frames gleam
+through the all-embracing veil of twilight. There is a ruddy light on
+the hearth, partially hidden from the girl's eyes by the figure of the
+old Countess in her arm-chair; the air is pure and cool, and there is a
+faint agreeable odour of burning wood. From beneath the windows comes
+the noise of rolling wheels, deadened by the snow, and there is now and
+then a faint crackle from the logs in the chimney, now falling into
+embers.
+
+Erika revels in a sense of comfort, as only those can who have known
+the reverse in early life. Suddenly she is possessed by a vague
+distress, an oppressive melancholy,--the memory of her mother who had
+voluntarily left all this pleasant easy-going life--for what? Her
+nerves quiver.
+
+Meanwhile, Lüdecke brings in two lamps, which in consequence of their
+large coloured shades fail to illumine the corners of the room, and
+hardly do more than "teach light to counterfeit a gloom." That grave
+dignitary was still occupied in their arrangement, when he turned his
+head and paused, listening to an animated colloquy in two voices just
+outside the portière which separated the Countess's boudoir from the
+reception-rooms. Evidently Friedrich, Lüdecke's young adjutant, who was
+not yet thoroughly drilled, was endeavouring to protect his mistress
+from a determined intruder.
+
+"If you please, Frau Countess, her Excellency is not at home," he said
+for the third time, whereupon an irritated feminine voice made reply,--
+
+"I know that the Countess is at home; and if she is not, I will wait
+for her."
+
+"The fairy," said Countess Lenzdorff, awaking. "Poor Friedrich! he is
+doing what he can, but there is nothing for it but to put the best face
+upon the matter." And, rising, she advanced to meet Countess Brock, who
+came through the portière with a very angry face.
+
+"That wretch!" she exclaimed. "I believe he was about to use personal
+violence to detain me!" And she sank exhausted into an arm-chair.
+
+"Since I ordered him to deny me to every one, he only did his duty,
+although he may have failed in the manner of its performance," Countess
+Lenzdorff replied.
+
+"But he ought to have known that I was an exception," the fairy
+rejoined, still angrily.
+
+"Yes, he ought to have known. And now tell me what you have on your
+mind, for I see by your bonnet's being all awry that you have not
+engaged in a duel with that simpleton Friedrich without some special
+cause."
+
+"Ah, yes!" Countess Brock groaned. "I have a request--an audacious
+request--to make, and you must not refuse me."
+
+"We shall see. Is it fifty yards of red flannel for your association
+for the relief of rheumatic old women?"
+
+"Oh, if it were only that I should have no doubt of your assent,--every
+one knows how generous you are; but you have certain whims." The wicked
+fairy's smile was sourly sweet: "I begged Goswyn to prefer my request,
+for I know how much you like him, and that you would not willingly
+refuse him anything; but he would not do it. He behaves so queerly to
+me."
+
+"Tell me what you mean, without any further preliminaries. I am curious
+to know what the matter is with which Goswyn will have nothing to do."
+
+"It is about my next Thursday,--no, not the next, I shall simply skip
+that, but the one after the next,--which, under the circumstances,
+ought to be particularly brilliant. I want to have tableaux, and two of
+the greatest beauties in Berlin have promised to help me,--Dorothea
+Sydow and Constance Mühlberg," Countess Brock explained, breathlessly.
+
+"H'm! that is magnificent," her friend interposed.
+
+"Well, yes; but every one knows them by heart, and I want to show the
+Berlin folk something new. In short, I have come to the conclusion that
+the great attraction for my next evening reception must be your
+enchanting grand-daughter," the 'fairy' declared, wriggling herself out
+of her seal-skin coat.
+
+Erika, who had hitherto kept modestly in the background, occupying
+herself with some embroidery, here paused, her needle suspended in the
+air, and looked up curiously.
+
+"My grand-daughter?" her grandmother exclaimed, in surprise.
+
+"Yes, yes; I have fallen in love with your granddaughter,--actually
+fallen in love with her. She has a natural air of distinction, with a
+certain barbaric charm which is immensely aristocratic: it reminds me
+of some noble wild animal: the aristocracy always reminds me of a noble
+wild animal, and the bourgeoisie of a well-fed barn-yard fowl,--except
+that the former is never hunted and the latter never slaughtered. But,
+then, who can tell, _par le temps qui court? Mais je me perds_. The
+matter in hand is not socialism nor any other threatening horror, but
+my tableaux. There are to be only three,--Senta lost in dreams of the
+Flying Dutchman, by Constance Mühlberg, Werther's Charlotte, by Thea
+Sydow, and last your grand-daughter as a heather blossom. She will bear
+away the palm, of course: the others are not to be compared with her."
+
+Countess Lenzdorff looked at Erika and smiled good-naturedly, as she
+saw how the young girl had gone on sewing diligently as if hearing
+nothing of this conversation. It never occurred to the old lady that it
+might not be advisable thus calmly to extol that young person's beauty
+in her presence.
+
+"You will let the child do me this favour, will you not?" the 'fairy'
+persisted. "It is all admirably arranged. Riedel is to pose them,--you
+know him,--the little painter with such good manners who has his shirts
+laundered in Paris."
+
+"Oh, that colour-grinder!" Countess Lenzdorff said, contemptuously.
+
+The 'fairy' shrugged her shoulders impatiently. "Colour-grinder or not,
+he is one of the few artists whom one can meet socially."
+
+"Yes, yes; and he will find it much easier to arrange a couple of
+pictures than to paint them," Countess Lenzdorff declared.
+
+"Then you consent? I may count upon your grand-daughter?"
+
+"I must first consider the matter," Countess Lenzdorff replied, but in
+a tone which plainly showed that she was not averse to granting her
+eccentric old friend's request.
+
+"I see that affairs look favourable for me," Countess Brock murmured.
+"Thank heaven! I think I should have killed myself if I had met with a
+refusal. What o'clock is it?"
+
+"Six o'clock,--a few minutes past. Where are you going?"
+
+"To dine with the Geroldsteins. We are going to the Lessing Theatre
+afterwards. There have been no tickets to be had for ten days past."
+
+"You--are going to dine with the Geroldsteins?" The old Countess
+clasped her hands in frank, if discourteous, astonishment.
+
+"I am going to dine with the Geroldsteins," the 'wicked fairy'
+repeated, with irritated emphasis; "and what of it? You have received
+her for more than a year."
+
+"I have no social prejudices. Moreover, I do not receive her: I simply
+do not turn her out of doors."
+
+"Well, at present she suits me," Countess Brock declared, her features
+working violently. "I have been longing for two months to be present at
+this first representation, without being able to get a seat: she offers
+me the best seat in a box,--no, she does not offer it to me, she
+entreats me to take it as a favour to her. And then think how I begged
+Goswyn yesterday to introduce G---- to me. No, he would not do it. She
+will see to all that. She is the most obliging woman in all Germany.
+And then--this very morning I saw her driving with Hedwig Norbin in the
+Thiergarten. Surely any one may know a woman with whom Hedwig Norbin
+drives through the Thiergarten."
+
+She ran off, repeating her request as she vanished. "You will let me
+know your decision to-morrow, Anna?"
+
+Countess Lenzdorff shook her head as she looked after her,--shook her
+head and smiled. She is still smiling as she thoughtfully paces the
+room to and fro.
+
+What is she considering? Whether it is fitting thus, in this barefaced
+manner, to call the attention of society to a young girl's beauty.
+Evidently Goswyn does not think it right; but Goswyn is a prig. The
+Countess's delicacy gives way and troubles her no further. Another
+consideration occupies her: will her grand-daughter hold her own in
+comparison with the acknowledged beauties who are to share with her the
+honours of the evening? Her gaze rests upon Erika. "That crackbrained
+Elise is right. Erika hold her own beside them! the others cannot
+compare with her."
+
+"What do you say, child?" she asked, approaching the girl. "Would you
+like to do it?"
+
+"Yes," Erika confesses, frankly.
+
+"It would not be quite undesirable," says her grandmother, whose mind
+is entirely made up. "You cannot go out much this year, and it would be
+something to appear once to excite attention and then to retire to the
+background for the rest of the season. Curiosity would be aroused, and
+would prepare a fine triumph for you next year."
+
+The following morning Countess Brock received a note from Anna
+Lenzdorff containing a consent to her request.
+
+
+About ten days afterwards Countess Erika Lenzdorff presented herself
+before a select public, chosen from the most exclusive society in
+Berlin, as "Heather Blossom," in a ragged petticoat, with her hair
+falling about her to her knees.
+
+It was a strange _soirée_, that in which the youthful beauty made her
+first appearance in the world.
+
+Countess Brock, the childless widow of a very wealthy man who had
+derived much of his social prestige from his wife, had inherited from
+the deceased the use during her lifetime of a magnificent mansion,
+together with an income the narrowness of which was in striking
+contrast with her residence.
+
+The consequence whereof was much shabbiness amid brilliant
+surroundings.
+
+The tableaux were given in a spacious ball-room, decorated with white
+and gold, at one end of which a small stage had been erected. The
+stage-decorations had been painted for nothing, by aspiring young
+artists. The curtain consisted of several worn old yellow damask
+portières sewed together, upon which the 'wicked fairy' herself had
+painted various fantastic flowers to conceal the threadbare spots.
+
+Whatever ridicule might attach to her Thursday evenings generally, on
+this one her preparations were crowned with success. The effect of the
+whole was greatly heightened by the musical accompaniment, furnished by
+G---- at the instigation of the indefatigable Frau von Geroldstein.
+
+For once this talented but shy young virtuoso forgot himself, and
+presented his audience with something more than a pattern-card of
+conquered technical difficulties.
+
+Whether it were the result of caprice, or of a vivid impression made
+upon him by Erika, or of a presumptuous desire to do all that he could
+to add to her triumph, thus irritating the acknowledged beauties of the
+day, certain it is that he played all his musical trumps in his
+accompaniment to the representation of "Heather Blossom."
+
+Old Countess Lenzdorff, who had been wont to compare his clear sharp
+performance to a richly-furnished cockney drawing-room far too
+brilliantly lighted, and with gas into the bargain, could scarcely
+believe her ears when as an introduction to the third picture the low
+wailing notes of the familiar but lovely melody "Ah, had I never left
+my moor!" rang through the crowded assemblage of fashionable people.
+How sweet, how melancholy, were the tones breathed from the instrument!
+they seemed to rouse an echo in the soul of Boris Lensky's magic
+violin.
+
+The curtain drew up, and revealed a waste, dreary heath, treated with
+tolerable conventionality by the amiable Riedel, and in the midst of it
+a single figure, tall, slender, in a worn petticoat and coarse white
+linen shift that left exposed the nobly-formed neck and the long and as
+yet rather thin arms, a pale face framed in heavy gleaming masses of
+hair, the features delicate yet strong, and with unfathomable,
+indescribable eyes.
+
+The painter Riedel had tried to force the Heather Blossom into the
+attitude of Ary Scheffer's Mignon. She had apparently yielded to his
+efforts, but at the last moment had posed according to her own wish,
+with her head bent slightly forward and her arms hanging straight by
+her side.
+
+The audacious simplicity of her pose puzzled the spectators, and those
+elegant votaries of fashion, weary of counterfeit presentments of art
+and poetry, were in a manner shaken out of the monotonous indifference
+of their lives at sight of the blank dumb despair embodied in this
+young creature. They seemed suddenly to feel among them the working of
+some mysterious force of nature.
+
+The curtain remained lifted for a longer time than usual; the young
+girl maintained her motionless attitude with a strength born of vanity;
+the wailing, sighing music sounded on.
+
+The curtain fell. The public was wild with enthusiasm. Three times the
+curtain rose; but when there was a demand for a fourth glimpse of the
+strange, pathetic picture, it remained obstinately down: Erika had
+retired.
+
+"Oh, the witch!" murmured old Countess Lenzdorff to Hedwig Norbin, who
+sat beside her.
+
+The stupidest and most innocent of country grandmothers could not have
+exulted more frankly in her grand-daughter's triumph than did the
+clever Countess Lenzdorff. She was never weary of hearing the child
+praised: her appetite for compliments was inappeasable.
+
+When Erika, transformed and modestly shy in her new gown from Petrus,
+appeared among the guests, she aroused enthusiasm afresh, and was
+immediately surrounded. She won the admiration not only of all the men
+present, but also of all the old ladies. Of course the younger women
+were somewhat envious, as were likewise the mothers with marriageable
+daughters. In a word, nothing was lacking to make her appearance a
+brilliant success.
+
+Her grandmother presented her right and left, and was unwearied in
+describing in whispered confidences to her friends the girl's
+extraordinary talents and capacity. Any other grandmother so conducting
+herself would have been called ridiculous, but it was not easy so to
+stigmatize Anna Lenzdorff; instead there was some irritation excited
+against the innocent object of such exaggerated praise, the girl
+herself, to whom various disagreeable traits were ascribed. The younger
+women pronounced her entirely self-occupied and thoroughly calculating.
+
+She was both in a certain degree, but after a precocious, childish
+fashion, that was diverting, rather than reprehensible.
+
+Countess Mühlenberg, the wife of an officer in the guards who did not
+appreciate her and with whom she was very unhappy, had appeared as
+Senta out of pure good nature, and held herself quite aloof from
+Erika's detractors,--in fact, she showed the young _débutante_ much
+kindness,--but Dorothea Sydow's dislike was almost ill-bred in its
+manifestation.
+
+She was a strangely fascinating and yet repulsive person,--very well
+born, even of royal blood, a princess, in fact, but so wretchedly poor
+that she had rejoiced when a simple squire laid his heart and his
+wealth at her feet. Her family at first cried out against the
+misalliance, but finally consented to admit that the young lady had
+done very well for herself. Some of her equals in rank came even to
+envy her after a while, for all agreed that there was not in the world
+another husband who so idolized and spoiled his wife, indulging her in
+every whim, as did Otto von Sydow his Princess Dorothea.
+
+He was Goswyn's elder brother, and the heir of the Sydow estates, which
+was why there was such a difference in the incomes of the brothers. In
+all else the advantage was decidedly on Goswyn's side.
+
+Otto looked like him, but his face lacked the force of Goswyn's; his
+features were rounder, his shoulders broader, his hands and feet
+larger, and he had a great deal of colour. The 'wicked fairy'
+maintained that he showed the blood of his bourgeoise mother.
+
+Countess Lenzdorff, who had been an intimate friend of the late Frau
+von Sydow, denied this, insisting that the Sydow mother had enriched
+the family not only by her money but also by her pure, strong, red
+blood. In fact, Otto was a genuine Sydow: such types are not rare among
+the Prussian country gentry.
+
+He was one of the men who always show to most advantage in the country
+and out of doors, for whom a drawing-room, even the most spacious, is
+too confined. In a brilliant crowd he looked as if he could hardly
+catch his breath. With the shyness not unusual in men with much-admired
+wives, he was wont to efface himself in a corner, emerging to make
+himself useful at supper-time, and never speaking except when he
+encountered some one still less at home in society than himself. He was
+never weary of watching his wife, devouring her with his eyes, drinking
+in her grace and beauty.
+
+Many people declared that she was not beautiful, only distinguished in
+appearance. In fact, she was both to an astonishing degree, and
+aristocratic to her finger-tips. Tall, slender almost to emaciation,
+with long, narrow hands and feet, a head proudly erect, and sharply-cut
+features, her carriage was inimitable, her walk grace itself. Wherever
+she went she attracted universal attention. She wore her fair hair
+short in close curls about her small head, a piece of audacity indeed,
+and she talked quickly in a rather high voice, and with a slight defect
+in her utterance, characteristic of the royal family to which she was
+related, and which made some people nervous, while her countless
+adorers declared it enchanting.
+
+However, beautiful or not, she had been a leader in Berlin society for
+two years, and would brook no rival near her throne.
+
+The evening ran its course; the servants opened the doors into the
+dining-hall; the ladies took their places at small tables, while the
+gentlemen served them--the entertainment being but meagre--before
+satisfying their own appetites. Some of them performed this duty with
+skill and dexterity, while others rattled plates and glasses and
+invariably dropped something.
+
+Erika, paler than usual, with sparkling eyes and very red lips, sat at
+a table with a charmingly fresh young girl about her own age, but ten
+years younger intellectually. Nevertheless the child's development
+might almost be said to be finished, while Erika's had scarcely passed
+its first stage. She had honestly tried to talk with this companion,
+but without success; nor had she much to say to the young men who,
+attracted by her beauty, thronged around her. Reaction had set in: her
+enjoyment of her triumph had been succeeded by a strange restlessness.
+
+Dorothea von Sydow was sitting near by at a table with one of the most
+fashionable women in Berlin, an Austrian diplomat, an officer of
+cuirassiers, and one of her cousins, Prince Helmy Nimbsch. All five had
+remarkably good appetites and talked incessantly. In their midst sat
+Frau von Geroldstein, a vacant place on each side of her,--solemn and
+mute. No one knew her, no one spoke to her, but she was sitting among
+people of rank and was content. Her only regret was that she had
+mistaken the continuance of the court mourning by a day, and had
+consequently appeared in a plain black gown in an assemblage of women
+in full dress with feathers and diamonds in their hair. To justify her
+error she had hastily trumped up a story of the death of a near
+relative.
+
+Goswyn's place was with the elder women, a distinction that frequently
+fell to his share. He looked grave and anxious, and Countess Lenzdorff,
+who had commanded his presence at her table, with her usual
+imperiousness, reproached him for being tiresome and bad-tempered. From
+time to time he glanced towards Erika, of whom he could see nothing
+save a slender neck with a knot of gold-gleaming hair, a little pink
+ear, and now and then the outline of a softly-rounded cheek.
+
+Yes, she was bewitching, there was no denying it, but she must be
+insufferable, there was no doubt of that either. The idea of thus
+making a show of a girl scarcely eighteen! It was in such bad taste: it
+was absolutely unprincipled: the old Countess, in her senseless vanity,
+was doing the child a positive injury. At times a kind of rage half
+choked him: he could have shaken his old friend, to whom he had been as
+a son, and who had from his boyhood petted him far more than her own
+child. Again he glanced towards Erika. Then his thoughtful gaze
+wandered across to the round table where his sister-in-law was sitting.
+She looked particularly well in a dress of white velvet with an antique
+Spanish necklace of emeralds around her slender neck. It was all very
+lovely, but her short hair was not in harmony with it.
+
+Beside her sat her cousin, Prince Helmy Nimbsch, a good-tempered dandy,
+scarcely twenty-five years old, with large light-blue eyes and a face
+smoothly shaven, except for a moustache. As Goswyn looked at Thea, she
+was laughing at her cousin over the champagne-glass which she held to
+her lips. Her eyes were her greatest beauty,--large hazel eyes, but
+with no soul in them, no expression, not even a bad one. Her charm was
+entirely physical, but it was very great. It was a pity that her
+manners were so loud. That perpetual giggle of hers rasped Goswyn's
+nerves. But he was alone in his dislike: her adorers were legion.
+
+He looked away from her. Where was his brother? Over in a corner, at a
+table without ladies, he was sitting with another gentleman.
+Fortunately he had found a man who was even more uncomfortable than
+himself in this brilliant assemblage.
+
+This was Herr Geroldstein, husband of the ambitious dame, a pale little
+man with a bald head and mutton-chop whiskers, who looked for all the
+world like a man who had wielded a yard-stick behind a counter all his
+life long,--a decent enough little man, with an air of being
+perpetually ashamed of himself, who never made use for his own part of
+the title which he had purchased as a birthday-present for his wife. He
+spoke very softly and ate and drank but little, while Otto von Sydow
+did both with great gusto, now and then uttering some oracular remark
+as to the best wine-merchant in Rheims. His face was redder than usual,
+and produced the impression of rude health beside the pale tradesman
+who had passed his life in his office. There was in Goswyn's opinion no
+denying that no man in the room was as ill fitted to be the husband of
+the slender Princess Dorothea as was his brother Otto.
+
+After supper there was a little music. When Goswyn was relieved from
+duty with Countess Lenzdorff, he was about to leave the house
+unnoticed, but longed for one more glimpse of Erika, whom he wished to
+remember as she looked to-night. "The dew will be brushed off so soon,"
+he said to himself, adding, "Oh, the pity of it!" He could not find her
+anywhere. "Ah, of course she is surrounded somewhere by a crowd of
+detestable admirers!" he said to himself, and turned to go. Why he had
+thus decided that all her admirers were detestable we shall not attempt
+to explain.
+
+The fourth and last in the suite of the 'wicked fairy's'
+reception-rooms was empty and dimly lighted. He suddenly seemed to hear
+low suppressed sobs, as he looked in. A red gleam of light played about
+the folds of a white gown behind a huge effective artificial palm.
+Involuntarily he advanced a step. There sat Erika, the youthful queen
+of beauty, whom he had supposed entirely absorbed in receiving the
+homage of her vassals, curled up in an arm-chair, her handkerchief to
+her eyes, crying like a tired child. Usually deliberate in thought and
+action, when once his nerves were irritated he became quick and
+impetuous. He did not hesitate a moment, but, bending over the girl,
+exclaimed, "Countess Erika! in heaven's name what is the matter? Can
+any one have offended you?" His voice grew angry at the bare suspicion.
+
+"Ah, no, no!" she sobbed.
+
+"Shall I go for your grandmother?"
+
+"No--no!"
+
+He paused an instant. Then, in a very low and kindly voice, he asked,
+"Do I annoy you? Would you rather be alone? Shall I go?"
+
+She took the handkerchief from her eyes and assured him frankly and
+cordially, "Oh, no, certainly not: I am glad to have you stay with me,"
+adding, rather shyly, "Pray sit down."
+
+Nothing was left of the self-possessed young lady: here was only a
+little girl dissolved in tears and dreading lest she should seem
+impolite to a friend of her grandmother's.
+
+"She treats me exactly like an old man," the young captain said to
+himself, at once touched and annoyed; nevertheless he accepted her
+invitation, and took a seat near her.
+
+"It will soon be over," she said, trying to dry her tears. But they
+would not be dried; they welled forth afresh: she was evidently quite
+unnerved by the excitement of her _début_, poor thing!
+
+"Oh, heavens," she cried, making a supreme effort to control herself,
+"I must stop crying! What a disgrace it would be if any of those people
+should see me!"
+
+Apparently there was a great gulf in her mind between Goswyn and "those
+people." He was glad of it. For a while he was sympathetically silent,
+and then he said, kindly, "Countess Erika, would you rather keep your
+sorrow to yourself, or will you confide it to me?"
+
+His mere presence had had a soothing effect; her tears ceased to flow;
+she only shivered slightly from time to time.
+
+"Ah, it was not a sorrow," she explained,--"only a distress,--something
+like what I felt on the night when I first came to Berlin. It was not
+homesickness,--what have I to be homesick for?--but suddenly I felt so
+lonely among all those strangers who stared at me curiously but cared
+nothing for me. I seemed to feel a great chill around me: it all hurt
+me; their way of speaking, their way of looking down upon everything
+that was not as fine and proud as themselves, went to my heart.
+You--you cannot understand it, for you have grown up in the midst of
+it; you have breathed this air from your childhood."
+
+"I think you do me injustice, Countess Erika," he interposed. "I can
+understand you perfectly, although I have grown up in the midst of it
+all."
+
+"I felt as if I hated the people," she went on, her large melancholy
+eyes flashing angrily, "and then--then, amidst all this elegance and
+arrogance,"--she named these characteristics in a perfectly frank way,
+as if they were elements but lately introduced into her life,--"the
+thought came to me of the misery in which I grew up, and of all the
+little pleasures and surprises which my mother prepared for me in spite
+of our poverty,--ah, such poor little pleasures!--those people would
+laugh at the idea of any one's enjoying them,--but they were very much
+to me. Oh, if you knew how my mother used to look at me when she had
+contrived a new gown for me out of some old rag!--No one will ever look
+at me so again. And then"--she clinched the hand that held the poor wet
+handkerchief--"to think that my mother belonged of right to all this
+bright gay world, and to remember how she died, in what sordid
+distress, and that it is past,--that I can give her nothing of all that
+I have---- My heart seemed breaking." She paused, breathless.
+
+"Poor Countess Erika!" he murmured, very gently. "It is one of the
+miseries of this life to remember our dead and to be powerless to be
+kind to them. All that we can do is to bestow as much love as we can
+upon the living."
+
+"But whom have I to bestow my love upon?" Erika cried, with such an
+innocent insistence that, in spite of his pity, Goswyn could hardly
+suppress a smile. "I cannot offer it to my grandmother: she would not
+know what I meant, and would simply think me ill."
+
+"But in fact," he said, now openly amused, "it is not to be supposed
+that you will all your life have only your grandmother to love."
+
+"You mean that----" She looked at him in sudden dismay.
+
+"I mean that--that----"
+
+The sound of a ritornella drummed upon the piano suddenly fell on their
+ears, and then came the notes of a thin, clear, expressionless soprano.
+
+His sister-in-law was singing. He listened breathless.
+
+Just then Countess Lenzdorff with Frau von Norbin appeared. "Ah, here
+you are, Erika!" she exclaimed. "This I call pretty conduct. I have
+been looking for you everywhere. H'm! to run away from one's admirers,
+to be made love to by a young gentleman---- What do you say to it,
+Hedwig?" This last to Frau von Norbin.
+
+"It was only Goswyn," the old lady replied, in her musical-box voice.
+
+"Yes, that is an extenuating circumstance," Countess Anna admitted.
+
+"And he did not make love to me," Erika assured them.
+
+"Indeed? That I take ill of him," Countess Lenzdorff said, with a
+laugh, while Erika went on with sincere cordiality. "I suddenly felt so
+lonely and sad, and he was very, very kind to me!" She raised her eyes
+gratefully to his.
+
+"Ah, well----but come now, child; we are going home. I have had quite
+enough of this.--Adieu, Goswyn."
+
+"Perhaps you will permit me to take you home," said Goswyn.
+
+"You had much better go in there and put a stop to the mischief which,
+if I am not mistaken, is being largely added to to-night." This with a
+significant glance towards the music-room.
+
+"I am powerless," Goswyn observed, dryly. He conducted the ladies to
+the anteroom, where a regiment of lackeys were in waiting. After
+attending to the old ladies, he had the pleasure of helping Erika to
+put on her cloak. He had a strange sensation as he wrapped it about the
+girl's slender figure. The white fur with which it was trimmed was
+wonderfully becoming to her.
+
+"A heather blossom in the snow," the vain grandmother remarked, with a
+glance in his direction, whereby she discovered that there was no
+necessity for calling his attention to her grand-daughter's charms.
+This discovery rejoiced her. She bade him good-night with unusual
+cordiality, smiling to herself as she descended the brilliantly-lighted
+staircase.
+
+Meanwhile, Goswyn had returned to the music-room. His sister-in-law was
+still standing by the piano, singing. G---- was accompanying her,
+good-humouredly ready to burden his soul with any musical misdeed that
+could give pleasure to his audience, a readiness arising partly from
+the prosaic view which he took of his "trade," as he was wont to call
+his music. Quite a little throng of ladies had already rustled out of
+the room.
+
+Countess Brock was beginning to be uneasy. The effect of the Princess's
+performance vividly reminded her of the effect which the young actor's
+reading had had upon her guests.
+
+Goswyn glanced at his brother. Otto von Sydow was a picture of
+distress: he looked as if threatened with an apoplectic stroke; he
+alternately clinched and opened his gloved hands, looked uneasily at
+the men whom he saw laughing, and at the women whom he saw leaving the
+room; he stood first on one foot and then on the other; but he allowed
+his wife to go on singing.
+
+The first verses of the music-hall song she had now selected were
+simply coarse. Goswyn comforted himself with thinking that perhaps she
+would not sing the last. He had underrated his sister-in-law's
+temerity. She went on. Sight and hearing seemed to fail him.
+
+Suddenly there came a loud burst of applause. A few of the men present,
+in pity for the unhappy husband, had thus drowned the improprieties of
+the last verse.
+
+Princess Dorothea looked round,--saw men laughing significantly and
+women hurriedly leaving the room. She grew pale, and there came into
+her Spanish face a look of indescribable hardness. She was about to
+continue, when her hostess approached her.
+
+"Charming!" exclaimed the 'fairy,'--"charming, my dear Thea, but you
+must not exert yourself further: you are a little hoarse."
+
+It was too unequivocal. Princess Dorothea understood. Her assumed
+gaiety took another turn. "I have a sudden longing for a dance!" she
+exclaimed. "G----, play us a waltz: we will extemporize a ball."
+
+G---- began to play with immense spirit one of Strauss's waltzes, when
+a gray-haired old General raised his voice,--a clear, sharp voice,--and
+said, "It would be a little difficult to extemporize a ball, for, with
+the exception of the hostess, your Excellency is the only lady
+present."
+
+Dorothea grew paler still, held herself rather more erect than usual,
+threw back her head, and smiled. Just thus, deadly pale, hard, erect
+and smiling, Goswyn was to see her once again in his life, a couple of
+years later, when all her world was pointing at her the finger of
+scorn.
+
+
+"You will let me drive Helmy home, will you not, Otto?" Dorothea asked
+in the hall, where she was holding a kind of little court amid her
+admirers, a yellow lace scarf wound around her head, and a black velvet
+wrap about her shoulders. "Helmy has such a cold, and there is no
+finding a droschky at this hour."
+
+Involuntarily Goswyn, who was just buckling on his sabre, paused to
+listen to this little speech of his fascinating sister-in-law's,
+uttered in the tenderest tone.
+
+He had no idea that his brother had anything to fear from Prince Helmy:
+this was only Dorothea's way of escaping any admonition from her
+husband. If Otto did not scold on the spot he never scolded at all.
+There really was nothing objectionable in her driving home alone with
+her cousin, but then---- She laid her little hand on her husband's
+breast as she spoke: the gentlemen around her looked on. Without
+waiting to hear his brother's reply, Goswyn left the house. He had gone
+but two or three steps in the street when some one joined him: it was
+Otto.
+
+"Have you a light?" he asked, in a rather uncertain voice. Goswyn
+struck a match for him, and paused in silence while his brother lighted
+his cigar with unnecessary effort.
+
+"I am really very glad to walk," said Otto, keeping pace with his
+brother. "Thea cannot bear to have me smoke in the coupé."
+
+Goswyn was silent.
+
+"I know Thea through and through," Otto continued: "she is as innocent
+as a child, but a little imprudent; and then all those starched,
+stiff-necked Berlin women cannot forgive her for being more fascinating
+and original than the whole of them together. And, after all, what harm
+was there in her singing those songs? It was easy enough to see that
+she did not understand what she was singing, or at least did not think.
+The purest women are always the most imprudent. These people do not
+understand her. They admire her,--no one can help that,--but they do
+not appreciate her. When she saw that she was shocking those
+Philistines she sang on out of sheer bravado. It was perhaps not wise
+to brave public opinion."
+
+Each time that Otto von Sydow had broken the thread of his discourse in
+hopes that Goswyn would assent to his view of the situation, he had
+been disappointed. His brother was persistently mute.
+
+Otto's footsteps sounded louder, his breath came more heavily; Goswyn,
+who knew him thoroughly, saw that he was struggling against an access
+of rage. For a while he maintained a silence like his brother's; then,
+pausing, he addressed Goswyn directly: "Do you find anything to blame
+in my allowing my wife to drive home alone with a cousin who is not
+well, and who may thereby be saved a fit of illness,--a cousin, too,
+with whom her relations have always been those of a sister?"
+
+Goswyn shrugged his shoulders. "Since you ask me, I must speak the
+truth," he replied. "On this particular evening I think it would have
+been wiser for you to drive home _tête-à-tête_ with your wife than to
+let her go with young Nimbsch."
+
+Otto's breathing became still more audible; he stamped his foot, and,
+before Goswyn could look round, had turned off into a side-street with
+a sullen "good-night."
+
+He was greatly to be pitied: he had hoped that Goswyn would comfort
+him, but Goswyn had not comforted him.
+
+"He never understood her, and therefore never liked her," he muttered
+between his teeth. "He is the worst Philistine of all."
+
+And then he recalled Goswyn's persistent opposition to his marriage
+with the Princess Dorothea, how passionately--for Goswyn, calm as he
+seemed, could be passionate--he had entreated his brother not to
+propose to her. "A blind man could see how unfitted you are for each
+other: you will be each other's ruin!" he had said. The words rang in
+his ears now with vivid distinctness.
+
+It was about two o'clock in the morning: the streets were dim,
+deserted. At intervals of a hundred steps the reddish lights of the
+street-lamps were reflected from the brown muddy surface of the
+asphalt. From time to time a carriage casting two bluish rays of light
+before it shot past Otto with an unnaturally loud rattle in the dull
+silence. The windows of the houses were all dark and quiet, except
+where from one open building came the muffled notes of some light
+popular airs: it was a cheap kind of music-hall. Involuntarily Sydow
+listened: something in the faint melody commanded his attention. They
+were playing the music of the very song his wife had sung but now.
+
+His wretchedness was intolerable; his limbs seemed weighed down with
+fatigue. "Pshaw! it is this confounded thaw," he said to himself. In
+his ears rang the words, "You are utterly unfitted for each other."
+What if Goswyn had been right, after all?
+
+Good God! No one could have resisted her.
+
+They had met first in Florence. The two brothers had made a tour
+through Italy just after Otto's attaining his majority. They travelled
+together so far as that means having the same starting-point and the
+same goal, but each followed his own devices, stopping where he liked,
+so that sometimes they did not meet for a long while. While Goswyn
+underwent all kinds of inconveniences for the sake of visiting many
+interesting little towns in Northern Italy, Otto, whose first
+requirement was a good hotel, went directly from Venice to Florence. He
+had been there for five days, and was terribly bored; he missed Goswyn.
+Although Otto was the elder of the two, he had always been in the habit
+of letting Goswyn think for him. Old Countess Lenzdorff maintained that
+when they were children she had often heard him ask, "Goswyn, am I
+cold?" "Goswyn, am I hungry?"
+
+He had carried with him through life a certain sense of dependence upon
+his younger brother, looking to him for help in every difficulty, for
+support in every sorrow.
+
+He had no acquaintances in Florence, the food was not to his taste, the
+wine was poor, the beds, in which so many had slept before him,
+disgusted him, the theatres did not edify him. He took no pleasure in
+the opera; he was thoroughly--and for a German remarkably--devoid of a
+taste for music; and the Italian drama he did not understand.
+Consequently he found his evenings intolerably long: he spoke no
+Italian, and very little French. Since there were no Germans in the
+hotel save those with whom, in spite of his homesickness, he did not
+choose to consort, he led a very lonely life. And, as he took not the
+slightest interest in art, it was no wonder that on the fifth day of
+his sojourn in Florence he declared such an "Italian course of culture"
+the "veriest mockery of pleasure in which a Prussian country nobleman
+could indulge."
+
+The queerest thing was that Goswyn seemed to be enjoying himself so
+much. He received delighted post-cards from him from all kinds of
+little out-of-the-way places of which Otto had never before even heard
+the names, not even when he studied geography at school, and he seemed
+entirely independent of discomfort as to his lodgings in his enjoyment
+of all that "art-stuff," as Otto expressed it to himself.
+
+One afternoon in the cathedral, in an access of most depressing ennui,
+he was sauntering from one shrine to another, when he suddenly heard a
+sigh. He looked round. A young girl in a large Vandyke hat and a dark
+cloth dress trimmed with silver braid had just seated herself in one of
+the chairs, and was opening a yellow-covered novel. Everything about
+her, her hat, her dress, as well as her own striking figure, gave an
+impression of distinction, although of distinction somewhat down in the
+world.
+
+She was very young, and yet did not seem at all affected by her
+loneliness. Before long she noticed that Otto was observing her, and
+she bestowed a scornful glance upon him over the pages of her book.
+
+He instantly flushed crimson, and turned away, feeling very
+uncomfortable. Then in the twilight silence of the spacious church,
+always deserted at this hour of the day, he heard a delicate
+insinuating voice call, "Feistmantel, dear!"
+
+Involuntarily he looked round: it was the slender girl in the chair who
+had called.
+
+He then observed hurrying towards her a short, stout individual in a
+striped gray-and-black water-proof with an opera-glass in a strap,--a
+wonderful creature, whom he had noticed before strolling about the
+church, but without an idea that she had anything to do with the
+attractive occupant of the chair.
+
+"Feistmantel, dear."
+
+"Princess!"
+
+"I am so hungry. Have you not seen enough of those stupid old relics?"
+And the girl yawned, sighed, and rubbed her eyes.
+
+"Oh, pray, Princess!"
+
+Both ladies then walked to the door of exit, where they paused
+dismayed.
+
+It was raining in torrents, that steady downpour that gives no hope of
+any speedy cessation.
+
+"This is intolerable!" exclaimed the young girl, in her insinuating and
+now melancholy voice, and with a slight imperfection of speech which
+struck kindly, awkward Sydow as something too charming ever to be
+forgotten. "Insufferable! We cannot put our skirts over our heads, like
+female pilgrims."
+
+"Pray permit me to call a droschky for you." With these words the young
+Prussian approached the pair; then when the girl measured him from head
+to foot with a half-merry, half-haughty stare, he added, with a bow, by
+way of explanation, "Von Sydow."
+
+The ladies bowed without finding it necessary to mention their names,
+and the younger said, with her bewitching voice and imperfection of
+speech, "You will greatly oblige us if you will be so kind as to take
+the trouble."
+
+And in fact it was a trouble. It is difficult to withstand the
+insistence of Italian droschky-drivers in fine weather, when one wishes
+to walk, but to find a droschky in bad weather, when one wishes to
+drive, is more difficult still.
+
+When he at last succeeded he feared to find that the ladies had left in
+despair at the delay; but no, there they were still, the companion in
+the striped waterproof with her face shining with the rain which had
+drenched it as she stretched her neck to see if he were coming, and her
+curls dangling limp in damp disorder; the girl more bewitching than
+ever, her cheeks slightly flushed by the fresh damp breeze, and
+evidently exhilarated in mind, flattered by her conquest. She had grown
+gracious, and she smiled her thanks, as she hurried into the carriage,
+lifting her skirts to avoid wetting them, and thereby displaying a pair
+of the prettiest little feet imaginable.
+
+"What address shall I give to the coachman?" he asked, after helping
+the ladies to ensconce themselves in the vehicle.
+
+"Hôtel Washington."
+
+
+He had no umbrella; he was wet to the skin, and the day was cold. But
+that was of no consequence. Otto von Sydow had never felt so warm since
+he had been in Italy.
+
+That very evening he moved to the Hôtel Washington from the Hôtel de la
+Paix. Since the entire first floor was occupied by a banker from
+Vienna, and the hotel was overcrowded, the room assigned him was far
+from comfortable; but he did not mind that.
+
+And that very evening, before the _table-d'hôte_ dinner, he found his
+fair one. She was in the reading-room, reading a Paris paper. He also
+learned who she was,--Princess Dorothea von Ilm.
+
+She was an orphan, and very poor. The family, originally distinguished,
+had degenerated sadly, principally through the dissipated habits of the
+Princess's two brothers, notably through the marriage of the elder to a
+French circus-rider. Since her installation in Castle Egerstein the
+Princess Dorothea had been homeless, and had been wandering about the
+world with very little means and a companion who was half instructress,
+half maid.
+
+This individual, whom Prince Ilm had hurriedly engaged for his sister
+through a newspaper advertisement, was named Alma Feistmantel, and came
+from Vienna, where she belonged to those æsthetic circles, the members
+of which interest themselves chiefly for artists and the drama. For ten
+years she had cherished a hopeless passion for Sonnenthal: her chief
+enthusiasms were for broad-shouldered men, Wagner's music, and novels
+which exalted "the sacred voice of nature."
+
+Under the protection of this lady the Princess Dorothea had for three
+years been completing her education in Vienna, Rome, and Paris
+successively.
+
+The Princess enlightened her admirer as to her affairs with the
+greatest candour, informing him that her brother had treated her
+shamefully, but that it was all the fault of the circus-rider, who
+could make him do just as she chose; and in spite of it all Willy was
+the most fascinating creature imaginable: he looked like a Spaniard.
+Sydow remembered him: he had served a year in the same regiment with
+him during his term of compulsory service.
+
+With equal frankness Princess Dorothea explained that she was often
+embarrassed pecuniarily; once she had been so pinched that she had sold
+her dog to an Englishman for three hundred francs; she had hated to
+part with him, for she never had loved any creature as she did that
+dog, but she needed a ball-dress to wear at an entertainment in Rome at
+the German embassy. Her aunt, Princess Nimbsch, had chaperoned her when
+she went into society: sometimes she went, and sometimes she did not;
+it depended upon her circumstances. In fact, she did not care much
+about going into society, it prevented you from doing so many amusing
+things; you could not go to the little theatres, where the funniest
+farces were played. Therefore she preferred to be in Paris, where not a
+soul knew her, and she and Feistmantel could go everywhere together.
+
+Feistmantel had frequently during these confessions admonished the
+Princess to greater discretion by a touch of her foot beneath the
+table: of one of these hints Sydow's boot had been the recipient. But
+when she found that she could thus make no impression upon her charge
+the Viennese interposed with some temper: "Pray, Baron Sydow, discount
+all this talk some fifty per cent. You must not believe that I would
+take any young girl intrusted to my care where it was not proper that
+she should go."
+
+"I know nothing about proper or improper: I only know what is amusing
+and what is tiresome," the Princess said, with a laugh, "and we went
+everywhere. Feistmantel is putting on airs because of my exalted
+family, but do not you believe her, Herr von Sydow. We saw 'Ma
+Camarade,' and 'Niniche,' and we even went one evening to the Café des
+Ambassadeurs. Eh?" And she pinched her companion's ear.
+
+"But, Baron Sydow, do not allow yourself to be imposed upon,"
+Feistmantel exclaimed, almost beside herself. "The Café des
+Ambassadeurs,--why, that is a _café chantant_. There is not a word of
+truth in all her nonsense."
+
+"Not true? oh, but it is," the Princess retorted, quite at her ease.
+"Of course it was a _café chantant_, and the singer sang '_Estelle, où
+est ta flanelle?_'--it was too funny; but I can sing it just like her.
+I practised it that very evening. I must sing it to you some day, Herr
+von Sydow,--that is, when we are better acquainted. Oh, is there no
+_café chantant_ in Florence to which you could take us?"
+
+"But, Princess----!" exclaimed Feistmantel.
+
+"Why, a gentleman took us to the Café des Ambassadeurs, a man whose
+acquaintance we made in the hotel," Dorothea ran on. "He was an
+American,--a Mr. Higgs: he came from Connecticut, and dealt in cheeses.
+He was very rich, and he sent us tickets for the theatre. Afterwards he
+wanted to marry me: I liked him very well, and would have accepted him,
+but my brother said he was no match for me. Well, I did not break my
+heart, but I should have liked to marry him for all that. We Princesses
+Ilm have the right, it is true, to marry crowned heads, but I never
+mean to avail myself of it. If I were an Empress I should always travel
+incognito. As soon as I am of age I shall marry a chimney-sweeper--if
+he is a millionaire, or if I fall in love with him."
+
+"Both contingencies seem highly probable," Sydow observed, laughing. It
+was the only remark he allowed himself during the conversation,--a
+conversation which took place in the reading-room of the Washington
+Hotel on the first evening of his stay there.
+
+After the Princess had finished her confessions, she went to the
+window, and looked out upon the Arno. For a while she was perfectly
+silent; but when Alma Feistmantel, recovering from her dismay, began to
+invent all sorts of falsehoods with which to impress Sydow, Dorothea
+quietly turned to him and said, "Herr von Sydow, will you not take a
+walk with us? Florence is so lovely at night!"
+
+The next day he drove with the ladies to Fiesole. He sat on the front
+seat of a very uncomfortable droschky and felt as happy as a king.
+
+It was the middle of April, and an upright crest of white and purple
+iris crowned the white wall bordering the crooked road leading to the
+famous old town. Here and there the rose-bushes trailed their
+blossoming branches in the dust. Barefooted Italian children, with
+dishevelled hair and glowing eyes tossed nosegays into the carriage and
+offered their straw wares to the ladies with persistent entreaties to
+buy. How many liri and fifty-centesimi pieces Sydow threw away on that
+wonderful day! The more he gave the rein to his liberality the longer
+grew the train of children, laughing, gesticulating, all pretty, with
+light in their eyes and flowers in their hands. Suddenly the driver
+shouted to some one who would not get out of the way. Sydow sprang out
+of the droschky and saw creeping along the dusty road a pair of
+wretched beggars, old and bent, their weary feet wrapped in rags. The
+sight of anything so miserable on the lovely spring day cut him to the
+heart. He could do no less than toss them some money.
+
+Alma Feistmantel, as a member of the society for the suppression of
+mendicancy, lectured him for his lavish alms, and the Princess laughed
+at the beggars, whose misery struck her as comical. She flung a
+sneering "Baucis and Philemon!" after them. This shocked Sydow for an
+instant; the next he gave her a kindly glance, saying to himself, "Ah,
+she is but a child!" He was already incapable of finding any harm in
+her.
+
+The next morning the German clerk of the hotel came to him, and, after
+some circumlocution, asked him if he were intimately acquainted with
+the Princess. Quite confused, and without a suspicion of the clerk's
+motive in asking, he explained that his acquaintance with her was of
+the most superficial kind. The clerk suppressed a smile beneath his
+bearded lip. Sydow was sorely tempted to knock him down, and was
+restrained only by regard for the Princess's reputation. It appeared,
+however, that the clerk's question was not the result of impertinent
+curiosity; he had no interest in the young Prussian's relations to the
+fair Princess, he only wished to discover whether Sydow knew anything
+of her family,--if she were a genuine Princess, and if they were people
+of wealth. She was travelling without a maid, and had not paid her
+hotel bill for a month.
+
+Whereupon Sydow snubbed the clerk sharply, informing him that he need
+be under no anxiety, the Ilms were among the first families of Germany.
+The Princess had simply forgotten to pay, supposing it to be a matter
+of small importance. The clerk was profuse in apologies.
+
+Sydow spent three hours considering how he should offer his aid to the
+Princess. At last--it was raining, and the ladies were at home--he
+knocked at their door.
+
+"Who is it?" Feistmantel's harsh voice inquired.
+
+"Sydow."
+
+"Oh, pray come in," called the high voice of the Princess. He entered.
+
+It was a small room in the third story. Feistmantel was sitting by the
+window, mending some article of dress; the Princess was sitting on her
+bed, reading "Autour du Mariage," by Gyp.
+
+The Princess moved no farther than to offer him her hand with a
+charming smile; Feistmantel cleared off the articles from an arm-chair,
+that he might sit down.
+
+"Oh, what a dreary day! I am so glad you are come! We are nearly bored
+to death," said Dorothea, rubbing her eyes, and gathering her feet
+under her so that she sat cross-legged on the bed. "Can you give me a
+cigarette? mine are all gone."
+
+Feistmantel said something in disapproval of a lady's smoking, when
+Dorothea remarked, composedly, "Don't listen to her; she is putting on
+airs again because of my exalted family, when the fact is that it was
+from her that I learned to smoke. Oh, what a wretched world! 'Who but
+ducks and pumps can keep out of the dumps, in a world that is never
+dry?' Oh, I am so bored,--so bored!" She stretched herself slightly. "I
+should like at least to go to Doney's and get an ice, but we cannot; we
+have no money."
+
+Then Sydow blurted out the little speech he had composed with infinite
+pains, coming to a stand-still three times during the recital.
+
+He had heard that the ladies had been expecting remittances from
+Germany. Of course there was some mistake: would they permit him to
+relieve them--from--their temporary embarrassment?
+
+He paused in great confusion. Would they turn him out of the room? No!
+The Princess simply held out her hands and exclaimed, "You are an
+angel! I could really embrace you!" which of course she did not do, but
+which she could have done without thinking much of it.
+
+That same evening the Princess's bill was paid.
+
+Two days later Goswyn arrived in Florence. He surprised his brother at
+dinner with Dorothea and Feistmantel at a small table at the extreme
+end of a long close dining-room, beside a window looking out upon the
+Arno.
+
+The Princess was giggling and chatting in her clear high voice, which
+could be heard outside of the dining-hall; she wore a white dress, and
+a diamond ring sparkled upon her hand. At first Goswyn smiled at his
+brother's charming travelling acquaintances, but in a very little while
+the state of affairs made him grave. Of course he took his place at the
+table with the three. The Princess instantly began to flirt with him.
+First she congratulated herself that they were now a _partie carrée_;
+it was very jolly; until then Herr von Sydow had cut but a sorry figure
+between two ladies, now they could be taken for two couples on a
+wedding-tour. Then, planting both elbows upon the table, she leaned
+across to Goswyn and asked, "Which of the gentlemen will appropriate
+Feistmantel?"
+
+"That is for the ladies to decide," Goswyn replied, laughing.
+
+"Then my guardian spirit shall fall to your lot," said Dorothea, "for I
+prefer your brother. I perceived the instant that you appeared that you
+are a very disagreeable fellow, Herr Goswyn von Sydow," pronouncing the
+name with mock pathos,--"yes, a thoroughly disagreeable fellow. I
+could not live with you three days; while I could endure a lifetime
+with your brother. He is such an honest, clumsy bear: I have always had
+a liking for bears. Look, he gave me this ring as a keepsake: is it not
+pretty?"
+
+Otto von Sydow long remembered the look which his brother gave the
+ring.
+
+That evening the brothers had a violent dispute.
+
+Goswyn admitted that the Princess was charming in spite of her wretched
+training and impossible behaviour; that there could not be a more
+amusing transient travelling acquaintance; that, finally, she certainly
+did come of very good stock, and was, in spite of her free and easy
+style of conversation, a pure-minded woman,--which should make it still
+more a matter of conscience with Otto not to compromise her as he was
+doing; for a marriage with her, even although her poor but haughty
+family could be brought to consent to the misalliance, was out of the
+question.
+
+The result of this conversation was that Otto at last hung his head and
+admitted that his wiser, stronger brother was right; he promised to
+leave Florence with Goswyn the next morning; but when the trunks were
+all piled on the coach for their departure he met the Princess Dorothea
+on the stairs, and did not leave, but stayed and was betrothed to her.
+
+It would be doing her injustice to say that she married him solely for
+his money. No, she really had a decided liking for "bears," and, as far
+as she could love any one, she loved her big, clumsy husband, just as
+she preferred brown bread and sour milk to all the delicacies of the
+table. During the honey-moon, which she spent with Otto upon his estate
+in Silesia, she developed an astonishing degree of tenderness, but she
+could not love anything for any length of time. Then, too, she was
+entirely unused to any regular life, and the dull routine at Kosnitz
+soon bored her to death. At first it delighted her to revel in her
+husband's wealth, to have dress after dress made, to adorn herself with
+all sorts of trinkets; but she soon found it tiresome and monotonous.
+Oh for a small room on the third floor of some hotel in Paris with
+Feistmantel, and poverty, and liberty, and a fresh conquest every day!
+how she longed for it all!
+
+At first in Berlin, in honour of her husband, she had assumed the
+conventional air of a great lady; but of that she soon became
+desperately tired: it was the most wearisome of all the weariness in
+her new life.
+
+In spite of all that evil tongues might say of her, she was as yet
+perfectly innocent: of that her husband was convinced.
+
+"She is utterly unsusceptible,--utterly," he said to himself, as he
+tramped home through the mud and wet. And with this poor consolation he
+was obliged to be content.
+
+But, slow-witted as he was, he was aware that women unsusceptible to
+temptation are apt to be equally unsusceptible to the disgrace of a
+fall. The matter is simply of no importance to them. Princess Dorothea
+would never be led astray through passion; but at the thought of the
+devouring, degrading ennui which was continually dragging her downward,
+Otto von Sydow shuddered.
+
+Suddenly his cheeks burned; he could have boxed his own ears for such
+thoughts with regard to his wife.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+A few days after the wicked fairy's successful Thursday two fresh
+pieces of news were circulated in Berlin: one was that Goswyn von Sydow
+had fought another duel in his sister-in-law's behalf, and the other
+stated that Countess Lenzdorff had given the fashionable artist Riedel
+permission to paint her grand-daughter as "Heather Blossom." The truth
+as to the duel was never fully discovered. Goswyn von Sydow certainly
+appeared for a while with his arm in a sling, but, as he stoutly
+maintained that he had sprained his wrist in a fall from his horse,
+people were forced to be satisfied with this explanation. If some very
+sharp-sighted men added that in certain cases it was a man's duty to
+lie, no matter how strict might be his ideas of truth,--why, that was
+their affair.
+
+As for the portrait, it was true that the old Countess had acceded to
+Riedel's request to be allowed to paint Erika as "Heather Blossom," of
+course not in the artist's studio, but in the Countess Lenzdorff's
+drawing-room, where Riedel worked away for a week, three hours daily,
+seated before a large easel, with colour-boxes beside him.
+
+The result of his well-meant efforts was a commonplace affair,
+something between Ary Scheffer's Mignon and Gabriel Max's "Gretchen at
+her Wheel."
+
+Naturally the Countess Lenzdorff was in no wise charmed by this
+picture, although in view of the ability of the artist in question she
+had not expected anything better.
+
+"A 'Book of Beauty' painter, that Riedel," she said of him: "he
+flatters every one alike, and is blind to wrinkles, scars, and what he
+calls defects of all kinds. Such fellows as he are sure to be a success
+in the present day, when truth is at a discount. They never dissipate a
+single illusion, and the world--the world of society--delights in
+them."
+
+She certainly took no pains not to dissipate illusions for the world to
+which she belonged: on the contrary, she delighted to destroy them,
+jeering _coram publico_ at the beautifying salve which the model
+members of society as well as her favourite artists and literary men
+plastered over every peculiarity of humanity, and which in life passes
+for 'kindly criticism' and in art for 'idealistic conception.' She
+spent her time in tearing down the rose-coloured curtains from the
+windows of her acquaintances, and naturally her acquaintances did not
+like it; they loved their rose-coloured curtains, which excluded the
+pitiless garish daylight, admitting only a becoming twilight in which
+all the sharp edges and dark stains of life faded into indistinctness.
+
+The Countess's rage for broad daylight seemed cruel to her
+acquaintances, while she in her turn called their love of twilight
+cowardly and when she alluded to the fashionable world usually
+designated it briefly as "Kapilavastu."
+
+Erika asked her grandmother the meaning of this word. Upon which the
+old lady shrugged her shoulders and replied, "Kapilavastu is the name
+of the town in which Buddha grew up, the town where his parents hoped
+to shield him forever from the sight of old age, death, and disease!"
+Then, with a quiet laugh, she added, as if to herself, "Oh, what a
+world it is!"
+
+All her life long she had sneered at the 'world of fashion,' which did
+not at all interfere with the fact that she would have greatly disliked
+being aught but 'a great lady.'
+
+
+When Riedel had completed his picture of "Heather Blossom" to his own
+satisfaction, and enriched it with his valuable signature, he laid it
+as a tribute at the feet of the Countess Lenzdorff, begging permission
+to exhibit his masterpiece at Schulte's, 'unter den Linden.'
+
+Permission was accorded him,--of course with the proviso that the name
+of the model should be strictly concealed.
+
+Whether the picture were the 'sentimental daub' which the old Countess
+dubbed it, or the exquisite work of art which Riedel's numerous
+admirers pronounced it, certain it is that it attracted a great deal of
+attention,--so much, indeed, that the Countess Anna was one day seized
+with a desire to witness for herself the effect produced by it upon a
+gaping public.
+
+It was a fair, sunshiny day in March when she walked to the end of the
+Thiergarten with Erika, slowly followed by her carriage. It was a
+pleasure to her to observe the undisguised admiration excited by her
+grand-daughter. And the girl was worthy of it. Tall, distinguished in
+air and bearing, faultlessly dressed in dark-gray cloth with a long boa
+of blue-fox fur and a black hat and feathers, she walked with an air
+and a bearing that a young queen might have envied.
+
+"Every one looks after you, as if you were the Empress herself," said
+her grandmother, with a laugh, as she espied a young officer of
+dragoons, who with his hand at his cap saluted the grandmother but
+looked at the grand-daughter.
+
+"Goswyn! this is lucky," she exclaimed, beckoning to him. "We are on
+our way to Schulte's to look at Erika's portrait. Will you come with
+us?"
+
+"If you will let me," he replied. "But you will probably not see the
+portrait," he went on, smiling,--"only a great crowd of people. At
+least that was almost all I could see the last time I was there."
+
+"Oh, you have been there?" said the old Countess, with a merry twinkle
+of her eye. "Then, of course, you do not care to go again."
+
+"No, certainly not to see the picture; but you cannot get rid of me
+now, Countess."
+
+Beneath the lindens on one side of the way stood a crippled boy with a
+huge hump, playing the accordion. The squeaking tones of the miserable
+instrument were but little in harmony with the splendour of the
+Thiergarten at this hour. A lady, as she passed the child, turned away
+with a shudder, and tears started in the boy's eyes and rolled down his
+pale, precocious face, as he retreated into still deeper shade.
+
+Without interrupting what he was saying to the old Countess, Goswyn
+gave the boy some money. On a sudden Countess Lenzdorff noticed that
+Erika was not beside her. "Where is the child?" she exclaimed, looking
+round. Erika had fallen behind to stroke the little cripple's thin
+cheeks.
+
+When she perceived that she was observed, she hastily left the child.
+Her own cheeks were flushed, and there were tears in her eyes.
+
+"Why, Erika!" her grandmother cried out, in dismay, "what are you
+about?"
+
+"I could not help it," the girl replied: "it was so hateful of that
+woman to show the boy her disgust at the sight of him." She could
+scarcely restrain her tears.
+
+"But, Erika,"--her grandmother put her hand on the girl's arm, and
+spoke very gently,--"you might catch some disease."
+
+"And if I did," Erika murmured, still under the influence of strong
+emotion, "I should not be half so wretched as that child. Why should I
+have everything and he nothing?"
+
+To this no reply could be made; even the Countess's talent for repartee
+failed her, and the three walked on together silently. The Countess
+Anna glanced towards Goswyn. Never before had she seen him so gravely
+impressed; and on a sudden the despair that had possessed her in view
+of the unjust arrangement of human affairs was converted into pride and
+joy.
+
+When they reached the picture-dealer's they found the portrait in an
+inner room, surrounded, in fact, by quite a crowd of people, although
+it was not great enough to satisfy the old Countess's pride: it could
+hardly have been that, indeed. Still, she did not express her
+disappointment in words, but ridiculed the assemblage.
+
+The words 'Heather Blossom' were carved in the very effective frame of
+the portrait, and on one side could be traced a coronet.
+
+"A beggar-girl and a coronet! nothing could appeal more strongly to
+these plebeians," the old lady exclaimed; and then she whispered to
+Erika, "Thank God, no one could recognize you from that daub, or we
+should have the whole rabble around us. What do you think of the
+picture, Goswyn?"
+
+"Miserable," Goswyn replied, with a frown. "Between ourselves, I cannot
+understand your allowing the fellow to exhibit it."
+
+"What could I do?" said the Countess, shrugging her shoulders: "he
+talked of the effect it would produce upon people generally, and in
+fact he seems to have been right. The Archduchess Geroldstein has
+already ordered her portrait of him. I cannot understand it. To me
+Riedel is absolutely uninteresting. If he has a really fine model he
+seems to lose even the power to flatter, upon which his reputation is
+chiefly based. Erika is ten times more beautiful than that picture."
+
+This was Goswyn's opinion also, but he remained silent, asking himself
+whether it could be that the absent old Countess had actually forgotten
+her granddaughter's presence. Such, however, was not the case. It
+simply had never occurred to her to regard Erika's beauty as a secret
+to be confided to all the world except to the girl herself: she would
+as soon have thought of concealing from her the amount of her yearly
+income.
+
+"I want you to look at a picture which has charmed me," Goswyn said,
+after a pause, desirous to change the subject, and as he spoke he
+pointed to a picture at sight of which the old lady uttered an
+exclamation of admiration, while Erika gazed at it pale and mute.
+
+The picture was called 'The Seeress,' and represented a peasant-girl
+standing wan and rapt, her eyes gazing into the unseen, her hand
+stretched out as if groping. On the right of the girl were a couple of
+willows in the midst of the level landscape, their trunks rugged and
+scarred and here and there tufted with wild flowers, while in the
+background a little trickling stream was spanned by a huge stone
+bridge, through the arches of which could be seen glimpses of a
+miserable village half obscured by rising mists.
+
+The Berlin public were too much spoiled by the mediocre artistic
+euphemism of the day to have the taste to appreciate this masterpiece.
+A couple of art critics passed it by with a shake of the head,
+muttering, "Unripe fruit."
+
+Countess Lenzdorff repeated the phrase as the wise-acres disappeared.
+"Unripe fruit!--Quite right, but a most noble specimen. I only trust it
+may ripen under favourable conditions. The thing is full of talent. 'A
+Seeress.' Apparently a Jeanne d'Arc."
+
+"Probably," said Goswyn. "It certainly is original in conception: there
+is nothing conventional in it. What inspiration there is in the pale
+face! what maidenly grace in the noble and yet almost emaciated figure!
+It is a most attractive picture."
+
+"The strange thing about it is that this Seeress in reality looks far
+more like Erika than does Riedel's 'Heather Blossom,'" exclaimed the
+old lady. "I must have this picture!"
+
+"You are too late, Countess," rejoined Goswyn.
+
+"Is it sold already? What was the price?"
+
+"It was very reasonable,--a beginner's price," Goswyn replied, with a
+slight blush.
+
+The old Countess laughed: she had no objection that Goswyn, with his
+limited means, should buy a picture just because it resembled her
+grand-daughter.
+
+Meanwhile, Erika was trembling in every limb. Who but _he_ could have
+painted the picture?--who else had seen Luzano,--Luzano, and herself?
+She felt proud of her _protégé_. In the corner of the picture she read
+'Lozoncyi.' It pleased her that he had so fine-sounding a foreign name.
+
+"You shall find out for me where the young man lives," Countess
+Lenzdorff cried, eagerly: "he must paint Erika for me while his prices
+are still reasonable."
+
+Goswyn cleared his throat. "Much as I admire this young artist," he
+observed, "if I were you I would not have him paint Countess Erika."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because he has another picture on exhibition here, to see which an
+extra price of admission is asked."
+
+"Indeed!" cried the old lady. "Is it so very bad?"
+
+"The worst of it is the curtain that hides it from the public, and the
+extra price paid to look at it," Goswyn replied, half laughing. "It
+certainly is a powerful thing,--painted later than 'The Seeress,' and
+under a different inspiration. If you would like to see it, let me play
+the part of Countess Erika's chaperon for a few minutes: you go behind
+that curtain."
+
+The Countess Anna could not let such an opportunity slip. She was an
+old woman; no one--not even the over-scrupulous Goswyn--could object to
+her looking at the picture. So she blithely went her way.
+
+Meanwhile, Erika had grown very pale. She felt as if some dear old
+plaything, to which she had attached all sorts of pathetic memories,
+had fallen into the mire! It was gone; let it lie there: she would not
+stoop to pick it up and wipe it off.
+
+Goswyn, who was observing her narrowly, could not understand the sudden
+change in her face. He had often had occasion to notice the
+sensitiveness of her moral nature, but to-day the key to the riddle was
+lacking. What could it possibly matter to her whether or not an obscure
+artist painted an improper picture?
+
+He tried to begin a conversation with her, but had hardly done so when
+Countess Lenzdorff returned, walking slowly, with her head held
+haughtily erect, a sign with her of extreme indignation.
+
+"You seem more shocked, Countess, than I expected you to be," Goswyn
+remarked, as she appeared. "Do you think the picture so very bad?"
+
+"Nonsense!" the old lady replied, impatiently. "It was not painted for
+school-girls and boys: it did not shock me. It is not the picture that
+has made me angry, but--whom do you think I found in the room with her
+cousin Nimbsch and two or three other young men? Your sister-in-law
+Dorothea! So young a woman had better not look at a picture before
+which it is thought necessary to hang a curtain, but it is beyond a
+jest when she takes a train of young men with her to see it. If one is
+without principles,--good heavens! it is hard enough to hold on to
+principles in this philosophic age, when one is puzzled to know upon
+what to base them,--one ought at least to have some feeling of decency,
+some æsthetic sentiment."
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+For some time of late the loungers in Bellevue Street had enjoyed an
+interesting morning spectacle. Before the hotel the first story of
+which was occupied by Countess Anna Lenzdorff, three beautiful
+thoroughbred horses pawed the ground impatiently between the hours of
+eight and nine. A stable-boy in velveteens held two of the horses,
+while a groom in a tall hat and buckskin breeches reverently held the
+bridle of the third steed, which was provided with a lady's saddle. The
+groom was bow-legged and red-faced, very English in appearance,--in
+fact, an ideal groom.
+
+Before long a young lady would appear at the tall door of the house, a
+young lady in a close-fitting dark-blue riding-habit and a tall silk
+hat beneath which the knot of her gleaming hair showed in almost too
+great luxuriance, and close behind her would come a fair-haired officer
+of dragoons. After stroking her steed and feeding it with sugar, the
+young lady would place her foot in the willing hand of her tall escort
+and lightly leap into the saddle. Then there would be a slight
+arrangement of skirt and stirrup, and "Is it all right, Countess
+Erika?"
+
+"Yes, Herr von Sydow."
+
+And in an instant the officer and his groom would mount and the little
+cavalcade would wend its way with clattering hoofs to the adjacent
+Thiergarten.
+
+At the close of the season Countess Lenzdorff had declared that her
+grand-daughter looked ill and needed exercise.
+
+At first she prescribed a course of riding-lessons in the Imperial
+School; but Erika found this very irksome, and Goswyn was intrusted
+with the task of procuring her a riding horse and of teaching her to
+ride. Under his guidance she made astonishing progress, and then--she
+looked so lovely on horseback. When she began, the Thiergarten was cold
+and bare,--it was towards the end of March: now it was the end of
+April, and there was spring everywhere.
+
+On the tall old trees the foliage, young and tender, drenched with
+sunlight, showed golden green, gleaming brown, and rosy red, shading
+off into transparency in the gradations of colour native to early
+spring, and in the midst of this harmonious variety here and there a
+grave dark fir would show its dark boughs not yet decorated with the
+slender green fingers in the gift of May. Among the trees the smooth
+surface of a pond would reflect the myriad tones of colour of the
+spring; the long shadows of morning stretched dark across the level
+sunlit sward of the openings in the woodland. The air was fresh and
+filled with the fragrance of cool moist earth and young vegetation, but
+mingling with its invigorating breath there was suddenly wafted a
+languid odour, intoxicatingly sweet, but with something sickening in
+its essence, and as the riders looked for its source they perceived
+among the spring greenery, covered to the tip of every bough with
+gleaming white blossoms, the luxuriant wild cherry.
+
+Erika inhaled its heavy breath with eager delight, while Goswyn's
+dislike of it amounted almost to disgust.
+
+Every day they rode thus together along the avenues of the Thiergarten,
+until they became familiar with every pond, every statue,--yes, even
+with the appearance of every rider. At times they would meet a couple
+of cavalry officers and exchange greetings; or a few infantry officers,
+much-enduring warriors, who seemed to find riding the most difficult
+duty required of them; or some gentleman in trade testing upon a hired
+steed his skill in horsemanship and pale with terror if he happened to
+lose a stirrup. Squadrons of young girls under the guardianship of a
+riding-master would come cantering along the smooth drive, some
+overflowing with youthful vitality, others evidently taking the
+exercise by order of a physician.
+
+Of course Countess Lenzdorff had requested Goswyn's supervision for
+only the few first efforts in horsemanship made by her grand-daughter,
+never dreaming that he would sacrifice two hours of each day in
+trotting about the Thiergarten with the young girl. But week followed
+week and he was still riding daily with Erika. In themselves there
+could have been but little pleasure in these excursions always along
+the same familiar avenues,--longer flights into the surrounding country
+with only a groom as escort would have been thought indecorous,--and
+yet the two morning hours thus passed were more to the young dragoon
+than the whole day beside.
+
+The girl was in such harmony with the early, fresh nature about them.
+She was still but a child; but just as she was, with her unblunted
+sensibilities, her eager warm-heartedness, he would fain have clasped
+her in his arms, and have claimed the right to cherish and nurture to
+their glorious development all the fine qualities now dormant within
+her, before she should be wounded and sore from the thorns that beset
+her pathway.
+
+That her sentiments towards him bore no comparison with those he
+cherished for her he was perfectly aware; but what of that? Passion too
+easily aroused on her part would not have pleased him, and she frankly
+showed her preference for him among all the men of her acquaintance.
+
+The old Countess did all that she could to further his wooing: if he
+had not been in love he would have thought that she did too much. It
+was foolish to delay.
+
+The leaves had lost their first tender beauty and were full-grown,
+strong, and shining, as they rode one day along one of the narrowest
+bridle-paths in the Thiergarten,--a path where here and there a huge
+tree, which those who had laid out the park had not had the heart to
+sacrifice, almost obstructed the way. They trotted along briskly, like
+all beginners. Erika preferred a very swift pace, at which Goswyn
+sometimes demurred. On a sudden the girl's horse shied, violently
+startled by a wayfarer who had fallen asleep in the shade by the side
+of the path.
+
+Very calmly, with no thought of danger, Erika not only kept her seat in
+the saddle, but quickly succeeded in soothing her horse.
+
+All the more was Goswyn terrified, and no sooner was he convinced that
+Erika did not need his assistance than he turned angrily and soundly
+berated the unfortunate man, who was apparently intoxicated. Then,
+somewhat ashamed of his outburst, he rejoined Erika, who awaited him
+with a smile of surprise. He frowned; his cheeks were flushed. "Pardon
+me, Countess; I am very sorry," he said. "I could think of nothing but
+that you might have been thrown,---that tree--if you had lost your
+presence of mind----" He shuddered.
+
+She shrugged her shoulders. "And what if I had? You were by."
+
+At these words his face cleared. "Do you really feel such confidence in
+me?" he asked.
+
+"I?" She looked at him in utter surprise. Why should he ask a question
+to which the reply was so self-evident?
+
+His grave, manly face took on an expression of almost boyish
+embarrassment, and suddenly she became aware of his sentiments,--for
+the first time. She made a nervous effort to devise something that
+should hinder his confession, something that should spare him
+humiliation and herself pain: she could invent nothing. In vain did she
+search her mind for some, even the smallest, sensible evasive phrase,
+and at last she murmured, "The trees are very green for the time of
+year. Do you not think so?"
+
+He smiled in spite of his agitation and confusion, and then said, in
+the slightly hoarse tone which always with him betokened intense
+earnestness, "Countess Erika, beyond a certain point twilight, lovely
+as it is, becomes intolerable; one longs for light." He paused, looked
+full in her face, and cleared his throat. "You must long have been
+aware of how I regard you?"
+
+But she interrupted him hurriedly: "No, no; I have been aware of
+nothing,--nothing at all."
+
+She trembled violently, and turned into a broad road, where a gay
+cavalcade came cantering towards her,--the Princess Dorothea and her
+train of several gentlemen.
+
+"Turn to the right," called Goswyn, and the cavalcade passed, the dust
+raised by their horses enveloping everything like a misty cloud.
+
+Erika coughed slightly. "Good heavens! perhaps he understood, and will
+save me from replying," she thought.
+
+But no, he did not save her from replying.
+
+"Well, Countess Erika?" he began, after a short pause, gently, but very
+firmly.
+
+"Wha--what?" she stammered.
+
+"Will you be my wife?"
+
+She gasped for breath: never could she have believed that she should
+find it so hard to refuse an offer. But accept it--no; something within
+her rebelled against the thought--she could not.
+
+"N--no. I am very sorry," she stammered, every pulse throbbing wildly.
+She was terribly agitated as she glanced timidly up at him. Not a
+muscle in his face moved.
+
+"I was prepared for this," he murmured.
+
+"Thank God, he does not care very much!" she thought, taking a long
+breath; and the next moment--nay, even that very moment--she was vexed
+that he did 'not care very much.'
+
+They had reached the railway bridge, beneath which they were wont to
+turn into the grand avenue for a final gallop. For a moment she
+contemplated sacrificing to her rejected suitor this gallop, the crown
+and glory of their daily ride. She reined in her horse.
+
+"No gallop?" he asked, as if nothing had passed between them, except
+that his voice was still a little hoarse.
+
+"Oh, if you will. I only thought----" she stammered.
+
+He replied with the chivalric courtesy with which he always treated
+her, "I am entirely at your service."
+
+For a moment she hesitated; then, with a touch of the whip on her
+steed's right shoulder, she started.
+
+"Oh, how glorious!" she exclaimed, as they turned just before reaching
+the pavement. "Shall we not have one more?"
+
+And so they rode twice up and down the grand avenue. The air was clear
+and cool, and there was in it the fragrance of freshly-planed wood,
+coming from a large shed that was being erected on one side of the
+avenue for an exhibition of horses.
+
+Years afterwards Erika could never recall that ride and her miserable
+cruelty without again perceiving that peculiar fragrance.
+
+The young man was in direful plight. Whatever he might say, he had not
+been prepared for this. The last few days had been passed by him in a
+state of blissful agitation in which, try as he might, he could not
+torment himself with doubts. He had fallen from an immense height, and
+he was terribly bruised. In spite of all his self-control, he began to
+show it. Erika grew more and more depressed, glancing sympathizingly
+aside at him from time to time. Now she would far rather that he had
+not cared so much. Evidently she did not herself know what she really
+wished.
+
+They trotted along side by side; then just as they turned into Bellevue
+Street he heard a low distressed voice say,--
+
+"Herr von Sydow--I would not have you think that--that--I--intended to
+say that to you. I so value your friendship--I should be so very sorry
+to lose it--and--and----" She threw back her head slightly, and,
+looking him in the face from beneath the stiff brim of her riding-hat,
+she said, with a charming little smile, "Tell me that all shall be just
+as it has been between us."
+
+"As you please, Countess Erika," he replied, unable to restrain a smile
+at this novel way of treating a rejected suitor.
+
+When he lifted her from her horse shortly afterwards, he just touched
+her gray riding-glove with his lips; she looked kindly at him, and as
+he gazed after her from the hall as she ascended the staircase she
+turned her head to give him a friendly little nod.
+
+
+His heart grew lighter; he would not take too seriously her rejection
+of his suit; it was not final. "After all," he thought, "in spite of
+her precocious intelligence she is but a charming, innocent child; and
+that is what makes her so bewitching."
+
+The sunlight gleamed on the gilded tops of the iron railings of the
+front gardens in Bellevue Street, upon the leaves of the trees, and
+upon the long line of red-painted watering-carts stretching away in
+perspective like the beads of a huge rosary. The heat was already
+rather oppressive in Berlin. But Goswyn was robust, and sensitive
+neither to heat nor to cold. His ride with Erika was but the beginning
+of his daily exercise, and he trotted off to finish it.
+
+In the Charlottenburg Avenue he encountered the same cavalcade he had
+seen before in the Thiergarten in the midst of his declaration to
+Erika. Thanks to her agitation, the girl had recognized none of the
+party, but he had bowed to his sister-in-law and her esquires. Now she
+beckoned to him from a distance, and called, "Goswyn!"
+
+She was considerably taller and more slender than Erika, but she looked
+well in the saddle. Her gray-green eyes sparkled with malicious mockery
+from beneath the brim of her tall hat. "Goswyn," she cried, speaking
+with her accustomed rapidity in her high piercing voice and with her
+strange lisp, "you were just now made the subject of a wager."
+
+"But, Thea," Prince Nimbsch interrupted his cousin, "we none of us
+agreed to wager with you."
+
+"What was it about?" asked Goswyn, with a most uncomfortable
+presentiment that some annoyance threatened him.
+
+The three men with Dorothea looked at one another; Dorothea giggled. At
+last Prince Nimbsch said, "My cousin wished to wager that the Countess
+Erika would be wooed and won this spring."
+
+"Oh, no," Dorothea interrupted him; "that was not it at all. I wagered
+that you had been refused by Erika this morning in the Thiergarten,
+Gos. Helmy would not believe me; but I have sharp eyes."
+
+She said it still giggling, with the wayward insolence of a spoiled
+child, not consciously cruel, who for very wantonness pulls a beetle to
+pieces. "Am I not right?" she persisted.
+
+The men turned away as men of feeling would turn away from beholding an
+execution.
+
+There was a red cloud before Goswyn's eyes, but he maintained his
+outward composure perfectly. "Yes, Dorothea, I have been rejected," he
+said, and the words sounded oddly distinct in the midst of the absolute
+silence of the little group, surrounded as it was by the bustle and
+noise of the capital. "May I ask what possible interest this can have
+for you?"
+
+"Oh," she laughed still more insolently, ready as she always was to
+exaggerate her ill-breeding when she was tempted to be ashamed of
+it,--"oh, I only wanted to make sure I was right. Helmy contradicted
+me so positively, declaring that a man like you never could be
+rejected. Aha, Helmy! Well, the other Berlin men will be glad!"
+
+"And why?" Goswyn asked, with the unfortunate persistence in pursuing a
+disagreeable subject often shown by strong men who would fain establish
+their lack of sensitiveness.
+
+"Why? Because you are a dangerous rival, Goswyn," cried Dorothea. "Do
+you suppose that you are the only one to covet the hand of the
+heiress?"
+
+For a moment Goswyn felt as if a naming torch had been hurled in his
+face. He grew giddy, but, still maintaining his self-control, he simply
+rejoined, "Dorothea, there are circumstances in which your sex is an
+immense protection," and then, turning with a bow to the three men, he
+galloped off in an opposite direction.
+
+Dorothea still giggled, but she turned very pale; her companions, on
+the other hand, were scarlet.
+
+"Ride home with whomsoever you please: I am ashamed to be seen with
+you!" Prince Nimbsch said, angrily; and he hurried after Sydow. But
+when he overtook him the two men looked at each other and were silent.
+At last Nimbsch began, "I only wanted to say----"
+
+Goswyn interrupted him: "There is nothing to be said;" and there was a
+hoarse tone in his voice that pained the young Austrian. "I know you to
+be a gentleman, Prince, and that you consider me one. There is nothing
+to be said."
+
+Before the Prince could say another word, Goswyn was well-nigh out of
+sight.
+
+Two hours afterwards Goswyn von Sydow might have been seen on a horse
+covered with foam galloping over the sandy hilly tracts of land by
+which Berlin is surrounded. He had never bestowed a thought upon
+Erika's wealth: now he felt that he never could forget it. He had been
+robbed of all ease in her society. It was all over.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER X.
+
+
+If Erika could have known anything of the unpleasant scene in
+Charlottenburg Avenue, her warm-hearted indignation would immediately
+have developed into vigour the germ of affection for Goswyn that
+already, unknown to herself, slumbered in her heart. She would
+certainly have committed some exaggerated, irresponsible act, which
+would have overthrown at a blow Goswyn's rudely-aroused, tormenting
+pride. She never could have borne to have another inflict upon him pain
+or humiliation. The entire disagreeable complication would have come to
+a crisis in a most touching scene, and in the end two people absolutely
+made for each other would have been sitting hand clasped in hand on the
+lounge beneath the fan-palms in Countess Lenzdorff's drawing-room,
+conversing in low tones, and Erika would have arrived at the sensible
+and agreeable conviction that there could be nothing better in the
+world than to share the life of a strong, noble husband to whom she
+could implicitly confide her happiness. The problem of her life would
+have found its solution, and she would have been spared the perilous
+errors and hard trials awaiting her in the future.
+
+But the ugly story never reached her. The three men who had been
+auditors of Dorothea's coarse cruelty would have considered as a breach
+of honour any report of it, and the Princess Dorothea contented herself
+with a giggling declaration to all who chose to listen that her
+brother-in-law Goswyn had had the mitten from Erika Lenzdorff, without
+referring to the way in which her information had been procured.
+
+Thus Erika passed the rest of the day with a rather sore, compassionate
+feeling in her heart, never doubting that she should have her usual
+ride with Goswyn the next morning, when she promised herself to be
+particularly amiable. All would come right, she said to herself.
+
+But that same evening, when she was taking tea with her grandmother,
+old Lüdecke brought his mistress a letter which she read with evident
+surprise and then laid down beside her plate. She did not eat another
+morsel, and scarcely spoke during the meal. Observing that Erika,
+distressed by her silence, had also ceased eating and was anxiously
+glancing towards her grandmother from time to time, she asked, "Have
+you finished?" Her voice was unusually stern. Erika was startled.
+"Yes," she stammered, and, trembling in every limb, she followed her
+grandmother out of the dining-room and into the Countess's cheerful,
+cosey boudoir. There the old lady began to pace thoughtfully to and
+fro: she looked very dignified and awe-inspiring. Erika had never
+before seen her thus, walking with short impatient steps, frowning
+brow, and a face that seemed hewn out of marble. She began to be
+frightfully uncomfortable in the presence of the angry old woman, and
+was trying to slip away unobserved, when her grandmother barred her way
+and said, harshly, "Stay here: I have something to say to you, Erika."
+
+"Yes, grandmother."
+
+"Sit down."
+
+Erika obeyed.
+
+The room looked very pleasant, with its light furniture revealed in the
+shaded brilliancy of coloured hanging lamps. One window was open; a low
+rustle of leaves was wafted in through the pale-green silken curtains
+upon the warm languorous breath of the spring night. Her grandmother
+seated herself in her favourite arm-chair beside her reading-table,
+with Erika opposite her on a frail-looking little chair, bolt upright,
+with her hands in her lap, and a very distressed expression of
+countenance.
+
+"This letter is from Goswyn," the old lady began, tapping the letter in
+her lap.
+
+"Yes, grandmother," murmured Erika.
+
+"You guessed it?" the old lady asked, in a hard, unnatural voice, and
+with an exaggerated distinctness of utterance, which were very strange
+to her granddaughter.
+
+"I know his handwriting."
+
+"H'm! You know what is in the letter?"
+
+"How should I?" Erika's pale cheeks flushed crimson.
+
+"How should you? Well, then, I must tell you"--she smoothed down her
+dress with an impatient gesture--"that you refused his offer to-day:
+that is what the letter contains. Surely you should know it. Such
+things are not done in sleep."
+
+"Ah, yes, I know that," Erika murmured, beginning to be irritated in
+her turn; "but how was I to suppose that he would write it to you? I
+cannot see what he does it for?"
+
+"What for? He informs me that he must deprive himself of all
+intercourse with us for a time, that he has obtained leave of absence
+and is going away from Berlin."
+
+"But why?" exclaimed Erika. "This is perfect nonsense! It was settled
+that we should ride together to-morrow as usual."
+
+"Indeed! You expected him to ride with you after you had rejected him?"
+
+"He was perfectly agreed," Erika eagerly declared: "we parted the best
+of friends. I do not want to marry him, but I prize his friendship
+immensely. I told him so. He has surely put that in the letter. He is
+never unjust; he must have told you that I was nice to him. How could I
+help being so, when I pitied him so much?" The girl's voice trembled.
+"You have missed something in the letter; you must have missed
+something," she persisted.
+
+Her grandmother opened the letter again, and read, first in an
+undertone, then aloud: "Yes, here it is: 'Never was man rejected more
+charmingly, with greater sweetness, than I by the Countess Erika; but
+it did me no good. I only thought her more bewitching than ever before
+in her tender kindliness,--yes, even in all her dear, child-like,
+awkward attempts to reconcile what in the very nature of things is
+irreconcilable.
+
+"'For a while I shall be very wretched; but you know me well enough to
+feel sure that I shall not go through life hanging my head, any more
+than I shall now butt that same head against the wall. I trust that the
+time will come when I shall be of some use to you, my dear old friend,
+and, it may be, to _her_; but at present I am good for nothing.
+
+"'It is best that I should retire into the background. To-morrow I
+leave Berlin. Forgive me for finding it impossible to take leave of you
+in person, and believe in the faithful devotion of yours always,
+
+ "'G. Von Sydow.'"
+
+
+After the old lady had finished the reading of the letter, not without
+a certain pathetic emphasis, she looked up. Erika's face was bathed in
+tears. Her grandmother was dismayed, and after a pause began again, but
+in a very different and a very gentle tone.
+
+"This affair annoys me excessively, Erika."
+
+The girl nodded.
+
+"The fact is,"--the grandmother laid her hand on Erika's arm,--"you are
+very inexperienced in such affairs. Another time you must not let
+matters go so far. One must do everything in one's power to spare an
+honourable gentleman such a humiliation. Your conduct would have given
+the most modest of men reason to suppose you cared for him. You misled
+me completely."
+
+"Misled!--cared for him!" Erika repeated, tapping the carpet nervously
+with her foot. "But I do like him very much."
+
+Her grandmother all but smiled. "My dear child, I do not quite
+understand you. Consider! Shall I write and tell Goswyn that you were a
+little unprepared, and that you are sorry,--there's no disgrace in
+admitting that,--and--Heaven knows I shall be glad enough to write the
+letter!" She rose to go to her writing-table, but Erika detained her,
+nervously clutching at her skirts.
+
+"No! no! oh, no, grandmother!" she almost screamed. "I do like him; I
+know how good he is; but I do not want to marry him, I am still so
+young. For God's sake do not force me to do so!" She had grown deadly
+pale, as she clasped her hands in entreaty.
+
+Her grandmother looked at her with a grave shake of the head. "As you
+please," she said, no longer stern, but depressed, worried,--a mood
+very rare with her. "Now go and lie down: rest will do you good; and I
+should like to be alone for a while."
+
+Far into the night did the old Countess pace restlessly to and fro in
+her boudoir, amidst all the graceful works of art which she had
+collected about her with such satisfaction and which gave her none at
+present. At last she seated herself at her writing-table, and before
+Goswyn left Berlin the next day he received the following letter:
+
+
+"My Dear Boy,--
+
+"This matter affects me more than you would think. I was so sure of my
+case. At first I was disposed to scold the girl; but there turned out
+to be no reason for doing so. Not a trace did she show of vulgar love
+of admiration, nor even of heartless thoughtlessness. Everything that
+she said to you is true: she likes you very much. I tried to set her
+right,--in vain! For the present there is nothing to be done with her.
+
+"In the course of conversation I perceived that there was nothing for
+which the child was to blame; the fault was all mine. Can you forgive
+me?
+
+"But that is a mere phrase. I know that it never will occur to you to
+blame me.
+
+"My words will not come as readily as usual, and I am very
+uncomfortable. I am writing to you not only to tell you how much I pity
+you, but also to relieve my anxiety somewhat by talking it over with
+you.
+
+"I have come to see that my grandchild, whom I so wrongly
+neglected--the words are not a mere phrase--for so long, and for whom I
+now have an affection such as I have never felt for any one in my life
+hitherto, will give me many an unhappy hour.
+
+"Her sad, dreary youth has left its shadow on her soul, and has
+exaggerated in her a perilous inborn sensitiveness.
+
+"There are depths in her character which I cannot fathom. She is good,
+tender-hearted, noble, beautiful, and rarely gifted; but there is with
+her in everything a tendency to exaggeration that frightens me. I
+forebode now that my long neglect of the child from mere selfish love
+of ease will be bitterly avenged upon me.
+
+"If I had watched her from childhood, I should now know her; but,
+fondly as I love her, I cannot but feel that I do not understand her,
+and the great difference in our ages makes any perfect intimacy between
+us impossible. Moreover, in spite of my trifle of sagacity, of which I
+have availed myself for my own pleasure and never for the benefit of
+others, I am an unpractical person, and shall make many a stupid
+mistake in my treatment of the child. And it is a pity; for I do not
+over-estimate her: she is bewitching!
+
+"Yet, withal, I cannot help thinking that you have not acted as wisely
+as I should have expected you to,--that with a little more heartfelt
+insistence you might have prevailed where my persuasion failed. In
+especial your sudden flight is a perfect riddle to me. I looked for
+more perseverance from you. But this is your affair.
+
+"I am very sorry not to see you again before your hurried departure. I
+shall miss you terribly, my dear boy, I have become so accustomed to
+refer to you in all my small perplexities. Still hoping, in spite of
+everything, that sooner or later all may be as it should be between
+Erika and yourself, I am your affectionate old friend,
+
+ "Anna Lenzdorff."
+
+
+Chafed and sore in heart as Goswyn was at the time, this letter did him
+good. After reading it through he murmured, "When she thus reveals her
+inmost soul, it is easy to understand how, with all her faults and
+follies, one cannot help loving the old Countess."
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+A Thread in the web of Erika's existence snapped with Goswyn's
+departure. The sudden separation from him without even a farewell she
+felt to be very sad, and long after he had gone the mere mention of his
+name would thrill her with a vague, restless pain, a nervous
+dissatisfaction with herself, with the world, with him, a dim sense
+that some error had crept into her life's reckoning and that the story
+ought to have turned out otherwise. In the depths of her heart she was
+bitterly disappointed when after a rather gay summer and autumn she
+heard upon her return to Berlin that young Sydow had been transferred
+to Breslau.
+
+Soon, indeed, she lacked the time for occupying her thoughts with her
+dear good friend but unwelcome suitor. Existence developed brilliantly
+for her, and the world's incense mounted to her head, and bewildered
+her, as it bewilders all, even the wisest and gravest, if they are
+exposed to its influence.
+
+She was presented at court, where she produced the most favourable
+impression, and was distinguished by the highest personages in the land
+in a manner to excite much envy.
+
+Of course she went out a great deal,--so much that her grandmother, who
+had always been characterized by a certain social indolence, grew weary
+of accompanying her, and, whenever she could, intrusted her to the
+chaperonage of her oldest friend, Frau von Norbin.
+
+But when Erika reached home at midnight or after it she had to recount
+her triumphs at her grandmother's bedside. The old Countess would
+scrutinize her closely, as she would have done a work of art, and once
+she said, "Yes, you are a rare creature, it cannot be denied: you are
+more lovely after a ball than before it. How life thrills through you!
+But I do not understand you. I know your mind, and your nerves, but I
+have never proved the depths of your heart." Then she shook her head,
+sighed, kissed the youthful beauty upon her eyelids, and sent her to
+bed.
+
+Yes, there was no end to the homage paid her. No young girl had ever
+been so admired and caressed as was Erika Lenzdorff in the first two
+years after her presentation. It fairly rained adorers and suitors.
+Then--not because her beauty began to fade; no, she had never been more
+beautiful, she had developed magnificently--her conquests decreased.
+Her admirers were capricious, returning to her at times, and then
+holding aloof again; and as for suitors, they entirely disappeared.
+
+One fact was too patent not to be acknowledged by even the girl's
+adoring grandmother. To the usual society man Erika was duller and more
+uninteresting than the rawest pink-and-white village girl whose natural
+coquetry taught her how to flatter his vanity and emphasize his
+superiority. She did not know how to talk to her admirers, and her
+admirers did not know how to talk to her. The men thought her 'queer.'
+She passed for a blue-stocking because she read serious books, and for
+'highfalutin' because she speculated upon matters quite uninteresting
+to young girls in general. Since with all her feminine refinement of
+mind she combined not an iota of worldly wisdom, she harboured
+the conviction that every one regarded life from her own serious
+stand-point, and would fearlessly propound the problems that occupied
+her to the most superficial dandy who happened to be her partner in the
+german.
+
+Her grandmother once said to her, "You scare away your admirers with
+your attempts to teach them to fly. Men do not wish to learn to fly:
+you would succeed far better if you should try to teach them to crawl
+on all fours. Most of them have a decided predilection for doing so,
+and those women who can furnish them with a plausible pretext for
+it--for crawling on all fours, I mean--are sure to be the most popular
+with them."
+
+In reply to such a declaration Erika would gaze at her grandmother with
+an expression 'so pathetically stupid' that the old Countess could not
+help drawing the girl towards her and kissing her.
+
+"It is a pity you would not have Goswyn," the old Countess generally
+concluded, with a sigh: "you are caviare for people in general, and
+Goswyn was the only one who knew how to value you. I cannot comprehend
+you, Erika. Goswyn is the very ideal of a husband; warm-hearted, brave,
+and true, there is real support in his stout arm, and his broad
+shoulders are just fitted to bear a burden that another would find too
+heavy. He is no genius, but instead is brimful of the noblest kind of
+sense. Understand me, Erika; there is a great difference between the
+noblest kind and the inferior article."
+
+But by the time she had reached this point in her eulogy of Goswyn,
+Erika was standing with her hand on the latch of the door, stammering,
+"Yes, yes, grandmother; but I--I have a letter to write."
+
+She liked to avoid any discussion of Goswyn: a sensation of unrest,
+always the same, never developing into any distinct desire, was sure to
+assail her heart at the mention of his name.
+
+
+The girls who had made their _débuts_ with her were now almost all
+married. Very commonplace girls, whom she had treated with
+condescending kindness, married her own former admirers: she was no
+longer wooed. At first she laughed at the airs of superiority which the
+young wives took on in her society; but the second winter she was
+annoyed by them. Meanwhile, a fresh bevy of beauties made their
+appearance, and many a girl was admired and fêted, simply because she
+had not been seen as often as the Countess Erika.
+
+In the depths of her heart, she had no desire whatever to marry. In her
+thoughts marriage was simply a clumsy, inconvenient requirement of our
+social organization, compliance with which she would postpone as long
+as possible. Against 'all for love' her inmost being rebelled, and yet
+her lack of suitors vexed her.
+
+Then, when the first social feminine authorities of Berlin began to
+shake their heads over her as a 'critical case,' she suddenly startled
+society by the announcement of her betrothal to a very wealthy English
+peer, Percy, Earl of Langley.
+
+She became acquainted with him at Carlsbad, whither her grandmother had
+gone for the waters. For several days she noticed that an elderly,
+distinguished-looking man followed her with his eyes whenever she
+appeared. At last, one morning he approached the old Countess, and with
+a smile asked whether she had really forgotten him or whether it was
+her deliberate intention persistently to cut him.
+
+She offered him her hand courteously, and replied, "Lord Langley, on
+the Continent a gentleman is supposed to speak first to a lady.
+Moreover, if I had been willing to comply with your national custom, I
+should hardly have known whether it were well to present myself to
+you."
+
+He laughed, with half-closed eyes, and rejoined that her remark could
+bear reference only to a period of his life long since past; now he was
+an old man, etc. "I have sown my wild oats," he declared, adding, "I've
+taken a long time to sow them, haven't I? But it's all over now!"
+Whereupon he requested an introduction to the Countess's companion.
+
+From that time he devoted himself to the two ladies. Erika was
+flattered by his respectful admiration, and liked to talk with him. In
+fact, she had never conversed with so much pleasure with any other man.
+He had formerly belonged to the diplomatic corps, and had known
+personally all the people mentioned by Lord Malmesbury in his
+memoirs,--in short, everybody who during the past forty years had been
+either famous or notorious, from the Emperor Nicholas, for whom he had
+an enthusiasm, to Cora Pearl, concerning whom he whispered anecdotes in
+the old Countess's ear, and whose career he declared, with a shrug, was
+a riddle to him.
+
+He was the keenest observer and cleverest talker imaginable,
+distinguished in appearance, always well dressed, a perfect type of the
+Englishman who, casting aside British cant, leads a gay life on the
+Continent, without faith, without any moral ideal, saturated through
+and through with a refined, cynical, witty Epicureanism, gently
+suppressed when in the society of ladies, although from indolence he
+did not entirely disguise it.
+
+Two weeks after recalling himself to the Countess Lenzdorff's memory,
+he wrote her a letter asking for her grand-daughter's hand. The old
+lady, not without embarrassment, informed the young girl of his
+proposal. "It certainly is trying," she began. "I cannot see how it
+ever entered his head to think of you. A blooming young creature like
+you, and his sixty years! What shall I say to him?"
+
+Erika stood speechless for a moment. The old Englishman's proposal was
+an utter surprise to her, but, oddly enough, it did not produce so
+disagreeable an impression upon her as upon her grandmother. She had
+always wished to mingle in English society. Wealthy as she was, she was
+aware that her wealth bore no comparison to that of Lord Langley. And
+then the position of the wife of an English peer was very different
+from that of the wife of any Prussian nobleman. Her fatal inheritance
+of romantic enthusiasm had latterly found expression with her in a
+certain craving for distinction. What a field opened before her! She
+saw herself fêted, admired, besieged with petitions, one of the
+political influences of Europe.
+
+"Well?" asked Countess Lenzdorff, who had meanwhile taken her seat at
+her writing-table.
+
+"Well?" Erika repeated, in some confusion.
+
+"What shall I say? That you will not have him, of course; but how shall
+I courteously give him to understand---- It is intolerable! Do not get
+me into such a scrape again. Although, poor child, you cannot help it."
+
+Erika was silent.
+
+Her grandmother had begun to write, when she heard a very low, rather
+timid voice just behind her say,--
+
+"Grandmother!"
+
+She turned round. "What is it, child?"
+
+"You see--if I must marry----"
+
+Her grandmother stared, then exclaimed, sharply, "You could be
+induced----?"
+
+Erika nodded.
+
+The old lady fairly bounded from her chair, tore up the letter she had
+begun, threw the pieces on the floor, and left the room. The door was
+closed behind her, when she opened it again to say, curtly, "Write to
+him yourself!"
+
+
+Two days after his betrothal, Lord Langley left Carlsbad to superintend
+the preparations at Eyre Castle for the reception of his bride, whom he
+hoped to take to England at the end of August.
+
+The lovers shed no tears at parting, and there was no other display of
+tenderness than a reverential kiss imprinted by Lord Langley upon his
+betrothed's hand. This respectful homage appeared to Erika highly
+satisfactory.
+
+
+After the old Countess had taken the cure at Carlsbad she betook
+herself with Erika to Franzensbad to complete it.
+
+At that time a great deal was said, in the sleepy, lounging life of
+Franzensbad, of the Bayreuth performances. 'Parsifal' was the topic of
+universal interest. The old Countess at first absolutely refused to
+listen to Erika's earnest request to go to Bayreuth; in fact, she had
+been in a bad humour ever since the betrothal, and her tenderness
+towards Erika had ostensibly diminished. She contradicted her
+frequently, was quite irritable, and would often reply to some
+perfectly innocent proposal of her grand-daughter's, "Wait until you
+are married." She would not hear of going to Bayreuth, maintaining that
+the bits of 'Parsifal' which she had heard played as duets had been
+quite enough for her,--she had no desire to hear the whole performance;
+moreover, she had had a headache--ever since Erika's betrothal.
+
+Her opposition lasted a good while, but at last curiosity triumphed,
+and she announced herself ready to sacrifice herself and go to Bayreuth
+with her granddaughter.
+
+Lord Langley's last letter had come from Munich, where one of his
+daughters (he was a widower, and had no son) was married to a young
+English diplomat. Grandmother and grand-daughter were to meet him
+there, and then all were to proceed to Castle Wetterstein in
+Westphalia, the family seat of Count Lenzdorff, a great-uncle of
+Erika's, where the marriage was to take place.
+
+Highly delighted at her grandmother's consent to her wishes, Erika
+wrote to Lord Langley asking him to meet them at Bayreuth instead of
+waiting for them at Munich, although, she added, he was to feel quite
+free to do as he pleased.
+
+Lüdecke, the faithful, was sent to Bayreuth to arrange for lodgings and
+tickets, and a few days afterwards the old Countess, with Erika and her
+maid Marianne, left Franzensbad, with its waving white birches, its
+good bread and weak coffee, its symphony concerts, and its languishing,
+pale, consumptive beauties. The dew glistened on leaves and flowers as
+they drove to the station. After they had reached it, Marianne, the
+maid, was sent back to the hotel for a volume of 'Opera and Drama,' and
+a pamphlet upon 'the psychological significance of Kundry,' in the
+former of which the old Countess was absorbed during the journey to
+Bayreuth.
+
+They were received with genial enthusiasm by the fair, fresh wife of
+the baker, in whose house Lüdecke had procured them lodgings, and they
+followed her up a bare damp staircase to the tile-paved landing upon
+which their rooms opened. They consisted of a spacious, low-ceilinged
+apartment, with a small island of carpet before the sofa in a sea of
+yellow varnished board floor, furnished with red plush chairs, two
+india-rubber trees, a bird in a painted cage, and a cupboard with
+glass doors, on either side of which were doors opening into the
+bedrooms,--everything comfortable, clean, and old-fashioned.
+
+After some refreshment the two ladies drove about the town, and out
+into the trim open country through beautiful, shady avenues, avenues
+such as usually lead to princely residences, and into the quiet
+deserted park, where there were few strangers besides themselves to be
+seen. Returning, they dined at 'the Sun,' at the same table with
+Austrian aristocrats, Berlin councillors of commerce, and numerous
+pilgrims to the festival from known and unknown lands. Then they
+sauntered about the dear old town, with its many-gabled architecture,
+and visited the Master's grave and the old theatre. The old Countess
+lost herself in speculations as to what the Margravine would have
+thought of the great German show that now wakes the lethargic old
+capital from its repose at least every other year; and Erika, laughing,
+called her grandmother's attention to the 'Parsifal slippers' and the
+'Nibelungen bonbons' in the unpretentious shop-windows.
+
+The sun was very low, and the shadows were creeping across the broad
+squares and down the narrow streets, when the old Countess proposed to
+go back to their rooms to refresh herself with a cup of tea. Erika
+accompanied her to the door of their lodgings, and then said, "I should
+like to look about for a volume of Tauchnitz. May I not go alone? This
+seems little more than a village."
+
+"If you choose," her grandmother, already halfway up the staircase,
+replied.
+
+With no thought of ill, Erika turned the corner of the nearest street.
+
+She walked slowly, gazing up at the antique house-fronts on either side
+of her. Suddenly she heard a voice behind her call "Rika! Rika!"
+
+She turned, and started as if stunned by a flash of lightning. Before
+her, his whiskers brushed straight out from his cheeks, rather more
+florid than of yore, in a very dandified plaid suit, with an eye-glass
+stuck in his eye, stood--Strachinsky.
+
+"Rika, my dear little Rika!" he cried, holding out his hand. "What a
+surprise, and what a pleasure, to find you here, and without the
+Cerberus who always has barred our meeting! Fate will yet avenge it
+upon her."
+
+Erika trembled with indignation, but her tongue clove to the roof of
+her mouth. Try as she might, she could not reply. A senseless, childish
+panic mastered her, as terrible as it would have been had this man
+still had power over her and been able to snatch her from her present
+surroundings and carry her back to the dreary life at Luzano.
+
+"You are quite speechless," he went on, having meanwhile seized her
+hand and carried it to his lips. "No wonder, it is so long since we
+have seen each other. That jealous old drag----"
+
+"I must beg you not to allude to my grandmother in that way!" she
+exclaimed, conscious of a benumbing, nervous pain at the remembrance of
+her terrible, sordid existence with this man.
+
+"You are under the old woman's influence," Strachinsky declared, "and
+nothing else was to be expected; but now all will be different: when
+you are once married, more cordial relations will be established
+between us. I bear no malice; I forgive everything: I was always too
+forgiving,--it was my only fault. My poor wife always called me an
+idealist, a Don Quixote,--my poor, idolized Emma,--I never can forget
+her." And he passed his hand over his eyes.
+
+"I must go home: my grandmother is expecting me," Erika murmured.
+
+"I should think you could consent to bestow a few minutes upon your old
+father, if only out of regard for your mother's memory," Strachinsky
+observed, assuming his loftiest expression.
+
+Regard for her mother's memory! Certainly, she would not let him starve
+or suffer absolute want. "Do you need anything?" she asked.
+
+"No," he replied, curtly, with a show of wounded feeling.
+
+Then followed a pause. She looked round, ignorant of where she was, for
+during this most unwelcome interview she had continued to walk on
+without observing whither she was going.
+
+"Will you show me the way to Maximilian Street?" she asked him.
+
+"To the left, here," he replied, laconically; then, with lifted
+eyebrows, he observed, "Unpractical idealist that I am, I was disposed
+to forget and forgive the outrageous ingratitude with which you have
+treated me in these latter years,--nay, always. I had even resolved to
+call upon your betrothed; although that would have been to reverse the
+order of affairs. But I perceive that your arrogance and pride are
+greater than ever. No matter! I only hope you may not be punished for
+them too severely!" With these words, he touched his hat with grotesque
+dignity and was gone before she could collect herself to reply.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+Meanwhile, the sky had become overcast; a keen wind began to blow, and
+large drops of rain were falling before Erika reached the door of the
+lodgings in Maximilian Street.
+
+As she mounted the staircase she heard her grandmother's voice in the
+drawing-room and recognized the cordial tone which she used when
+speaking to the few people in the world with whom she was in genuine
+sympathy. Nevertheless, agitated by her late interview, Erika inwardly
+deplored the arrangement of their apartments which made it impossible
+that she should reach her bedroom without passing through the
+drawing-room. She opened the door: her grandmother was seated on the
+sofa, and near her, in an arm-chair, with his back to the casement
+window, was a man in civilian's dress. He arose, looking so tall that
+it seemed to Erika he must strike his head against the low ceiling of
+the room. She did not instantly recognize him, as he stood with his
+back to the light, but before he had advanced a step she exclaimed,
+"Goswyn!" and ran to him with both hands extended. When, with rather
+formal courtesy, he kissed one of the hands thus held out as if seeking
+succour, and then dropped it without any very cordial pressure, she was
+assailed by a certain embarrassment: she remembered that she should
+have called him Herr von Sydow, and that it became her to receive
+her rejected suitor with a more measured dignity. But she was not
+self-possessed today. The shock of meeting her step-father had unstrung
+her nerves; the numbness which had of late paralyzed sensation began to
+depart; her youthful heart throbbed almost as loudly as it had done
+when she had first ascended the thickly-carpeted staircase in Bellevue
+Street, as strongly as upon that brilliant Thursday at the Countess
+Brock's, when, suddenly overcome by the memory of her unhappy mother,
+she had fled from the crowd of her admirers to sob out her misery in
+some lonely corner.
+
+Lord Langley's worldly-wise, self-possessed betrothed had vanished, and
+in her stead was a shy, emotional young person, oppressed by a sense of
+her exaggerated cordiality towards the guest. She now seated herself as
+far as possible from him in one of the red plush arm-chairs.
+
+"How long have you been in Bayreuth, Herr von Sydow?" she asked, in a
+timid little voice, which thrilled the young officer's heart like an
+echo of by-gone times.
+
+Erika, whose eyes had become accustomed to the darkened light of the
+room, noted that he smiled,--his old kind smile. His features looked
+more sharply chiselled than formerly; he had grown very thin, and had
+lost every trace of the slight clumsiness which had once characterized
+him.
+
+"I came several days ago: my musical feast is already a thing of the
+past," he replied.
+
+"Indeed! And what then keeps you in Bayreuth?" Erika asked.
+
+He laughed a little forced laugh, and then blushed after his old
+fashion, but replied, very quietly, "I learned from your factotum
+Lüdecke, whom I met the day before yesterday, that you were coming, and
+so I determined to await your arrival."
+
+She longed to say something cordial and kind to him, but the words
+would not come. Instead her grandmother spoke.
+
+"It was kind of you to stay in this tiresome old hole just to see us. I
+call it very kind," she assured him, and Erika added, meekly, "So do
+I."
+
+A pause ensued, broken finally by Goswyn: "Let me offer you my best
+wishes on the occasion of your betrothal, Countess Erika." He uttered
+the words very bravely, but Erika could not respond: she suddenly felt
+that she had cause to be ashamed of herself, although what that cause
+was she did not know.
+
+"Are you acquainted with Lord Langley, Goswyn?" the old Countess asked,
+in the icy tone which she always assumed when any allusion was made to
+her grand-daughter's engagement.
+
+"No. You can imagine how eager I am to hear about him."
+
+"He is one of the most entertaining Englishmen I have ever met,--a very
+clever man," the Countess declared, as if discussing some one in whom
+she took no personal interest.
+
+"It was not to be supposed that the Countess Erika would sacrifice
+her freedom to any ordinary individual," said Goswyn, with admirable
+self-control.
+
+For all reply the Countess raised the clumsy teacup before her to her
+lips.
+
+With every word thus spoken Erika's sense of shame deepened, and she
+was seized with an intense desire to be frank with Goswyn, and to
+dispel any illusion he might entertain as to her betrothal. "Lord
+Langley is no longer young," she said, hurriedly. "I will show you his
+photograph."
+
+She went into the adjoining room and brought thence the photograph in
+its case, which she opened herself before handing it to Goswyn. He
+looked at the picture, then at her, and then again at the picture. His
+broad shoulders twitched; without a word he closed the case, and put it
+upon a table, beside which Erika had taken her seat.
+
+An embarrassing silence ensued. The sound of rolling vehicles was heard
+distinctly from below, and one stopped before the dark door-way. Soon
+afterwards the staircase creaked beneath a heavy tread. Lüdecke opened
+the low door of the old-fashioned apartment, and announced, "Frau
+Countess Brock."
+
+The 'wicked fairy' unconsciously had a novel experience: her appearance
+was a relief.
+
+As usual, she bowed and nodded on all sides, but, as she was unable for
+the moment to find her eye-glass, she saw nobody, and fell into the
+error of supposing a tall india-rubber tree in a tub before a window to
+be her particular friend the chamberlain Langefeld. Not until Goswyn
+discovered the eye-glass hanging by its slender cord among the jet
+ornaments and fringes with which her mantle was trimmed and humanely
+handed it to her, did she find out her mistake. Goswyn was about to
+withdraw after having rendered her this service, but she tapped him
+reproachfully on the shoulder and begged him to stay a moment with his
+old aunt. He might have resisted her request; but when Countess
+Lenzdorff added that he would please her by remaining, he complied, and
+seated himself again, although with something of the awkwardness apt to
+be shown by an officer when in civilian's dress.
+
+The 'wicked fairy' established herself beside the Countess Anna upon
+the sofa behind the round table, and accepted from Erika's hand a cup
+of tea, which she drank in affected little sips. She was clad, as
+usual, in trailing mourning robes, although no one could have told for
+whom she wore them, and the Countess Anna's first question was, "Do you
+not dislike wandering about Bayreuth as the Queen of Night?"
+
+"On the contrary," replied the 'wicked fairy,' rubbing her hands,
+"I like it. Awhile ago one of my friends declared that I appeared
+in Bayreuth as the mourning ghost of classic music. Was it not
+charming?--but not at all appropriate, for I adore Wagner!" And she
+began to hum the air of the flower-girl scene, "trililili lilili----"
+
+"What do you think of 'Parsifal'?" Countess Anna asked, turning to
+Goswyn. "One of the greatest humbugs of the century, eh? They howl as
+if possessed by an evil spirit, and call it joy,--call it song!"
+
+"At the risk of falling greatly in your esteem, I must confess that
+'Parsifal' made a profound impression upon me, Countess," Goswyn
+replied.
+
+"Et tu, Brute!" his old friend exclaimed.
+
+"I do not entirely approve of it, if that is anything in my favour," he
+rejoined.
+
+"Ah, there is nothing like Wagner! there is but one God,--and one
+Wagner!" The 'wicked fairy' went on humming, closing her eyes, and
+waving her hands affectedly in the air.
+
+"The scene containing the air which you are humming is not one of my
+favourites," Goswyn remarked.
+
+"Oh, it charmed us most of all,--Dorothea and me," the 'wicked fairy'
+declared. "Those hovering little temptresses, so seductive, and
+Parsifal, the chaste, in their midst!" She clasped her hands in an
+ecstasy. "The other evening at Frau Wagner's we met Van Dyck. He is
+rather strong in his mode of speech. Dorothea seemed much entertained
+by him, but afterwards she thought him shocking."
+
+"Your niece seems to have a positive mania just now for thinking
+everything 'shocking,'" Countess Anna said, dryly. "She sings no more
+music-hall ditties, and casts down her eyes modestly when she sees a
+French novel in a book-shop. Such a transformation is, to say the
+least, startling. Oh, I beg pardon, Goswyn; I always forget that
+Dorothea is your sister-in-law."
+
+"No need to remember it while we are among ourselves," Goswyn rejoined.
+"_Coram publico_, I would beg you to modify your expressions, for my
+poor brother's sake."
+
+"He cannot endure Thea," Countess Brock said, laughing, as she shook
+her forefinger at him; "but I know why that is so. Look how he
+blushes!" In fact, Goswyn had changed colour. "He fell in love with her
+in Florence. She told me all about it--aha!"
+
+"Does she really fancy so, or has she invented the story for her own
+amusement?" Goswyn murmured, as if to himself.
+
+The 'fairy' continued to giggle and writhe about in the corner of the
+sofa.
+
+"You must have been much with Dorothea of late," the Countess Anna
+remarked, quietly: "you have acquired all her airs and graces. Is the
+lady in question in Bayreuth at present?"
+
+"No; she left early this morning, for Berlin, where she has various
+matters to attend to before she goes to Heiligendamm. But we have been
+together for some time. We were in Schlangenbad for six weeks. Oh, we
+enjoyed ourselves excessively,--made all sorts of acquaintances whom we
+should never have spoken to at home. But--I came to see you, Anna,
+for a special purpose,--two purposes, I might say. One concerns
+Hedwig Norbin's birthday,--her seventieth,--and the other--yes, the
+other--guess whom I met in Schlangenbad?" She threw back her head and
+folded her arms across her breast, the very impersonation of
+anticipated enjoyment in a disagreeable announcement.
+
+"How can I?"
+
+"Your grand-daughter's step-father: yes," nodding emphatically.
+
+Erika started. Countess Lenzdorff said, calmly, "Indeed! I pity you
+from my heart; but, since I had no share in bringing such a misfortune
+upon you, I owe you no further reparation."
+
+"H'm! you need not pity me. He interested me extremely. You and your
+grand-daughter have seen fit simply to ignore him; but you do not know
+what people say."
+
+"Nor does it interest me in the least."
+
+"Well, you may not care about the verdict of society, but it is
+comfortable to stand well with one's conscience, as Dorothea said to me
+the other day."
+
+"Indeed! did she say that to you?" Countess Anna murmured in an
+undertone.
+
+"Yes, and she was indignant at the way in which you have treated the
+poor man."
+
+"Is it any affair of hers?" Countess Lenzdorff asked, sharply.
+
+"Oh, she is quite right; I am entirely of her opinion," the 'fairy'
+went on; then, turning to Erika, "I cannot help remonstrating with you.
+He certainly cared for you like a father until you were seventeen. He
+was a man whom your mother loved passionately."
+
+Erika sat as if turned to marble: every word spoken by the old 'fairy'
+was like a blow in the face to her.
+
+The Countess Lenzdorff's eyes flashed angrily. "Do not meddle with what
+you do not in the least understand, Elise!" she exclaimed. "As for my
+daughter-in-law's passion for that stupid weakling, it was made up of
+pity on the one hand for a man whom she came to know wounded and ill,
+and on the other hand of antagonism towards me. The fact is, I provoked
+her; the marriage would never have taken place if I had not most
+injudiciously set myself in opposition to Emma's betrothal to the Pole.
+Her second marriage was a tragedy, the result of obstinacy, not of
+love."
+
+"My dearest Anna, that is entirely your own idea," the Countess Brock
+asserted. "Every one knows that you cannot appreciate any tenderness of
+affection because your own heart is clad in armour, but you can never
+convince me that your daughter-in-law did not love the Pole
+passionately. In the first place, her passion for him was the only
+possible motive for her marriage; how else could it have occurred to
+her?--bah!--nonsense! and in the second place, Strachinsky read me her
+letters,--letters written soon after their marriage. He carries these
+proofs everywhere with him: his devotion to his dead wife is most
+touching. Poor man! he wept when he read the letters to us, and we wept
+too. I had invited a few friends, and he spent two evenings in reading
+them aloud to us. When he had finished he kissed the letters, and said,
+with a deep sigh, 'This is all that is left to me of my poor, adored
+Emma,' and then he told us of the tender relations that had existed
+between himself and his step-daughter, until she, when a brilliant lot
+fell to her share, had cast him aside--like an old shoe-string, as he
+expressed it. I do not say that such a connection is the most
+desirable, but _on choisit ses amis, on subit ses parents_. Certain
+duties must be conscientiously fulfilled, and, my dear Erika, be sure
+that I advise you for your good when I beg you to be friends with your
+step-father: you owe him a certain amount of filial affection. He is
+here in Bayreuth, and has requested me to effect a reconciliation
+between you and him."
+
+Erika made no reply. She sat motionless, speechless. The 'fairy' played
+her last trump. "People are talking about your unjustifiable treatment
+of him," she said; "but that can all be arranged. May I tell him that
+you are ready to receive him, Anna?"
+
+The Countess Lenzdorff rose to her feet. "Indeed!" she exclaimed, with
+an outburst of indignation; "you wish me to receive a man who, for the
+sake of exciting sympathy, reads aloud to your invited guests the
+letters of his dead wife? What do you take me for? I will have him
+turned out of doors if he dares to show his face here! And I have no
+more time at present to listen to you, Elise: I am going to pay a visit
+to Hedwig Norbin. Will you come with me?"
+
+"With the greatest pleasure!" cried the 'wicked fairy,' decidedly
+cowed.
+
+"Bring me my bonnet and gloves from my room, my child," her grandmother
+said to Erika, and when the girl brought them to her she kissed her on
+the cheek.
+
+Goswyn had risen to depart with the two ladies. Erika looked after him
+dully as, after taking a formal leave of her, he had reached the door
+of the room. Then she suddenly followed him. "Goswyn," she murmured,
+"stay for one moment!"
+
+He stayed; the door closed after the others, and they were alone.
+
+What did she want of him? He did not know: she herself did not know. He
+would advise her, rid her of the weight upon her heart: her old habit
+of appealing to him in all difficulties returned to her in full force.
+The time was past for her when she could relieve herself in any
+distressing agitation by a burst of tears: she sat there white and
+silent, plucking at the folds of her black lace dress.
+
+At last, passing her hand across her forehead once or twice, she began
+in a forced monotone, "You know that I idolized my mother; I have told
+you about her; perhaps you remember----"
+
+"I do not think I have forgotten much that you have ever told me," he
+interrupted her.
+
+The words were kind, but something in his tone pained her. Something
+interposed between them. It had seemed so natural to turn to him for
+sympathy, but she suddenly felt shy. What was her distress to him?
+
+"Forgive me," she murmured. "I longed to pour out my heart to some one.
+I have no one to go to, and I suffer so! You cannot imagine what this
+last quarter of an hour has been to me. My poor mother's marriage was a
+tragedy; my grandmother was right. No one who did not live with her can
+dream of all that she suffered for years. Her last request to me when
+she was dying was that I would not let him come to her. And now that
+wretch is boasting to strangers--oh, I cannot endure it! Can you
+understand what it all is to me? Can you understand?"
+
+The question was superfluous. She knew very well that he understood,
+but she repeated the words mechanically again and again. Why did he sit
+there so straight and silent? She was pouring out her soul to him,
+revealing to him all that was most sacred, and he had not one word of
+sympathy for her. A kind of anger took possession of her, and, with all
+the self-control which she could summon up, she said, more calmly, "I
+know I have no right to burden you with my misery----"
+
+"Countess Erika!" he exclaimed, with a sudden unconscious movement of
+his hand, which chanced to strike the case containing Lord Langley's
+photograph. It fell on the floor; Goswyn picked it up and tossed it
+contemptuously upon the table, while his face grew hard and stern.
+
+He was the first to break the silence that followed. "Is this
+Strachinsky staying in Bayreuth?"
+
+"Yes. I met him to-day."
+
+"Do you know his address?"
+
+"No. Why do you ask?"
+
+"For the simplest reason in the world: I wish to procure your mother's
+letters for you."
+
+"The letters!" she exclaimed. "Oh, if that were possible! But upon what
+pretext could you demand them of him? they belong to him; we have no
+right to them."
+
+"Might is right with such a fellow as that," Goswyn said, as he rose to
+go.
+
+She offered him her hand; he took it courteously, but there was no
+cordial pressure on his part, nor did he carry it to his lips.
+
+In a moment he was gone. She stood gazing as if spell-bound at the door
+which closed behind him. She did not understand. He was the same, but
+in his eyes she was no longer what she had been. This conviction
+flashed upon her. He was, as ever, ready to help her, but the tender
+warmth of sympathy of former days had gone, as had the reverence with
+which the strong man had been wont to regard her weakness: she was
+neither so dear nor so sacred to him as she had been.
+
+In the midst of the pain caused her by the 'wicked fairy's' malicious
+speeches she was aware of a paralyzing consciousness that she had sunk
+in the esteem of the one human being in the world whom she prized most
+highly.
+
+When the Countess Lenzdorff returned at the end of an hour, her
+grand-daughter was still sitting where she had left her, in the dark.
+When Erika heard her grandmother coming, she slipped into her own room.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+The next forenoon Erika was sitting in the low-ceilinged drawing-room.
+She was alone in the house. Lord Langley had announced his arrival
+during the forenoon, and the Countess Anna had gone out, to avoid being
+present at the meeting of the betrothed couple. The young girl's pulses
+throbbed to her fingertips; her eyes burned, her whole body felt sore
+and bruised, as if she had had a fall. For an hour she sat listening
+breathlessly. Would Goswyn come before Lord Langley arrived? Should she
+have a moment in which to speak to him? Ah, how she longed for it! She
+wanted to explain to him---- At last she heard a step on the stair: of
+course it was Lord Langley. No, no! Lord Langley's step was neither so
+quick nor so light: it was Goswyn; she could hear him speaking with
+Lüdecke, and the old servant, with the garrulous want of tact at which
+she had so often laughed, was explaining to him that her Excellency had
+gone out, but that the Countess Erika had stayed at home to receive
+Lord Langley.
+
+Erika listened, and heard Goswyn say, in a clear, cold tone, "In that
+case I will not disturb the Countess. Tell her----"
+
+She could endure it no longer, but, opening the door, called, "Goswyn!"
+
+"Countess!" He bowed formally.
+
+"Come in for one moment, I entreat you," she begged, involuntarily
+clasping her hands. Of course he could not but obey.
+
+They confronted each other, she trembling in every limb, he erect and
+unbending as she had never before seen him. In his hand he held a small
+packet.
+
+"There, Countess," he said, "I am convinced that these are all the
+letters which this Herr von Strachinsky ever received from your mother:
+some of the epistles with which he edified my amiable aunt and her
+guests were the productions of his own pen. But you may rest assured
+that while I live he will not be guilty of any further indiscretion in
+that direction." There was such a look of determination in his eyes as
+he spoke that Erika easily guessed by what means he had contrived to
+intimidate Strachinsky.
+
+She was filled with the warmest gratitude towards him, but there was
+something so repellent in his air that, instead of any extravagant
+expression of it, she stood before him without being able to utter a
+word of thanks. Instead, she fingered in an embarrassed way the packet
+which he had given her, a very little packet, wrapped in a sheet of
+paper and sealed with a huge coat of arms. In her confusion she fixed
+her eyes upon this seal.
+
+"The arms of the Barons von Strachinsky," Goswyn explained. "Pray
+observe the delicacy with which the very letters read aloud for the
+entertainment of Heaven only knows how many gossiping old women are
+sealed up carefully lest I should read them."
+
+Erika smiled faintly. "It is hardly necessary that you should be
+understood by Strachinsky," she said. "Men always judge from their own
+point of view. You judged me by yourself, and consequently estimated me
+more highly than I deserved. Sit down for a moment, I pray you."
+
+"I do not wish to intrude," he said, bluntly, almost discourteously.
+
+"How could you intrude? You never can intrude."
+
+"Not even when you are expecting your betrothed?" He looked her full in
+the face.
+
+She blushed scarlet; a burning desire to regain his esteem took
+possession of her.
+
+"You take an entirely false view of my position," she exclaimed. "Mine
+is not the betrothal of a sentimental school-girl. I--I" and she burst
+into a short, nervous laugh that shocked even herself--"I do not marry
+Lord Langley for love."
+
+There was a pause. Goswyn bowed his head; then, suddenly raising it, he
+looked straight into Erika's eyes in a way which made her very
+uncomfortable, and said, "I guessed that; but why, then, do you marry
+him,--you, a young, pure, gifted girl, and a man with such a past as
+Lord Langley's? I know that no man is worthy of such a girl as you are;
+but, good God, there is some difference---- Why, why do you marry him?"
+
+"Why? why?" She tried to collect herself and to answer him truly. "I
+marry him because the position he offers me suits me,--because one is
+condemned to marry at a certain age, if one would not be sneered at and
+ridiculed; I marry him because he is an old man and will not require of
+me any warmth of affection, and because I have determined that there
+shall be nothing romantic in my marriage. Ah," with a glance at the
+small packet in her hand, "after all that you know of my wretched
+experience, you ought to understand why I do not choose to marry for
+love."
+
+A long silence followed. He looked at her as he had never hitherto
+done, searchingly, inquiringly. Suddenly his glance grew tender: it
+expressed intense pity. "I understand that you talk of love and
+marriage as a blind man talks of colours," he said, slowly. "I
+understand that you unwittingly contemplate the commission of a crime
+against yourself, and that you should be prevented from it."
+
+He ceased speaking on a sudden, and bit his lip. A voice was heard in
+the hall,--the characteristic voice of an old English _bon viveur_ with
+a Continental training. "Is the Countess at home?"
+
+"What am I doing here?" Goswyn exclaimed, and, without touching the
+hand extended to him, he turned on his heel and was gone.
+
+Outside the door stood an old gentleman with a tall white hat and a
+dark-blue cravat spotted with white. One glance of rage and curiosity
+Goswyn darted at the correct florid profile and white whiskers, and
+then he rushed down-stairs like one possessed.
+
+Yes, he had not been mistaken. It was the same Englishman whom he had
+once seen at Monaco with a most disreputable train. Then he was
+travelling under an assumed name,--Mr. Steyne: his English regard for
+appearances forbade him in such society to profane his title and his
+social dignity.
+
+Goswyn's blood fairly boiled in his veins.
+
+
+When, some time afterwards, Countess Lenzdorff entered the
+drawing-room, after her walk, Lord Langley, rather redder in the face
+than usual, and with a baffled, puzzled expression of countenance, was
+sitting in an arm-chair; Erika, very pale, with sparkling eyes and very
+red lips, strikingly beautiful, and evidently tingling in every nerve,
+was in another on the other side of a table between the pair, upon
+which was an open jewel-case containing a diamond necklace. The
+Countess suspected that some kind of disagreement had arisen between
+the couple, and, as soon as she had returned Lord Langley's greeting,
+asked, carelessly, what it had been.
+
+"Oh, nothing to speak of," he replied. "My queen was a little
+ungracious; but even that has a charm. A perfectly docile woman is as
+tiresome as a quiet horse: there is no pleasure in either unless there
+is some caprice to subdue."
+
+Erika's grandmother bestowed a keen, observant glance, first upon the
+speaker, and then upon her grand-daughter, after which she remarked,
+dryly, "If we wish for any dinner we had better betake ourselves to
+'The Sun.'"
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+The sleepy afternoon quiet is broken by a sudden stir and excitement.
+It is time to go to the theatre, and the Lenzdorffs in a rattling,
+clumsy, four-seated hired carriage join the endless train of vehicles
+of all descriptions that wind through the narrow street of the little
+town and beyond it, until upon an eminence in the midst of a very green
+meadow they reach the ugly red structure looking something like a
+gasometer with various mysterious protuberances,--the temple of modern
+art.
+
+The Lenzdorffs are among the last to arrive, but they are in time:
+unpunctuality is not tolerated at Bayreuth.
+
+Summoned by a blast of trumpets, the public ascend a steep short flight
+of steps to a large, undecorated auditorium. The Countess Lenzdorff and
+her granddaughter have seats on the bench farthest back, just in front
+of the royal boxes.
+
+At a given signal all the ladies present take off their hats. It
+suddenly grows dark,--so very dark that until the eye becomes
+accustomed to it nothing can be discovered in the gloom. Gradually row
+upon row of human heads are perceived stretching away in what seems
+endless perspective: such is the auditorium of the theatre at Bayreuth.
+
+The most brilliant toilette and the meanest attire are alike
+indistinguishable; here is positively no food for idle curiosity,
+nothing to distract the attention from the stage.
+
+Agitated as Erika already was, and consequently sensitively alive to
+impressions, the first sound of the trumpets thrilled her every nerve,
+and before the last note of the prelude had died away she had reached a
+condition of ecstasy closely allied to pain, and could with difficulty
+restrain her tears.
+
+All the woe of sinning humanity wailed in those tones,--the mortal
+anguish of that humanity which in its longings for the imperishable,
+the supernatural, beats and bruises itself against the barriers that it
+cannot pass,--that humanity which, dragged down by the burden of its
+animal nature, grovels on the earth when it would fain soar to the
+starry heavens.
+
+Just when the music wailed the loudest, she suddenly started: some one
+in a seat in front of her turned round,--a handsome Southern type of
+man, with sharply-cut features, short hair, and a pointed beard; in the
+gray twilight she encountered his glance, a strange searching look
+fixed upon her face, affecting her as did Wagner's music. At the same
+time a tall, fair woman at his side also turned her head. "_Voyons,
+qu'est-ce qu'il y a?_" she asked, discontentedly. "_Ce n'est rien; une
+ressemblance qui me frappe_," he replied, in the weary tone of
+annoyance often to be observed in men who are under the domination of
+jealous women.
+
+A couple of young Italian musicians blinding their eyes in the darkness
+by the study of an open score exclaimed, angrily, "Hush!" and the
+stranger riveted his eyes upon the stage, where the curtain was just
+rolling up.
+
+Erika shivered slightly: some secret chord of her soul--a chord of
+which she had hitherto been unaware--vibrated. Where had she seen those
+dark, searching eyes before?
+
+The musical drama pursued its course, and at first it seemed as if the
+enthusiasm produced in Erika's mind by the prelude was destined to fade
+utterly: the painted scenes were too much like other painted scenes;
+she had heard them extolled too highly not to be disappointed in them;
+the music, to her ignorant ears, was confused, inconsequent, a tangle
+of shrill involved discords, in the midst of which there were now and
+then musical phrases of noble and poetic beauty.
+
+The effect was not to be compared with the impression produced upon the
+girl by the prelude,--when suddenly she seemed to hear as from another
+world a voice calling her, arousing her,--something unearthly,
+mystical, interrupted by the same shuddering, alluring wail of anguish,
+and when the nerves, strung to the last degree of tension, seemed on
+the point of giving way, there came rippling from above like cooling
+dew upon sun-parched flowers with promise of redemption the mystic
+purity of the boy-chorus,--
+
+
+ "Made wise by pity,
+ The pure in heart----"
+
+
+"No one shall ever induce me to come again. I am fairly consumed with
+nervous fever. No one has a right under the pretence of art to stretch
+his fellow-creatures thus on the rack! Parsifal is altogether too fat.
+Wagner should have cut his Parsifal out of Donatello," exclaims
+Countess Lenzdorff, as she leaves the theatre at the close of the first
+act.
+
+"I don't quite understand the plot," Lord Langley confesses. "The
+leading idea seems to me unpractical. I must say I feel rather
+confused." He then speaks of Kundry as 'a very unpleasant young woman,'
+and asks Erika if she does not agree with him; but Erika shrugs her
+shoulders and makes no reply.
+
+"She is very ungracious to-day," his lordship remarks, with a rather
+embarrassed laugh. "Shall I take offence, Countess?" (This to the
+Countess Anna.) "No, she is too beautiful ever to give offence. Only
+look! She is creating quite a sensation.--Every one is staring after
+you, Erika."
+
+The theatre is empty. The audience is streaming across the grass
+towards the restaurant to refresh itself.
+
+Close behind the Lenzdorffs walks the Russian Princess B----, who hires
+an entire suite of rooms for every season and attends every
+representation. She is dressed in embroidered muslin, and from the
+broad brim of her white straw hat hangs a Brussels lace veil partially
+concealing her face, which was once very handsome.
+
+She addresses the old Countess: "_Êtes-vous touchée de la grâce, ma
+chère Anne?_"
+
+Countess Anna shakes her head emphatically: "No; the music is too
+highly spiced and peppered for me. It bas made me quite thirsty. I long
+for a draught of prosaic beer and some Mozart."
+
+The Russian smiles, and immediately begins to tell of how she had once
+reproved Rubinstein when he ventured to say something derogatory with
+regard to Wagner.
+
+A stout tradesman, whose poetically-inclined wife has apparently
+brought him to Bayreuth against his will, exclaims, "What a humbug it
+is!" to which his wife rejoins, "You cannot understand it the first
+time: you must hear 'Parsifal' frequently." "Very possibly," he
+declares; "but I shall never hear it again."
+
+The Lenzdorffs and Lord Langley take their seats at a table in the airy
+balcony of the restaurant, to drink a cup of tea: table and tea have
+been reserved for them by Lüdecke's watchful care. The greater part of
+the assemblage can scarcely find a chair upon which to sit down, or a
+glass of lemonade for refreshment. The consequence is that there is
+much unseemly pushing and crowding.
+
+Erika eats nothing. Lord Langley complains, as do all Englishmen, of
+the German food, and the old Countess complains of the shrill music.
+
+Meanwhile, a tall, striking woman advances to the table where the three
+are sitting, and where there is a fourth chair, unoccupied. "_Vous
+pardonnez!_" she exclaims: "_je tombe de fatigue!_"
+
+Erika gazes at her: it is the companion of the man who had turned to
+look at her in the theatre during the prelude. A disgust for which she
+cannot account possesses her: it is as if she were aware of the
+presence of something impure, repulsive; and yet she could not possibly
+explain why the stranger should excite such a sensation: she is
+undeniably handsome, well formed, with regularly-chiselled features,
+and fair hair dressed with great care and knotted behind beneath the
+brim of her broad Leghorn hat. A red veil is tied tightly over her
+face. There is nothing else to excite disapproval in her dress, and
+inexperienced mortals would pronounce her age to be scarcely thirty. It
+would require great familiarity with Parisian arts of the toilette to
+perceive that her whole face is painted and that she is at least forty
+years old. Everything about her is exquisitely fresh and neat, and from
+her person is wafted the peculiar aroma of those women whose chief
+occupation in life is to take care of their bodies. Her air is
+respectable, and somewhat affected.
+
+Lord Langley, to whom her unbidden presence seems especially annoying,
+is about to intimate this to her, when her escort approaches, and,
+hastily whispering to her, obliges her to leave her place, which she
+does unwillingly and even crossly. Courteously lifting his hat, the
+young man utters an embarrassed "Excuse me," and retires. She can be
+heard reproaching him petulantly as they walk away, and their places in
+the theatre remain unoccupied during the other acts of the drama.
+
+"Disgusting!" mutters Lord Langley. "Do you know who it was?" he asks,
+turning to the Countess Anna. "Lozoncyi, the young artist who created
+such a sensation a couple of years ago. She was his mistress. I
+remember her in Rome."
+
+Although upon Erika's account the words are spoken in an undertone, she
+hears them, and the blood rushes to her cheeks.
+
+And now 'Parsifal' is over, the second act, with its fluttering
+flower-girl scene, in rather frivolous contrast with the serious motive
+of the work, its crude inharmonious decorations, and its wonderful
+dramatic finale; the third act too is over, with its sadly-sweet
+sunrise melody, its Good Friday spell resolving itself into the angelic
+music of the spheres.
+
+With the hovering harp-arpeggio of the final scene still thrilling in
+their souls, Erika and her grandmother with Lord Langley drive back to
+town, leaving behind them the melancholy rustle of the forest, and
+hearing around them the rolling of wheels, the cracking of whips, and
+the footsteps of hundreds of pedestrians.
+
+Life throbs in Erika's veins more warmly than it is wont to do; she is
+filled with a vague foreboding unknown to her hitherto. She seems to
+herself to be confronting the solution of a great secret, beside which
+she has pursued her thoughtless way, and around which the entire world
+circles.
+
+
+At the door of their lodgings Lord Langley takes his leave of the
+ladies: with a lover's tenderness he slips down the glove from his
+betrothed's white wrist and imprints upon it two ardent kisses, as he
+whispers, "I trust that my charming Erika will be in a more gracious
+mood to morrow."
+
+The disagreeable sensation caused by his warm breath upon her cheek was
+persistent; she could not rid herself of it.
+
+She sent away her maid, and whilst she was undressing took from her
+pocket the packet of letters which Goswyn had left with her. She had
+carried it with her all day long, without finding a moment in which to
+destroy the papers. Now she removed their outside envelope, merely to
+assure herself that they were her mother's letters. Yes, she recognized
+the handwriting,--not the strong, almost masculine characters which had
+distinguished her mother's writing in the latter years of her life, but
+the long, slanting, faded hand which Erika could remember in the old
+exercise-books of her school-days. Nothing could have tempted the girl
+to read these letters: she kissed the poor yellow sheets twice, sadly
+and reverentially, and then she held them one by one in the flame of
+her candle.
+
+Her heart was very heavy; a yearning for tenderness, for sympathy,
+possessed her, and she felt sore and discouraged. The wailing music,
+the shuddering alluring strains of sinful worldly desire, still haunted
+her soul with the glance of the stranger who seemed to her no stranger.
+
+She felt a choking sensation at the thought of his companion. Never
+before had she come in contact with anything of the kind.
+
+She lay down, but could not sleep. How sultry, even stifling, was the
+atmosphere! The windows of the little room were wide open, but the air
+that came in from without was heavy and inodorous: it brought no
+refreshment.
+
+The tread of a belated pedestrian echoed in the street below, and there
+was the sound of laughter and song from some inn in the neighbourhood.
+Suddenly the door opened, and the old Countess entered, in a white
+dressing-gown and lace night-cap. She had a small lamp in her hand,
+which she put down on a table, and then, seating herself on the edge of
+the bed, she scanned the young girl with penetrating eyes.
+
+"Is anything troubling you, my child?" she began, after a while.
+
+Erika tried to say no, but the word would not pass her lips. Instead of
+replying, she turned away her face.
+
+"What was the difficulty between Lord Langley and yourself to-day?" the
+grandmother went on to ask.
+
+Erika was mute.
+
+"Tell me the simple truth," the old Countess insisted. "Did you not
+have some dispute this morning?"
+
+"Oh, it was nothing," Erika replied, impatiently; "only--he attempted
+to play the lover, and I thought it quite unnecessary. Such folly is
+very unbecoming in a man of his age; and, besides, I cannot endure
+anything of the kind."
+
+A strange expression appeared upon the grandmother's face,--the same
+that Goswyn had worn when his indignation had suddenly been transformed
+into pity for the girl. She cleared her throat once or twice, and then
+remarked, dryly, "How then do you propose to live with Lord Langley?"
+
+Erika stared at her in dismay. "Good heavens! I have thought very
+little about it. You know well that I do not wish to marry for love.
+That is why I accepted an old man instead of a young one,--because I
+supposed he would refrain from all lover-like folly. You have always
+told me that you married my grandfather without love, and that it
+turned out very well."
+
+Her grandmother was silent for a while before she rejoined, "In the
+first place, constituted as you are, I should wish for you a less
+prosaic companion for life than your grandfather; but, at the same
+time, the torture which, with your exaggerated sensitiveness, awaits
+you in marrying Lord Langley bears no comparison with the simple tedium
+of my married life. We married in compliance with a family arrangement;
+and if I did so with but a small amount of esteem for him, he for his
+part brought to the match no devouring passion for me,--which I should
+have found most annoying. But the case is entirely different with Lord
+Langley. He is as desperately in love with you as an old fool can be
+whose passion is stimulated by the consciousness of his age."
+
+Something in the horrified face of the inexperienced young girl must
+have intensified the old Countess's pity for her. "My poor child, I had
+no idea of your innocence and inexperience. I have lived on from day to
+day without in the least comprehending the young creature beside me."
+
+She kissed the girl with infinite tenderness, put out the light, and
+left her alone, her burning face buried in the pillows and sobbing
+convulsively, a picture of despair.
+
+The next day Erika broke her engagement to Lord Langley.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+Erika's betrothal to Lord Langley had produced a sensation in society,
+but it had been regarded as a very sensible arrangement. The girl had
+been envied, and all had declared that her ambition had achieved its
+aim in a marriage with an English peer. Malice had not been silent: she
+had been credited with heartlessness,--but then she had done vastly
+well for herself. The announcement that the engagement was dissolved
+gave rise to all sorts of reports. No one knew the real reason of the
+breach, and had it been known it would not have been credited.
+
+The belief steadily gained ground that Lord Langley had been the first
+to withdraw, dismayed by the discovery of Erika's objectionable
+relative Strachinsky, and shocked by the girl's heartless treatment of
+him.
+
+Countess Brock furnished the material for this report, the Princess
+Dorothea detailed it with various additions, and in the eyes of Berlin
+society Erika was nothing more than an ambitious blunderer who had
+experienced a tremendous rebuff. It was edifying to hear Dorothea
+descant upon this theme, winding up her remarks with, "I do not pity
+Erika,--I never liked her,--but poor old Countess Lenzdorff. She has
+always been one of Aunt Brock's friends."
+
+There had been an apparent change in the Princess Dorothea from the day
+when she had publicly insulted Goswyn von Sydow in Charlottenburg
+Avenue. The story had been told greatly to her discredit, and not only
+had her cousin Prince Helmy forsworn his allegiance to her, but the
+other men who had been present at that memorable interview had since
+held aloof from her. She found herself compelled to attract a fresh
+circle of admirers,--which she did at the sacrifice of every remnant of
+good taste which she yet possessed.
+
+After this for a while she pursued her madly gay career; but for a year
+past there had been a change. The number of her admirers had greatly
+diminished,--was reduced, indeed, to a Prince Orbanoff, who was now her
+shadow. She boasted of her good resolutions, went to church every
+Sunday, was shocked at the women who read French novels, and was
+altogether rather a prudish character.
+
+Society held itself on the defensive, and did not put much faith in her
+boasted virtue. But when she calumniated Erika society believed her; at
+least this was the case with the society of envious young beauties whom
+she met every Friday at the 'wicked fairy's,' where they made clothes
+for the poor.
+
+
+When, late in the autumn, the Lenzdorffs returned to Berlin, supposing
+that the little episode of Erika's betrothal was already forgotten by
+society, they were met on all sides by a malicious show of sympathy.
+
+Erika regarded all this with utter indifference, and withdrew from all
+gaiety as far as she could, but the old Countess fretted and fumed with
+indignation.
+
+She could not comprehend why all the world could not view Erika from
+her own point of view; and her exaggerated defence of the girl
+contributed to make Erika's position still more disagreeable. Moreover,
+age was beginning to cast its first shadows over the Countess's clear
+mind. She was especially annoyed, also, by Goswyn's holding aloof. He
+had replied courteously, but with extreme reserve, to the Countess's
+letter informing him, not without exultation, of the breaking of
+Erika's engagement. This was as it should be; but when the answer to a
+second letter written much later was quite as reserved, the old
+Countess was vexed and impatient. Erika insisted upon reading this
+second epistle herself. Her hands trembled as she held it, and when she
+had finished it she laid it on the table without a word, and left the
+room as pale as ashes.
+
+To the grandmother, whose heart was filled with tenderness, all the
+more intense because it had been first aroused in her old age, her
+grand-daughter's evident pain was intolerable. After a while she went
+to her in her room. The girl was sitting at the window, erect and pale.
+She had a book in her hand, and the Countess observed that she held it
+upside down.
+
+"Erika," she said, tenderly laying her hand on the girl's shoulder, "I
+only wanted to tell you----"
+
+Erika arose, cold and courteous. "You wanted to tell me--what?" she
+asked, as she laid aside her book.
+
+"That--that----" Erika's dry manner embarrassed her a little, but after
+a pause she went on: "I wanted to tell you not to take any fancies into
+your head with regard to Goswyn."
+
+"Fancies? Of what kind?" Erika asked, calmly, becoming absorbed in the
+contemplation of her almond-shaped nails.
+
+"You would do him great injustice by supposing that his regard for you
+is one whit less than it ever was."
+
+"Indeed! I should do him injustice?" Erika questioned in the same
+unnaturally quiet tone. "I think not. It is not my fashion to deceive
+myself. I know perfectly well that--that I have sunk in Goswyn's
+esteem; it is a very unpleasant conviction, I confess; and, to be
+frank, I would rather you did not mention the subject again."
+
+"But, Erika, if you would only listen," the old Countess persisted. "He
+adores you. His pride alone keeps him from you: you are too wealthy;
+your social position is too brilliant."
+
+Erika waved aside this explanation of affairs. "Say no more," she
+cried. "I know what I know! But you must not waste your pity upon me:
+my vanity is wounded, not my heart. I value Goswyn highly, and it
+troubles me that he no longer admires me as he did, but, I assure you,
+I have not the slightest desire to marry him. I pray you to believe
+this: at least it may prevent you, perhaps, from throwing me at his
+head a second time, without my knowledge. If you do it, I declare to
+you, I will reject him." As she uttered the last words, the girl's
+self-command forsook her, her voice had a hard metallic ring in it, and
+her eyes flashed angrily.
+
+Her grandmother turned and left the room with bowed head.
+
+Scarcely had the sound of her footsteps died away when Erika locked her
+door, threw herself upon her bed, buried her face in the pillows, and
+burst into tears.
+
+What she had declared to her grandmother was in a measure true: she
+herself supposed it to be entirely true. She really had no wish to
+marry, and there was in her heart no trace of passionate sentiment for
+Goswyn, but she was bruised and sore, and she longed for the tender
+sympathy he had always shown her. At times she would fain have fled to
+him from the cold judgment and scrutiny of the world.
+
+After she had relieved herself by tears, she understood herself more
+clearly. Sitting on the edge of her bed, her handkerchief crushed into
+a ball in her hand, she said, half aloud, "I have lied to my
+grandmother. If he had come I would have married him,--yes, without
+loving him; but it would have been wrong: no one has a right to marry
+such a man as Goswyn out of sheer despair because one does not know in
+what direction to throw away one's life. But why think of it? He does
+not care for me. Why, why did my grandmother write to him? I cannot
+bear it!"
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+A few days afterwards the Lenzdorffs left Berlin, to spend the winter
+in Rome, where Erika, incited thereto by her grandmother, went into
+society perpetually, without taking the least pleasure in it. And she
+made no secret of her indifference, her discontent. The bark of her
+existence, once so safe and sure in its course, seemed to have lost its
+bearings: she saw no aim in life worthy the effort to pursue it.
+
+She indulged in fits of causeless melancholy; yet all the while her
+beauty bloomed out into fuller perfection, and all unconsciously to
+herself life throbbed within her and demanded its right. The old
+Countess, who did not understand her condition, looked upon it as a
+morbid crisis in the girl's life; but she never dreamed how fraught
+with danger the crisis was.
+
+Thus she utterly failed to appreciate or to sympathize with her
+grand-daughter; and, whether because of her exaggerated admiration for
+her, or because her age was beginning to tell upon her powers of
+perception, she did not suspect the slow approach of the fever which
+had begun to undermine the young creature's existence.
+
+
+Towards the end of February, just at the close of the Carnival, Erika
+told her grandmother that she was heartily tired of Rome, and wished to
+see Italy from some other point of view.
+
+After much deliberation, Venice was chosen for their next abode; and
+here the old Countess refused to follow the usual custom of foreigners
+and rent a palazzo: she declared that in Venice true comfort was to be
+found only in a hotel. So a suite of rooms was hired in the Hotel
+Britannia,--four airy apartments, in which their predecessor had been a
+crowned head, and two of which looked out upon the church of Santa
+Maria della Salute, whilst the other two had a view of the small garden
+of the hotel, and, across its low wall, of the Grand Canal.
+
+Of course they had a gondola for their own private use; but Erika was
+not fond of availing herself of it. The rocking motion, the monotonous
+plash of the water, excited still further her irritated nerves; she
+preferred taking long walks,--at first, out of deference to her
+grandmother's wishes, accompanied by the maid Marianne. She soon tired,
+however, of such uncongenial companionship, and induced her grandmother
+to allow her to pursue alone her investigations of the corners and
+by-ways of Venice. She explored the curiosity-shops, spent whole days
+in the galleries, and made wonderful discoveries in the way of bargains
+in old stuffs and artistic antiquities, until her little salon became a
+museum of such treasures. In one corner stood a grand piano, seated at
+which at times she poured out her soul in all that is most beautiful
+and most tragic in music.
+
+The old Countess left her to pursue her own path, and occupied herself
+very differently.
+
+In spite of her original and independent view of life, and her
+readiness to criticise frankly all that was artificial and
+conventional, she loved _les chemins battus_. She went the way of the
+multitude,--saw nothing of Venetian by-ways, but devoted her time to
+museums and works of art, being indefatigable in her daily round of
+sight-seeing. And yet, although her health seemed as robust as
+ever, and she could apparently endure far more fatigue than her
+grand-daughter, she was no longer what she had been.
+
+Her extraordinary memory began to fail, and the interest which formerly
+had been excited only by affairs of some moment was now ready to be
+aroused in petty concerns. She took pleasure in gossip, allowed
+Marianne to detail to her scraps of the Venetian _chronique
+scandaleuse_ picked up from the couriers in the hotel, and, worst of
+all, the fine edge of her moral sentiment seemed in a degree blunted.
+
+She would repeat to Erika, without the slightest idea of the pain she
+was inflicting, stories and reports of a nature to offend the girl's
+sense of morality and delicacy.
+
+Nothing any longer shocked her: love and hatred of her kind seemed
+blunted under the influence of a low estimate of human nature which she
+called a philosophic view of life.
+
+She simply never observed how Erika's cheeks burned when she suddenly
+disclosed to her the lapse from virtue, hidden from the superficial
+world, of some woman whom they had met in society; she never perceived
+the girl's feverish agitation upon hearing her grandmother calmly
+advance all sorts of excuses for the so-called indiscretion. She did
+not suppose her revelations could affect Erika disagreeably; although
+Erika did not always allow her to talk on without interruption; she
+would sometimes bluntly declare that she could not believe what her
+grandmother thus told her.
+
+Then the old Countess would reply, "I really cannot see what reason you
+have to disbelieve it. You cannot alter human nature by shutting your
+eyes to its defects."
+
+Whereupon Erika would say, with annihilating emphasis, "If human nature
+really is what you describe it, I cannot understand your pleasure in
+frequenting society, since you must despise unutterably those who
+compose it."
+
+"Despise!" her grandmother repeated, shaking her head. "I despise no
+one. Knowing, as I do, how mankind struggles under the burden of animal
+instincts, I wonder to see it ever rise above them, and I am forced to
+esteem men in spite of everything."
+
+Erika only repeated, angrily, "Esteem! esteem!" Her grandmother's mode
+of esteeming mankind was certainly extraordinary.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+The Princess Dorothea was pacing her salon restlessly to and fro. From
+time to time she gazed out of the window into the dreary Berlin March
+weather, upon the heaps of dirty snow shovelled up on each side of the
+street and slowly melting beneath the falling rain.
+
+The Princess was annoyed. She had been left out in the invitation to a
+court ball. Usually she would have ascribed the omission to an
+oversight of the authorities, but to-day the matter disturbed her:
+instead of an oversight she suspected the omission to have been an
+intentional slight, and her steps as she walked to and fro were short
+and impatient.
+
+Why were they so frightfully moral in Berlin, so aggressively moral?
+she asked herself. Everywhere else people might do as they chose, if
+only appearances were preserved.
+
+What had she done, after all? Long ago in Florence Feistmantel had
+explained to her that marriage, as arranged in civilized countries, was
+entirely unnatural. The Princess, still pure, in spite of the
+degradation about her, had laughed aloud at the philosophic view thus
+advanced by her companion and guide. Years afterwards she had recalled
+this theory that it might serve to justify herself to herself; and
+lately--only yesterday--Feistmantel, who was established in Berlin and
+gave music-lessons in the most aristocratic circles, had enunciated the
+same views at a breakfast to which Dorothea had invited her, and the
+Princess had contradicted her positively, had been rude to her, had
+nearly turned her out of doors, but at the last moment had apologized
+almost humbly and had finally dismissed her with a handsome present.
+
+She had suspected behind Feistmantel's assertion of her philosophic
+view a mean attempt to ingratiate herself with her hostess. "As if
+Feistmantel could suspect anything! No human being can suspect
+anything," she repeated several times. "And, after all, there is
+scarcely a woman, beautiful and admired, who is not worse than I."
+
+In the midst of all her superficiality and moral recklessness, she had
+always been characterized by a certain frankness, which at times had
+passed the bounds of decorum; now she writhed under a burden of
+hypocrisy which weighed most heavily upon her.
+
+And why was this so?
+
+It had all been the gradual result of the tedium of the life she led. A
+man more coarse and rough than any of her other admirers had paid court
+to her in a way that flattered her vanity; he amused her, he brought
+some variety into her life; his lavishness was astounding. Once when he
+had lost a wager to her he brought her a diamond necklace in an Easter
+egg.
+
+She knew that this was wrong, but she had been wont as a girl to accept
+presents from men, and then she had an almost morbid delight in
+diamonds. And what stones these were!--a chain of dew-drops glittering
+in the morning sun! And he had so careless a way of throwing the costly
+gift into her lap, as if it had been the merest trifle.
+
+She could not resist wearing the necklace once at the next court
+ball,--explaining to her husband, who understood nothing of such
+things, that she had purchased it for a mere song at a sale of old
+jewelry.
+
+She intended to return it; but she did not return it. From that moment
+he had her in his power. He lured her on as a serpent lures a bird,
+extorting from her one innocent concession after another, until one
+day---- Good God! if she could but obliterate the memory of that day!
+
+To call the torment which she suffered from that time stings of
+conscience would be to invest it with ideality. No, she felt no stings
+of conscience; her moral sense was entirely blunted; but she was
+enraged with herself for having fallen into the snare; her pride was
+humbled in the dust, and she was in mortal dread of discovery. She was
+a coward to the core. What would she not have given to be free? She
+would have broken with her lover ten times, but that she feared him
+more than she did her husband.
+
+He was a Russian, fabulously wealthy, and notorious in the Parisian
+demi-monde which he habitually frequented. Orbanoff was his name, and
+outside of his own country he was credited with princely rank to which
+he had no title,--a man with no moral sense, brutal on occasion, with
+no idea of the laws of honour prevailing in Western Europe, but of an
+undoubted physical courage, which helped him to maintain his present
+position.
+
+Princess Dorothea was convinced that should she break with him he would
+commit some reckless, impossible crime.
+
+Oh, if he would only release her! She began to build castles in the
+air. Never, never again would she be concerned in such an adventure.
+All the romances that she had read were lies: there was nothing in the
+world more hateful than just this. Only once in her life had she been
+conscious of any real preference for a man, and that had been for her
+cousin Helmy; now of all men her own clumsy, thoroughly honourable and
+intensely good-natured husband was the dearest. He was at present on
+his estate in Silesia, where he was much happier than in the society of
+the capital. Dorothea had made him so uncomfortable in Berlin that he
+always stayed as long as possible in Silesia.
+
+To-day she longed for him; she wanted him to take her on his knee and
+soothe her like a tired child, and then to have him carry her in his
+strong arms down the broad staircase of his old castle in Kossnitz, as
+he used to do when they were first married. Yes, she longed for his
+strong supporting arm.
+
+Ah, if she were only free! She would turn her back on Berlin and go
+with him to Kossnitz. She positively hungered for Kossnitz,--for the
+odour of stone and whitewash in the broad corridors, for the airy, bare
+rooms, for the farm-yard with the brown farm-buildings. How picturesque
+it must all look now in the snow!--for the snow was still deep in
+Silesia. They would go sleighing: oh, how delicious it would be to rush
+along, warmly wrapped up, with only her face exposed to the fresh
+wintry breeze, the sleigh-bells ringing merrily, the horses mad with
+their exciting gallop, the snow-clad forest gleaming silvery white
+around them!
+
+And how delicious would be the supper when they got home!--she would
+have done with all fashionable division of the day: they would dine at
+one, and she would have potatoes in their skins at supper-time,--she
+had not had them since she was a child,--and black bread, and sour
+milk:--how she liked sour milk!
+
+One hope she had. Was it not Orbanoff whom she had seen last night in
+the background of the box of a young actress? It was not his habit to
+conceal himself on such occasions: probably he had been thus discreet
+on her account. An idea suddenly occurred to her. What an opportunity
+this might afford her to recover her freedom! All she had to do was to
+feign furious jealousy, and break with her dangerous lover without
+wounding his vanity.
+
+On the instant she felt relieved, and even gay, in the light of this
+hope.
+
+The clock struck five,--the hour of her appointment with Orbanoff.
+Without ringing for her maid, she dressed herself in the plainest of
+walking-costumes and left the house. She walked for some distance, then
+hired a droschky and was driven to a shop in Potsdam Street, where she
+dismissed the vehicle, bought some trifle, and walked on still farther
+before hiring another conveyance.
+
+
+At about eight o'clock of the same day, Goswyn von Sydow, who had
+lately been transferred to Berlin, where he was acting as adjutant to
+an exalted personage, issued from the low door of a small house in a
+side-street where he had attended the baptism of the first-born son of
+one of his early friends, a young fellow of decided talent, who had
+married a girl without a fortune, and who did not at all regret his
+choice. The home was modest enough, but was so unmistakably the abode
+of the truest happiness that Sydow could not but envy his friend his
+lot in life. How pleasant it had all been!
+
+He lighted a cigar, but held it idly between his fingers without
+smoking it, and reflected upon his own requirements in a
+wife,--requirements which one woman alone could fulfil, and she----
+
+Could he forget his pride, and try his fortune once more? His heart
+throbbed. No! under the circumstances, he could not. He never could
+forget that he had been taunted with Erika's wealth. Even if he could
+win her love, their marriage would begin with a discord.
+
+If she were but poor!
+
+The blood tingled rapturously in his veins at the thought of how, if
+trial or misfortune should befall her, he might take her to his arms
+and soothe and cheer her, making her rich with his devotion and
+tenderness. He suddenly stood still, as if some obstacle lay in his
+path. Had he really been capable of selfishly invoking trouble and
+trial upon Erika's head? He looked about him like one awaking from a
+dream.
+
+Just at his elbow a young woman glided out of a large house with
+several doors. He scarcely noticed her at first, but all at once he
+drew a long breath. How strange that he should perceive that peculiar
+fragrance, the rare perfume used by his sister-in-law, Dorothea! He
+could have sworn that Dorothea was near. He looked around: there was no
+one to be seen save the girl who had just slipped by him, a poorly-clad
+girl carrying a bundle.
+
+He had not fairly looked at her before, but now--it was strange--in the
+distance she resembled his sister-in-law: it was certainly she.
+
+He was on the point of hurrying after her to make sure, but second
+thoughts told him that it really mattered nothing to him whether it
+were she or not: it was not his part to play the spy upon her.
+
+He turned and walked back in the opposite direction, that he might not
+see her. As he passed the house whence she had come, a man muffled in
+furs issued from the same door-way. The two men looked each other in
+the face. Goswyn recognized Orbanoff.
+
+For a moment each maintained what seemed an embarrassed silence. The
+Russian was the first to recover himself. "_Mais bon soir_," he
+exclaimed, with great cordiality. "_Je ne vous remettais pas_."
+
+Goswyn touched his cap and passed on. He no longer doubted.
+
+
+The next morning Dorothea von Sydow awaked, after a sound refreshing
+sleep, with a very light heart. She was free! All had gone well. She
+had first regaled Orbanoff with a frightfully jealous scene to spare
+his vanity, but in the end they had resolved upon a separation _à
+l'aimable_, and the Princess Dorothea had then made merry, declaring
+that their love should have a gay funeral; whereupon she had partaken
+of the champagne supper that had been prepared for her, had chatted
+gaily with Orbanoff, had listened to his stories, and they had parted
+forever with a laugh.
+
+Now she was sitting by the fire in her dressing-room, comfortably
+ensconced in an arm-chair, dressed in a gray dressing-gown trimmed with
+fur, looking excessively pretty, and sipping chocolate from an
+exquisite cup of Berlin porcelain. "Thank God, it is over!" she said to
+herself again and again.
+
+But, superficial as she was, she could not quite convince herself that
+her relations with Orbanoff were of no more consequence than a bad
+dream.
+
+She felt no remorse, but a gnawing discontent: she would have given
+much to be able to obliterate her worse than folly. She sighed; then
+she yawned.
+
+She still longed for her husband and Kossnitz: she would leave
+Berlin this very evening for Silesia and surprise him. How delighted he
+would be! She clapped her hands like a child. Suddenly--it was
+intolerable--again she was conscious of that gnawing discontent. Could
+she never forget? And all for what she had never cared for in the
+least. She thrust both her hands among her short curls and began
+to sob violently. Just then the door of the room opened; a tall,
+broad-shouldered man with a kindly, florid face entered. She looked up,
+startled as by a thunderclap. The new arrival gazed at her tearful
+face, and, hastening towards her, exclaimed, "My dear little Thea, what
+in heaven's name is the matter?"
+
+She clasped her arms about his neck as she had never done before. He
+pressed his lips to hers.
+
+
+Goswyn was sitting at his writing-table,--an enormous piece of
+furniture, somewhat in disarray,--trying to read. But it would not do;
+and at last he gave it up. He was distressed, disgusted beyond measure,
+at his discovery with regard to Dorothea. The Sydows had hitherto
+prided themselves upon the purity of their women as upon the honour of
+their men. Nothing like that which he had discovered had ever happened
+in the family. He had suspected the mischief before; since yesterday he
+had been sure.
+
+Must he look calmly on? What else could he do? To open his brother's
+eyes, to play the accuser, was impossible. Yes, he must look on calmly.
+He clinched his fist. At that moment he heard a familiar deep voice
+outside the room, questioning his servant. "Otto! What is he doing in
+Berlin?" he asked himself; "and he seems in a merry mood." He sprang
+up. The door opened, and Otto rushed in, rough, clumsy as usual, but
+beaming with happiness. He laid his broad hand upon his brother's
+shoulder, and cried,--
+
+"How are you, old fellow? Why, you look down in the dumps. Anything
+gone wrong?"
+
+"Nothing," Goswyn declared, doing his best to look delighted.
+
+"Is everything all right?"
+
+"Everything."
+
+"That's as it should be. I suppose you are surprised to see me drop
+down from the skies in this fashion."
+
+"I am indeed."
+
+"'Tis quite a story. But I say, Gos, how comfortable you are here!" and
+he began to stride to and fro in the bachelor apartment; "although you
+don't waste much time or money in decoration, old fellow: not a pretty
+woman on the walls. H'm! my room looked rather different in my bachelor
+days. What have you done with your gallery of beauties, Gos?"
+
+"I bequeathed all my youthful follies to my cousin Brock, who got his
+lieutenancy six weeks ago," said Goswyn, to whom his brother's chatter
+was especially distasteful to-day.
+
+"H'm! h'm! you're right: you're getting quite too old for such
+nonsense." And Otto stooped to examine two or three photographs that
+adorned his brother's writing-table. "That's a capital picture of old
+Countess Lenzdorff," he exclaimed,--"capital! Here is our father when
+he was young,--I look like him,--and here is Uncle Goswyn, our famous
+hero, killed in a duel at thirty years of age. They say old Countess
+Lenzdorff was in love with him. As if she could ever have been in love!
+And you look like him: our mother always said so. Oh, here is our
+mother!" He took the faded picture, in its old-fashioned frame, to the
+window to examine it. "This is the best picture there is of her," he
+said. "Think of your ever being that pretty little rogue in a white
+frock in her arms, and I that boy in breeches by her side! Comical, but
+very attractive, such a picture of a young mother with her children.
+How she clasps you in her arms! She always loved you best. Where did
+you get this picture?"
+
+"My mother gave it to me when I was quite young. She brought it to me
+when she came to see me in my first garrison, shortly before her
+death," said Goswyn.
+
+"I remember; you had been wounded in your first duel."
+
+"Yes; she came to nurse me."
+
+"Ah, you've a deal on your conscience. No one would believe you were
+worse than I; but"--with a look at the picture--"I'd give a great deal
+for such a little fellow as that." And he put the picture back in its
+place with a care that was unlike him, and that touched Goswyn.
+
+With his usual want of tact, Otto proceeded to efface the pleasant
+impression he had produced. "Have you no picture of the Lenzdorff
+girl?" he asked, looking round the room.
+
+"I may have one somewhere," Goswyn replied, evasively. Indeed, he had a
+charming picture of her in the first bloom of her maiden loveliness;
+but he kept it behind lock and key, that no profane eye might rest upon
+his treasure.
+
+"What a tone you take!" Otto rejoined. "Why, she was a flame of yours.
+A capital girl, only rather too full of crotchets: she was always a
+little too high up in the sky for me, but she would have suited you. I
+cannot understand why you did not seize your chance----"
+
+"Now you are going too far," Goswyn said, with some irritation. "Do not
+pretend that you do not know that Erika Lenzdorff rejected me."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Otto, in some dismay. "True, I remember hearing
+something of the kind; but that was a hundred years ago. Forgive me,
+Gos: the 'no' of a girl of eighteen who looks at one as the young
+Countess looked at you ought not to be taken seriously. Why don't you
+try your luck a second time? You cannot attach any importance to that
+intermezzo with the Englishman! Why, you are made for each other; and
+she is quite wealthy, too----"
+
+"Otto, for God's sake stop marching up and down the room like a lion in
+a cage," cried Goswyn, unable to bear it any longer; "do sit down like
+a reasonable creature and tell me how you come to appear so
+unexpectedly in Berlin."
+
+Otto lit a cigar and obediently seated himself in an arm-chair opposite
+his brother. "'Tis quite a story," he began, just as he had a quarter
+of an hour before.
+
+"You've told me that already."
+
+"Now, don't be so impatient. I know I am rather slow at explanations.
+You see, Gos, of late matters have not gone quite right between Thea
+and myself. There is sure to be fault on both sides in such cases: I
+could not be satisfied with the stupid life here in town, and she did
+not care for Silesia, so we agreed that I should stay at home, while
+she diverted herself for a while in town, and perhaps she would come
+back to me and be more contented in the end. I know that certain people
+disapproved of my course; but I had my reasons. There's no good in
+fretting a nervous horse: better give it the rein. But the time seemed
+long to me, she wrote so seldom and her letters were so incoherent. In
+short,"--he suddenly began to be embarrassed,--"I got some foolish
+notions into my head, and so, without letting her know, I appeared in
+Berlin this morning. And how do you think I found poor Thea? Sitting
+crying by the fire. Just think of it, Gos! Of course I was frightened,
+and did all that I could to comfort her, and when she was calm I asked
+her what was the matter. Homesickness, Gos! Yes, a longing for the old
+home and for the clumsy bear who is, after all, nearer to her than any
+other human being. She reproached me for neglecting her,--said I had
+not even expressed a wish in my letters to see her, and she was just on
+the point of starting for Kossnitz; and she was jealous too,--poor
+little goose! In short, there were all sorts of a misunderstanding, and
+the end of it all was that she begged me--begged me like a child--to
+carry her back to Kossnitz. I wish you could have heard her describe
+our life together there! She would not hear of my going a few days
+before to make ready for her, but clung to me as if we had been but
+just married. What is the matter with you, Gos?" for his brother had
+walked to a window, where he stood with his back turned to Otto,
+looking out.
+
+"What could be the matter?" Goswyn forced himself to reply.
+
+"Then why do you stand looking out of the window as if you took not the
+least interest in what I am telling you?"
+
+"Forgive me: there is a crowd in the street about a horse that has
+fallen down."
+
+"Very well: if every broken-down hack in the street can interest you
+more than what is next my heart, there is no use in my talking. But I
+know what it is; you were always unjust to Thea; you never understood
+her. Adieu!" And Otto took his hat and walked towards the door.
+
+Goswyn conquered himself. What affair was it of his if his brother was
+happy in an illusion? he ought to do all that he could to prevent his
+eyes from being opened.
+
+He laid his hand upon Otto's arm and said, kindly, "Forgive me, Otto;
+you must not take it ill if such a confirmed old bachelor as I does not
+share as he should in your happiness; it all seems so foreign to such a
+life as mine."
+
+Otto's brow cleared. "I was silly," he confessed. "I ought not to have
+been so irritable. Poor Gos! But indeed I should rejoice from my heart
+if you could marry. There is nothing like it in the world. You need not
+frown: I never will mention the subject to any one else."
+
+"Yes, yes, Otto. And when are you going home?"
+
+"To-morrow. We are going to spend a few weeks at Kossnitz, and then we
+are to take a trip together. I came to ask you if you would not lunch
+with us to-day, that we might see something of you in comfort. This
+room of yours is decidedly cold. Do you never have it any warmer?
+Dorothea especially begs you to come,--at one o'clock."
+
+"Indeed! does Dorothea want me?"
+
+"Gos!"
+
+"I will come. I have one or two things to attend to, but I will be with
+you in half an hour." And the brothers parted.
+
+
+A few hours have passed. Goswyn had appeared punctually at lunch, and
+had done his best not to be a spoil-sport. They were now sitting by the
+fire in the little _salon_ in which they had taken coffee, Goswyn and
+his brother. The early twilight began to make itself felt, but no
+object was as yet indistinct.
+
+Dorothea had gone out to inform her aunt Brock of her projected
+departure and to ask her to make a few farewell calls for her. She had
+met Goswyn with such gay indifference that he had been puzzled indeed,
+and had finally begun to believe that he had been mistaken,--that the
+person whom he had supposed to be Dorothea Sydow was not she at all.
+
+Something had happened in her life, however; of that he was convinced.
+Never had Dorothea been so simply charming. She gave him her hand in
+token of reconciliation, alluded, not without regret, to her defective
+education, told an anecdote or two with much grace and in a softened
+tone of voice, and clung to Otto like an ailing child.
+
+"We are going to begin all over again,--all over again," she repeated,
+adding, "And when Gos has forgotten what a bad creature I used to be,
+and that he could not bear me, he will come and see us at Kossnitz:
+won't you, Gos? You shall see how pleasant I will make it for you
+there. You have absolutely hated me; or perhaps you thought me not
+worth hating,--you only detested me as one detests a caterpillar or a
+spider. I confess, I hated you. I always felt as if I ought to be
+ashamed in your presence; and that is not a pleasant sensation." She
+laughed, the old giggling silvery laugh, but there was a pathetic tone
+in it as she brushed away the tears from her eyes, and left the room,
+to return in a few moments, fresh and smiling, equipped for her walk.
+She kissed her husband by way of farewell, and held out her hand to
+Goswyn. "Shall I find you here when I return, Gos?" she asked, just
+before the door closed behind her.
+
+"There is no one like her!" murmured Otto. "And to think that I could
+ever fancy a bachelor existence a pleasant one! But all is different
+now." The good fellow's eyes were moist as he passed his hand over
+them.
+
+Shortly afterwards they heard a ring at the outside door. "Some
+visitor,--the deuce!" growled Otto. Goswyn looked about for his sabre,
+which he had stood in a corner.
+
+But it was no visitor. Dorothea's maid entered. "A package has come for
+her Excellency," she announced. "Perhaps the Herr Baron will sign the
+receipt."
+
+"Give it to me, Jenny."
+
+Sydow signed it, and then said, "And give me the package. I will hand
+it to your mistress."
+
+The maid gave it to him: it was a thick sealed envelope.
+
+A dreadful suspicion flashed upon Goswyn's mind: in an instant he
+guessed the truth. What if it should occur to his brother to open the
+envelope? Apparently he had no thought of doing so: he simply laid it
+upon Dorothea's writing-table, a pretty, useless piece of furniture,
+much carved and decorated. Goswyn felt relieved. He suddenly became
+garrulous, talked of the latest political complication, told the last
+story of the intense piety of the Countess Waldersee, as narrated by
+the Prince at a recent supper-party, and described the four magnificent
+horses sent by the Sultan to the Emperor.
+
+Otto sat with his back to the ominous packet. It did not escape Goswyn
+that he became very monosyllabic and did not show much interest in his
+brother's conversation.
+
+"If she would only return!" Goswyn thought to himself. He was convinced
+that the packet contained Dorothea's letters to Orbanoff. He had not
+been mistaken the previous evening: it had been Dorothea who had passed
+him, evidently returning to her home from a last interview. The affair,
+odious as it was, was at an end: Dorothea was relieved that it was so.
+She was not fitted to engage in a dangerous intrigue.
+
+Suddenly Otto began to sniff, as if perceiving some odour in the air.
+"'Tis odd," he said. "Don't you perceive a peculiar fragrance? If it
+were not too silly, I should say that it smells like Dorothea."
+
+"That would not be odd," his brother rejoined, "since she left the room
+only half an hour ago."
+
+"But I did not perceive it before," Otto said; and then, with sudden
+irritability, turning towards the writing-table, he added, "It is that
+confounded packet!"
+
+"It probably contains something of Dorothea's which she has
+accidentally left at a friend's."
+
+But Otto had taken the packet from the table. He turned it over. "I
+know the seal,--a die with the motto _va banque_: it is Orbanoff's
+seal!" His breath came quick. "What can Orbanoff have sent her?"
+
+"Probably some political treatise. I do not see how it can interest
+you," said Goswyn.
+
+Once more Otto turned the packet over in his hands. He seemed about to
+lay it down on the writing-table again; then, at the last moment,
+before Goswyn could bethink himself, he opened it hastily. About a
+dozen short notes, in Dorothea's childish handwriting, fell out, then a
+note of Orbanoff's. Otto's eyes were riveted upon it with a glassy
+stare; he could not yet comprehend. Then with a sudden cry he crushed
+the note together, tossed it to Goswyn, and buried his face in his
+hands.
+
+A dull, brooding silence followed. Goswyn held the note in his hand,
+without reading it: it was not for him to pry curiously into his
+brother's anguish and disgrace.
+
+After a while Otto raised his head. "What have you to say?" he
+exclaimed, bitterly. "That such another idiot as I does not live upon
+the earth? Say it! Ah, you have not read the note, Goswyn. Why do you
+look at me so? Could you have known---- Oh, my God! my God!" The strong
+man buried his face in his hands again, and sobbed hoarsely.
+
+Goswyn was terribly distressed. He had never known his brother to weep
+since his childhood. He would far rather have had him fall into a fury.
+But no; he was weeping: the sense of disgrace was drowned in agony.
+
+Before long he collected himself, ashamed of his weakness, and there
+was the quiet of despair in the face he lifted to Goswyn.
+
+"You knew it--since when?"
+
+"I know nothing," Goswyn replied.
+
+"No, you know nothing,--good God! who ever knows anything in such
+affairs?--but you suspected, did you not?"
+
+Goswyn was silent.
+
+"Perhaps you can tell me how many people in Berlin--suspect it?"
+
+Goswyn bit his lip. What reply could he make? after a while he began:
+"Otto, I would have given anything in the world to prevent you from
+learning it."
+
+"Indeed!" Otto interrupted him. "You would have let me go through life
+grinning amiably, ridiculously, with a stain on my name at which people
+would point contemptuously, and you never would have told me of that
+stain? Goswyn!" He started up; Goswyn also arose, and the brothers
+confronted each other beside the hearth, upon which the fire had fallen
+into glowing embers and ashes.
+
+"I ought certainly to have given Dorothea opportunity to expiate her
+fault. She was in the right path," said Goswyn. "The result of her
+frivolity had caused her a panic of terror: the entire affair had been
+a burden to her from the beginning, as you can see by her relief that
+it is at an end. One must take her as she is. All this has less
+significance for Dorothea than for any other woman whom I know. It has
+not entered into her soul. It has left nothing behind it but a horror
+of it all from beginning to end."
+
+Otto looked suspiciously at his brother. Was this Goswyn who talked
+thus?--Goswyn the strict,--Goswyn, so uncompromising where honour was
+concerned?
+
+Yes, it was Goswyn; there was no denying it.
+
+"And you think that I should--I should--forgive?" murmured Otto,
+hoarsely, as if ashamed to utter the words.
+
+"If you can so far conquer yourself."
+
+Otto stooped and picked up the letters that had fallen upon the floor.
+He glanced through one of them. "There is not much tenderness in these
+lines, I must say." And he dropped at his side the hand holding the
+packet.
+
+"One piece of advice I must give you," said Goswyn, with a coldness in
+his tone which he could not quite disguise. "If you forgive, you must
+have the strength of soul to forgive absolutely. If you forgive, throw
+those letters into the fire: Dorothea must never learn that you know
+anything."
+
+"Yes," Otto said, dully. Suddenly he went close to Goswyn, and, looking
+him full in the eye, said, between his teeth, "Would you forgive?"
+
+Goswyn started. He had no answer ready. "I--I never should have married
+Dorothea," he said, evasively.
+
+"I understand," Otto said, in the same hoarse whisper. "You never would
+have forgiven; but it is all right for stupid Otto."
+
+Again there was a distressing pause. Otto had turned away from his
+brother, with an inarticulate exclamation of pain. Goswyn gave him some
+moments in which to recover himself; then, laying his hand on his
+brother's arm, he said, "Do not take it so ill of me, Otto; I have no
+doubt I talk foolishly. I cannot decide; I am confused."
+
+"No wonder," groaned Otto. "The position is a novel one for you: there
+has never been anything like it in our family. Oh, God!" he struck his
+forehead with his clinched fist; "I cannot believe it! I used to be
+jealous at times, but of no special person. Never, never could I have
+believed,--never!"
+
+"Otto."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Since you cannot bring yourself to forgive----"
+
+"Since I cannot bring myself to forgive----" Otto repeated, with bowed
+head.
+
+"You must at least look the matter boldly in the face and decide what
+to do."
+
+"Decide--what--to do----"
+
+"Are you going to procure a divorce?"
+
+Otto stood motionless. Goswyn laid his hand upon his shoulder; Otto
+shrank from his touch. "Leave me, Gos!" he gasped. "I beg you, go!"
+
+The clock on Dorothea's writing-table struck: the tone was almost like
+that of Dorothea's voice. Goswyn looked round. Six o'clock. At seven he
+was invited to dine with a great personage,--an invitation tantamount
+to a command: he could not be absent. It was high time for him to go
+home to dress, but he could not bear to leave Otto alone.
+
+"I must go," he said, "but I entreat you to come with me; you must not
+see Dorothea just now, and the fresh air will do you good and clear
+your thoughts."
+
+"Why should they be clearer than they are?" Otto said, wearily and with
+intense bitterness. "I see more than you think. But go,--go: in a few
+minutes she will be here, and it would be more terrible to me than I
+can tell you to see her before you. No need to say more: I know that
+you will stand by me through thick and thin! There, give me your hand.
+I will do nothing unworthy of us, I promise you. Now go!"
+
+Goswyn had gone, but Dorothea had not yet returned. Otto sat alone
+beside the dying fire. He could not comprehend what had befallen him.
+He must rid himself of this terrible oppression, but how? Some way must
+be found,--some solution of the problem: he sought for it in vain.
+
+"Forgive!" The word rang in his ears, and his cheeks burned. How had
+Goswyn dared to suggest such a thing? No, it was impossible. Be
+divorced,--have her name dragged in the mire, and his shame published
+in all the newspapers? He stamped his foot. "No! no!"
+
+What then?
+
+He could challenge Orbanoff, and send Dorothea adrift in the world, a
+wife, not divorced, but separated from her husband. This was what the
+world would expect of him. He shivered as with fever. Send her adrift
+into the world without protection, without support, without moral
+strength, beautiful as she was,--expose her to insult from women, to
+sneering homage from men: she would sink to the lowest depths, not from
+depravity, but from despair. He wiped the moisture from his forehead.
+That would be the correct thing to do,--only---- Suddenly a sound that
+was half laughter, half sob, burst from his lips: he knew perfectly
+well that, while she lived, sooner or later the moment would come when
+he could no longer endure life without her; and then--then he should
+follow her, Heaven only knew whither, and take her in his arms, even
+were she far, far more lost than now.
+
+And again there rang through his soul, "Forgive!" and again his whole
+being revolted. The packet of letters which he had thrust into his
+breast weighed him down. It was all very well for Goswyn to say that
+Dorothea must never know that the packet had fallen into his hands.
+Why, she would ask for it. Ah,--he bit his lip,--he could not think of
+it! He could not forgive!
+
+His burden grew heavier every moment. On a sudden he felt very
+tired,--overcome with drowsiness. What was that? The rustle of a gown.
+The door opened. Framed by the folds of the portière, indistinct in the
+gathering twilight, appeared Dorothea's tall, lithe figure.
+
+She had come, and he had determined upon nothing,--nothing.
+
+He did not stir.
+
+"Gos not here?" she asked, in her high, twittering voice. He tried to
+summon up his anger against her; he told himself that he ought to
+strike her,--kill her. But he was as if paralyzed; he could not stir;
+he trembled in every limb. She did not perceive it, and she could not
+distinguish his features in the darkness.
+
+"So much the better!" she exclaimed. "I am so glad of a quiet cosy
+evening with you. Do you want to please me, Otto? Come with me now to
+Uhl's and dine, and then let us go to the theatre. Will you?"
+
+She came up to him. He had arisen, and the fresh sweetness of her
+feminine nature seemed to envelop him. She put both her hands on his
+shoulders and nestled close to him. "Will you?" she murmured again.
+
+He put his arms around her and kissed her twice as he never had kissed
+her before, with a tenderness in which there was a mixture of rage and
+glowing, frantic passion. Twice he kissed her, and then he suddenly
+became aware of what he was doing. He thrust her away.
+
+"What is the matter?" she asked, startled.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"But something is the matter."
+
+"I tell you no!" He hurled the words in her face as it were, and
+stamped his foot. "Go--get ready!"
+
+She lingered for a moment, and then left the room. He looked after her.
+
+
+Goswyn's state of mind was indescribable. He hastily changed his
+uniform and made ready for the dinner. His nerves were quivering with a
+dread that he could not explain. "He never can bring himself to get a
+divorce," he said to himself; "and if he forgives----"
+
+Disgust seemed fairly to choke him; he took shame to himself for having
+suggested such a course to Otto for a moment. He had no right to
+despise Otto. The old family affection for his brother revived in him
+in full force.
+
+As soon as he was dressed he belied his usual Spartan habits by sending
+for a droschky. It would give him time to stop for a moment at
+Dorothea's lodgings to see what was going on there. The monotonous
+jogging of the vehicle soothed his nerves: his thoughts began to stray.
+As it turned into Moltke Street the droschky moderated its speed, and
+at the same instant a dull sound as of the excited voices of a crowd
+struck upon his ear. He looked out of the carriage window, upon a close
+throng of human beings. The vehicle stopped; he sprang out.
+
+There was a crowd before the house occupied by his sister-in-law.
+Shoulder to shoulder men were pushing eagerly forward. A smothered
+murmur made itself heard; now and then a cynical speech fell distinctly
+on the ear, or a burst of laughter that died away without an echo,
+mingled with the curses of coachmen who could not make their way
+through the mass of humanity crowding there in the pale March twilight,
+through which the glare of the lanterns shone yellow and dreary. At
+first he could not get to the house; but the crowd soon made way for
+his officer's uniform.
+
+He rang the bell loudly. Some time passed before the door was opened
+for him. Measures had evidently been taken to baffle the curiosity of
+the crowd.
+
+The door of Dorothea's apartments, however, was open. He hurried
+onward, finding at first no one to detain him or to give him any
+information.
+
+In the cosy little room, now brilliantly lighted, where he had left his
+brother, stood Dorothea, evidently dressed to go out, in a gray gown,
+and a bonnet trimmed with pale pink roses, her cheeks ashy pale, her
+face hard and set in a frightful, unnatural smile.
+
+"What has happened?" cried Goswyn.
+
+She tried to reply, but the words would not come. The smile grew
+broader, and her eyes glowed. Her face recalled to him the evening at
+the Countess Brock's, when she looked around after her song and found
+herself the only woman in the room.
+
+One or two persons had made their way into the room. Goswyn ordered
+them out, with an imperious air of command. "Where is he?" he asked,
+hoarsely. She pointed mutely to a door. He entered. It was her
+sleeping-room, airy, bright, luxurious; and there, at the foot of the
+bed, lay a dark figure, face downward, with outstretched arms.
+
+Two officials, one of whom was writing something in a note-book, were
+in the room.
+
+The servant told him it had been entirely unexpected. When her
+Excellency came home, she had exchanged a few words with the Herr
+Baron, and had then gone to dress for the theatre. The Herr Baron had
+gone into the other room to write a note, and then--while her
+Excellency was in the _salon_ putting on her gloves they had heard--a
+shot. Her Excellency had been the first to find him.
+
+On the table lay two notes, one to Goswyn, the other to Dorothea.
+
+The contents of Dorothea's Goswyn never knew: in his own note there was
+nothing save
+
+
+ "Dear Gos,--
+
+ "I have forgiven.
+
+ "Otto."
+
+
+Yes, he had forgiven, but his life had paid the forfeit.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+The news of Otto von Sydow's sudden tragic death produced a profound
+impression upon old Countess Lenzdorff.
+
+She immediately wrote a long letter to Goswyn,--eight pages of
+affectionate and sincere sympathy. Erika said very little about the
+matter, but she looked forward eagerly to Goswyn's reply.
+
+When it came it was dry, almost formal,--the reply of a man crushed to
+the earth, who is not wont to discourse about his emotions and is shy
+of expressing himself with regard to them.
+
+Thus the Countess Lenzdorff understood it. Her sympathy for the young
+officer increased after reading his brief note. Erika, on the other
+hand, after perusing the epistle, which her grandmother handed to her
+with a sigh, showed an unaccountable degree of irritability.
+
+"Surely he might have written you more cordially!" she exclaimed. "Such
+a letter as this means nothing! It is simply a receipt for your
+sympathy,--nothing more."
+
+Her grandmother shook her head, and tried to set her right. But Erika
+would not listen. She had greatly changed of late: her state of mind
+was growing more and more distressing. She ate and slept but little.
+Her sentiment was searching for a new stay; her life lacked a purpose.
+At any risk she would gladly have fled from the chill brilliance which
+characterized her grandmother's philosophy of life to take refuge in
+some inspiration of the heart, even although it might perhaps lead her
+astray. Religion had been taken from her, and even the sacred nimbus of
+morality had been frayed by her grandmother's cynicism. When her God
+had been taken from her she had at first wept hot, bitter tears, but
+she had aroused herself anew, and faith had been born within her in a
+transfigured form: it was no longer the conventional belief, expressed
+in worn-out formulas, with which the multitude satisfy themselves in
+view of the mysteries of creation, but an apprehension, however faulty,
+of an order of affairs, incomprehensible to her finite intellect,
+lifting her above that part of us which is of the earth, earthy,--a
+faith which may bring with it but little consolation, but which is
+certainly elevating. When her grandmother first attacked in her
+presence what she called the 'by God's grace principle' of morality,
+and coldly proved that all morals culminated in a number of laws not
+founded in nature,--nay, even at variance with nature,--which had been
+illogically framed by society for its preservation, she did not weep,
+but her whole being was poisoned by a discontent which she could not
+away with. If her grandmother had had the least idea of the effect upon
+the girl of her cold reasoning, she would have kept to herself the
+aphorisms which she was so fond of handing about like little
+delicately-prepared tidbits. Her nature, however, was a thoroughly
+sound and rather cold one, which took no pleasure in overwrought
+emotion, and which was absolutely free from the devouring thirst which
+glowed in Erika's soul. How could she understand the young creature, or
+know how to protect her from herself?
+
+
+But if, on the one hand, the old Countess had but a poor opinion of
+mankind, on the other it was impossible for her to forego society.
+Although she had promised Erika to resist its temptations in Venice,
+she not only yielded to them herself, but did all that she could to
+induce the girl to accompany her. Her efforts were, however, of no
+avail, in view of Erika's misanthropic and unamiable mood; and thus it
+came to pass that society witnessed the unusual spectacle of a
+venerable matron of seventy appearing with indefatigable enjoyment
+at one afternoon tea after another, while her beautiful young
+grand-daughter at home confused her mind with the study of metaphysical
+works or visited the poor abroad. This last had of late been her
+favourite occupation: she had a long list of beneficiaries, whom she
+befriended with enthusiastic zeal, and of whom she had learned from the
+kindly hostess at the hotel and from the doctor when he came to visit
+his patients there.
+
+It was on a cloudy afternoon towards the end of March, after her
+grandmother had parted from her with a sigh of compassion, that Erika
+set out on foot, as was her wont, to visit a poor music-teacher.
+
+The way to the modest lodgings where Fräulein Horst resided led Erika
+far from the busy Riva by a narrow alley to the quiet Piazza San
+Zacharie, where grass was growing between the stones. Thence the road
+grew more difficult to find, and it was not without some pride that she
+threaded accurately the labyrinth of narrow streets and reached the
+small dwelling in question without having been obliged to inquire her
+way.
+
+She found the poor woman in bed in a wretchedly-furnished room. A table
+beside her served to hold her various bottles of medicine, and a green
+screen before the window shut out the light. In the midst of this
+poverty the music-teacher lay reading "Consuelo," and--was happy.
+
+A wave of compassion--a compassion that brought the tears to her
+eyes--overwhelmed Erika. She leaned over the invalid and kissed her
+throbbing temples. Then, with the graceful kindliness which
+characterized her in the presence of sickness or misery, she adorned
+the room with the flowers she had with her, cleared away the grim
+witnesses from the table, had a cup of tea made and brought, and set
+out various little dainties from her basket, talking the while so
+cheerfully that the invalid forgot her pain. The poor music-teacher
+followed her every movement in a kind of ecstasy; at last, taking the
+girl's hand and pressing her feverish lips upon it, she exclaimed, "How
+could I ever dream that the beautiful Countess Lenzdorff, whom I have
+admired at the theatre and at concerts, would ever come to drink a cup
+of tea with me! Ah, what a pleasure it is!"
+
+"I am so glad," Erika replied, stroking the thin hand held out to her.
+"I will come often, since you really like to have me."
+
+"One never ought to despair, while life lasts," said the sick woman.
+"Just now I received a letter from an old school-mate, Sophy Lange.
+When she was a poor girl she fell in love with a gentleman. Of course
+their union was not to be thought of. Now, after many years, she writes
+me that she has reached the goal of her desires: she is married,--she
+is his wife,--and she is almost crazy with delight."
+
+"Sophy Lange!" Erika cried, with peculiar interest. "That was the name
+of our governess. She must be forty years old."
+
+"About that," the woman replied, smiling to herself. "A truly loving
+heart keeps young even at forty years of age."
+
+"And what is her husband's name?" asked Erika, smitten by a strange
+suspicion.
+
+"Baron Strachinsky," replied Fräulein Horst. "He is of ancient Polish
+lineage, not very wealthy, but dear Sophy does not mind that, for a
+rich old gentleman whom she took care of during his ten-years' illness
+has left her all his property."
+
+"And she is happy?" Erika asked, in a kind of terror.
+
+"Oh, how happy! I am so glad!--so glad! A little romance is so
+refreshing in these prosaic days. They met each other again on the
+Rigi, at sunrise,--just think, Countess! and Sophy is not at all
+pretty,--only dear and kind. Now they are in Naples; but she tells me
+that in the course of the spring she and her husband may come to
+Venice. She has had a hard life, but at last--at last--it is good to
+hear of so happy an end to her troubles."
+
+At this point an attack of coughing interrupted her. Ah, how terrible
+it was! The handkerchief she held to her lips was crimsoned. Erika did
+all that she could for her, supported her in her arms, and bade her
+take courage. When the invalid was more comfortable, she left her,
+promising to come again on the morrow.
+
+"God bless you, Countess!" the poor woman murmured, faintly.
+
+It was late, and it had begun to grow dark. Before leaving the house
+Erika had a short interview with the woman who rented the lodgings, and
+deposited with her a sum of money, that the poor music-teacher might be
+supplied with every comfort possible. Then, with a friendly nod, she
+departed.
+
+Her heart felt lighter than it had done for some time, and it was not
+until she had started on her homeward way that she noticed the
+gathering gloom.
+
+She was half inclined to summon a gondola, but decided that it was not
+worth the trouble; and, moreover, she detested the swampy odour of the
+lagoons. And just here the air was so sweet: a spring fragrance was
+wafted about her from the grassy deserted Campo.
+
+"What mysteries people are!" the girl reflected, her thoughts
+reverting to her grandmother's comments upon the late elopement, with a
+lover, of the lovely young wife of an old German diplomat. "This is
+love,--Countess Ada on the one hand, poor Sophy on the other,--the one
+criminal, the other ridiculous. Good heavens!"
+
+Around her breathed the sweet, drowsy air of spring; there was a
+distant sound of bells and of plashing water, and over all brooded
+something like a dim foreboding, an expectant yearning.
+
+Erika suddenly awoke from her dreamy mood, to find that she had lost
+her way. She walked on to the nearest corner in hopes of finding
+it,--in vain! Not without a certain tremor, she resolved to go straight
+on: she could not but reach some familiar square or canal. She walked
+hurriedly, impatiently. The air was no longer fragrant, and she found
+herself in a narrow, poverty-stricken alley running between rows of
+tall, evil-looking, and ruinous houses, in which the windows showed
+like deep, hollow eyes. The gray mist was rising above the roofs, and
+the walls of the houses, as well as the stones underfoot, were slimy
+with moisture.
+
+Erika had much ado to keep her footing, so slippery was the pathway. If
+she walked in the middle of the street she had to wade through mud and
+filth; and if she pressed near to the walls the green slime soiled her
+dress.
+
+Darker and darker grew the night, when suddenly a rude noise broke the
+forlorn silence,--songs issuing from rough throats, mingled with the
+shrill, coarse laughter of women.
+
+Poor Erika hastened her pace, but utter weariness so assailed her that
+she felt almost unable to stand upright. In an unlucky moment a drunken
+sailor staggered out of the wretched drinking-place whence the noise
+proceeded. He was a young, stalwart man, and before the girl could pass
+him he had stretched out his arms and barred her way.
+
+Beside herself with terror, she screamed,--when, as if rising from the
+earth, a man stepped in front of her, seized the sailor by the collar,
+and flung him against the wall. She trembled in every limb with disgust
+and fear as she looked up at her rescuer, whose features she could
+barely distinguish, although she could see his eyes,--dark,
+compassionate eyes.
+
+Where had she already seen those eyes? Before she could recall where,
+he said, lifting his hat, "You have evidently lost your way: will you
+tell me where you live, that I may guide you out of this labyrinth?" He
+spoke in English, but with a foreign accent: apparently he took her for
+an Englishwoman.
+
+His proposal was an unusual one; and this seemed to strike him, for
+before she could reply he added, "Of course it is disagreeable to trust
+to a stranger's escort, but under the circumstances it is the only
+thing to do. I cannot leave you here without a protector: this is no
+place for a lady."
+
+So dismayed was she by this knowledge that she could find no courteous
+word of thanks, and all she said in reply was to mention the name of
+her hotel.
+
+"To the left," he said, motioning in the given direction. His voice,
+too, seemed familiar.
+
+They passed together through the net-work of narrow streets and over a
+high arched bridge upon which a red lantern was burning and beneath
+which the sluggish water flowed slowly.
+
+"Of whom does he remind me?" thought Erika. Suddenly her heart beat so
+as almost to deprive her of breath. Bayreuth--Lozoncyi!
+
+And at the same moment she recalled also his fair companion.
+
+Meanwhile, they had reached a large, airy square.
+
+"Piazza San Zacharie. I know where I am now," she said, very coldly, as
+she took leave of him.
+
+He stood still, evidently wounded by her tone, and looked after her
+with a frown.
+
+Without thanking him, she hurried on. Suddenly she paused, unable to
+resist the impulse to look back. He was still standing looking after
+her. She half turned to retrace her steps and thank him, when
+indignation seemed to paralyze her. What had she to say to a man who
+without the least shame could appear in public with---- Without further
+hesitation she returned to the hotel.
+
+She slept badly that night. Her teeth chattered with fear at the
+thought of her adventure. And then--then, in spite of herself, she was
+vexed that she had said no friendly word to Lozoncyi: he had deserved
+some such at her hands. What was his private life to her? She recalled
+the handsome half-starved lad whom she had fed beside the gurgling
+brook. She longed to see him again. Half asleep, she turned her head
+uneasily on her pillow. The plashing of the water beneath her window
+sounded like a low, trembling sigh, and the sigh became a song. Nearer
+and nearer it sounded, insinuatingly sweet,--a song of Tosti's then in
+fashion. She heard only the refrain:
+
+
+ "Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie,
+ Toi, qui n'as pas d'amour?"
+
+
+She sprang out of bed and threw open the window. Along the Grand Canal,
+illuminated by gay little lanterns, glided a gondola whence the song
+proceeded.
+
+She leaned forward, but almost before she was aware of it the gondola
+had passed out of sight: it was nothing more in the distance than a
+shadow with a little dash of colour, and the sweet melody only a sigh
+slowly absorbed by the rippling waves.
+
+She still stood at the window when all was silent again. All gone! all
+silent! Where the gondola had passed there lay a broad moon-glade upon
+the black water, and mingling with the swampy odour of the lagoon Erika
+could perceive the breath of spring.
+
+She closed the window, and no longer heard even the plash of the water,
+or aught save the beating of her own heart.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+The next morning after breakfast Erika stood again at her window,
+looking out upon the magnificence of the palaces bordering the Grand
+Canal, and upon the dark, sluggish water. She seemed to be looking for
+the spot where the gondola the previous night had passed through the
+silvery radiance of the moonlight. The burden of the plaintive song
+still rang in her ears, in her nerves, in her soul:
+
+
+ "Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie,
+ Toi, qui n'as pas d'amour?"
+
+
+Her grandmother entered, ready to go out, an opera-glass in her hand,
+and asked her, "Erika, will you not come with me to the exhibition in
+the Circolo artistico? There is a picture there of which all Venice is
+talking,--a wonder of a picture, they say."
+
+"Whom is it by?"
+
+"By Lozoncyi."
+
+"Ah!" Erika turned away from her grandmother, and gazed out of the
+window into the broad Southern sunlight, until black specks danced
+before her eyes.
+
+"What an indignant exclamation!" her grandmother said, with a laugh.
+"Your 'Ah!' sounded as if Lozoncyi were your mortal enemy. Perhaps you
+resent his being in Bayreuth with--with a companion. You must not be so
+strict with an artist: the society which these gentlemen, in pursuance
+of their calling, are obliged to frequent, is apt to blunt their
+sensibilities in that direction. Besides, he was just from Paris: such
+things are usual there. We are rather more strict in our notions. It is
+all the same. For my part, it is a matter of entire indifference to me
+how this Herr Lozoncyi arranges his domestic affairs. Years ago I
+prophesied a brilliant future for him, when our best Berlin critics
+condemned his efforts as unripe fruit. Of course I feel flattered at
+having been right. The vanity of being in the right is the last to die
+in the human breast. At all events, he seems to have painted a really
+great picture, and I thought---- But if you do not want to come with
+me, you prejudiced young lady, I will go alone. Adieu, my child." She
+stroked the cheek of the young girl, who had now turned away from the
+window, and went towards the door.
+
+But before she had reached it, Erika called after her: "But,
+grandmother, do not be in such haste. I--I should like to take a little
+walk with you, and I do not care where we go."
+
+"Very well: I will wait."
+
+Shortly afterwards grandmother and grand-daughter walked across the
+little square behind the hotel, decorated in honour of the spring with
+orange-trees and laurels in tubs, towards the Piazza San Stefano. The
+day was lovely, and the streets were filled with people. Erika wore a
+dark-green cloth walking-suit, that became her well. Although she gave
+but little thought to her dress, with her good taste was instinctive:
+she always looked like a picture, and to-day like an uncommonly
+handsome picture.
+
+"Everybody turns to look at you," her grandmother whispered to her;
+"and I must confess that it is worth the trouble."
+
+This sounded like old times. The compliment had no effect upon Erika,
+but the tenderness that prompted it did the girl good. She smiled
+affectionately, but shook her forefinger at the old lady.
+
+"What? I am to take care not to spoil you?" the old Countess said, with
+a laugh. "I'll answer for that. If flattered vanity could spoil, you
+would be quite ruined by this time. Good heavens! I would rather you
+were a little spoiled,--just a little,--and happy, instead of being as
+you are, an angel,--sometimes an insufferable one, but still an
+angel,--with no sunshine in your heart." She looked askance, almost
+timidly, at the young girl, as if to see if she were not a little
+merrier to-day than usual. No, Erika did not look merry: she looked
+touched, but not merry.
+
+"If I only knew what you want!" the grandmother sighed, half aloud.
+
+Erika moved closer to her side. "I want nothing. I have too much," she
+whispered. "You spoil me."
+
+"How can I help it? I am seventy-two years old: how much time is left
+me to delight in you? It may be all over for me to-day or to-morrow,
+and then----" But when she looked again at Erika the tears were rolling
+down the girl's cheeks. "Foolish child!" exclaimed the grandmother. "In
+all probability I shall not die so very soon: you need not spoil your
+fine eyes with crying, beforehand; but one ought to be prepared for
+everything, and of course I should like to see you married to a good
+husband."
+
+She had rested her hand on Erika's arm, and hitherto the young girl in
+a child-like caressing way had pressed it close to her side, but now
+she extricated herself from the old lady's clasp; her lips quivered.
+"Whom shall I marry?" she exclaimed, with bitter emphasis.
+
+Then both were silent. The grandmother was conscious of the blunder she
+had committed, and was furious with herself; which nevertheless would
+not in the least prevent her from making another of the same kind
+whenever an opportunity offered.
+
+Erika walked stiff and haughty beside her without looking at her again.
+
+When they reached the Circolo, after a long walk, they wandered through
+the splendid, spacious rooms for some time without discovering the
+object of their expedition. The spring exhibition at the Circolo was
+sparsely attended: strangers had no time for modern art in Venice, and
+the natives preferred a walk in such fine weather. Consequently the
+pictures signed by famous modern names hung for the most part upon the
+walls merely for the satisfaction of their originators. Bezzy's
+landscapes the old Countess pronounced to be masterpieces, and she
+became so absorbed in a sirocco by that artist that she quite forgot
+the purpose for which she had come hither.
+
+It looked almost as if Erika took more interest than her grandmother in
+Lozoncyi's picture. She looked about her in search of it. From the next
+room came the sound of voices, now suppressed, then loud in talk. Her
+heart began to beat fast, and she directed her steps thither.
+
+A group of six or seven men were standing in front of a large picture
+which hung alone on one side of the room, probably because no other
+artist had ventured to provoke comparison with it. The men standing
+before it--Erika suspected, from their remarks, that they were all
+artists by profession--spoke of it in low tones, as of something
+sacred, which the picture was not,--far from it; but it was a
+magnificent revelation of genius, and as such was something divine.
+
+'Francesca da Rimini' was engraved upon the frame. The old subject
+was strangely treated. Trees in full leaf were cut short by the
+frame so that only their luxuriant foliage and blossom-laden boughs
+were visible, and above them against a background of dull, gloomy
+storm-clouds floated two forms closely intertwined.
+
+Never had Erika seen two such figures living, as it were, upon canvas;
+never had she seen writhing despair so revealed in every limb and
+muscle. Her first sensation was one of almost angry repulsion for the
+artist.
+
+"What do you say to it?" the old Countess, who had followed Erika,
+asked, rather loudly, as was her wont. "A masterpiece, is it not?"
+
+Erika turned away. She was very pale, and she trembled from head to
+foot.
+
+"It is wonderfully beautiful," she murmured, in a low voice, "but it is
+unpleasant. I feel as if it were a sin to look at it."
+
+
+As they crossed the Piazza San Stefano on their way home, at the foot
+of Manin's statue stood a group of five street-singers, two men and
+three women, all over fifty, both men blind, one of the women one-eyed,
+another hump-backed, and the third so corpulent that she looked like a
+caricature.
+
+These five monsters, the women with guitars, the men with violins, were
+accompanying themselves in a love-song, their mouths wide open, and the
+drawling notes issuing thence echoed from one end to the other of the
+spacious Piazza. The burden of the ditty was,--
+
+
+ "Tu m'hai bagnato il seno mio di lagrime,
+ T'amo d'immenso amor."
+
+
+The old Countess, with a laugh and the easy grace of a great lady,
+tossed the singers a coin half-way across the Piazza. Erika frowned. A
+feverish indignation possessed her. Good heavens! did the whole world
+circle about one and the same thing? Must she hear it even from the
+lips of these wretched cripples? She bit her lip: from the distance
+came the drawling wail,--
+
+
+ "T'amo d'immenso amor."
+
+
+"Erika, look there!"
+
+The words are spoken by old Countess Lenzdorff in the library
+of the monastery of San Lazaro, and as she speaks she plucks her
+grand-daughter's sleeve.
+
+The monastery is the same in which Lord Byron, more than half a century
+ago, was taught by long-bearded monks; and the Lenzdorffs, taking
+advantage of the fine weather, had been rowed over to it on the
+afternoon of the day on which they had visited the exhibition at the
+Circolo.
+
+The monk who acted as their cicerone had conducted them to the library
+to show them Lord Byron's signature and his portrait, a small,
+authentic likeness. In addition he showed them many likenesses of his
+lordship which were by no means authentic, but which represented him in
+various costumes and at various periods of his existence, and which it
+was hoped romantic tourists might be tempted to purchase as _souvenirs
+de Venise_.
+
+Two gentlemen are standing laughing and criticising one of these
+pictures, and it is to these gentlemen that the Countess directs her
+grand-daughter's attention. One of them is standing with his back
+turned to the ladies, but his faultlessly-fitting English overcoat, his
+gray gaiters, his way of balancing himself with legs slightly apart,
+the distinction and gray-haired worthlessness that characterize him,
+leave Erika in no doubt as to his identity. It is Count Hans
+Treurenberg, an old Austrian friend of her grandmother's. The other,
+whose profile is turned towards the ladies, is a man of middle height,
+delicately built, well dressed, although his clothes have not the
+English _cachet_ that distinguishes Count Treurenberg's, and with a
+frank, attractive bearing and a clear-cut dark face. Taken all in all,
+he might be supposed to be a man of the world,--some young relative of
+the Count's,--were it not for his eyes, strange, gleaming eyes,
+which after a brief glance at the grandmother are riveted upon the
+grand-daughter. No mere man of the world ever had such eyes. Meanwhile,
+Count Treurenberg has turned round.
+
+"Ladies, I kiss your hands!" he exclaims. "You too have employed this
+fine weather in an excursion: you could not do better."
+
+The old Countess was about to reply, when Treurenberg's companion
+whispered a few words to him.
+
+"Permit me to present Herr von Lozoncyi," said the Count,--whereupon
+the old Countess, before Lozoncyi had quite finished his formal
+obeisance, called out, "I am delighted to know you. I belong among your
+oldest admirers. Do not misunderstand me: I do not, of course, refer to
+my own age, but to that of my admiration."
+
+"I am immensely flattered, Frau Countess," Lozoncyi replied, in the
+gentle, agreeable voice of a Viennese of mixed descent and doubtful
+nationality. "Might I ask when first I had the good fortune to arouse
+your interest?"
+
+"How long ago is it, Erika?--five or six years?" asked the old lady.
+"You will know."
+
+"Six years ago, I think, grandmother."
+
+"Six years ago, then," the Countess went on. "It was in Berlin, where
+you were exhibiting two pictures, one before a curtain, the other
+behind a curtain. I saw both; and I have believed in your talent ever
+since,--which has not, however, prevented me from being surprised by
+your last picture in the Circolo artistico."
+
+"You are very kind."
+
+"One thing I should like to know: do you fancy there are trees in full
+leaf in hell?"
+
+"What?--in hell?" asked the artist, lifting his eyebrows. "So far as I
+can tell, I have never pictured hell to myself; although I have more
+than once felt as if I had been there."
+
+"Why, then, did you paint Francesca da Rimini after that fashion?"
+
+"Francesca da Rimini?" Again he looked at her in surprise.
+
+"The picture in the Circolo," the old lady persisted. "But"--and her
+tone was much cooler--"perhaps I am mistaken, and the picture is not
+yours?"
+
+"No, no," he replied, laughing. "The picture to which you refer is
+certainly mine, Countess, but my picture-dealer invented the title for
+it. I never for a moment intended to paint that most attractive of all
+sinning women."
+
+"What did your picture mean, then?"
+
+"To tell you the truth, I do not know." He said it with an odd smile in
+which there was some annoyance. "I want to paint a series of pictures
+under the title of 'Mes Cauchemars,'--' Evil Dreams,'--and the thing in
+the Circolo was to be number one. If I could have dared to challenge
+comparison with Botticelli,--which I could not,--I should perhaps have
+called the picture 'Spring.'"
+
+As he spoke, his eyes had continually strayed towards Erika: at last
+they rested upon her with so uncivilized a stare that she turned away,
+annoyed, and Count Treurenberg held up his hand as a screen, saying,
+with a laugh, "Spare your eyes, my dear Lozoncyi: what sort of way is
+that to gaze upon the sun?"
+
+"You are right, Count," the painter said, rather bluntly; then, turning
+again to the young girl, he said, in a very different tone, "I am not
+recalling our meeting in the Calle San Giacomo. If I do not mistake,--I
+can hardly believe it, but if I do not,--our acquaintance dates from
+much farther back. Have you a step-father called Strachinsky?"
+
+"Unfortunately, yes," her grandmother replied, dolefully.
+
+"Well, then," he said, eagerly, "I----" He made a sudden pause. "How
+foolish I am! You must long ago have forgotten what I am remembering."
+
+"No, I have forgotten nothing," Erika replied, lifting her eyes to his
+with a strange expression of mingled pride and reproach. "I recognized
+you long ago; but it was not for me to tell you so."
+
+"Countess! Allow me to kiss your hand, in memory of the dear little
+fairy who brought me good fortune."
+
+"What's all this?" Count Treurenberg asked, inquisitively, and the old
+Countess as curiously inquired, "Where did you make each other's
+acquaintance?"
+
+Erika hesitates: a sudden shyness makes her uncertain how to begin the
+story. Lozoncyi comes to her aid. His narrative is a little masterpiece
+of pathos and humour. He tells everything; how the Baron--he describes
+him perfectly in a single phrase--sent him off with an alms,--two
+kreutzers,--his own indignation, his despair, his hunger, the sudden
+appearance of the little girl; he describes her sweet little face, her
+faded gown, her long thin legs in their red stockings, and the basket
+of food decorated with asters; he describes the landscape, the little
+brook creeping shyly beneath the huge bridge,--a bridge about as
+suitable, he declares, as the tomb of Cecilia Metella would be as a
+monument for a dead dog; he repeats the little fairy's every word, and
+tells how, finally, she slipped the five guilders into his pocket,
+assuring him that she knew how terrible it was to be without money.
+
+The old lady and Treurenberg laugh; Erika listens eagerly and with
+emotion. The story lacks something. Yes, in spite of its minute
+details, something is missing. Is he keeping it for the conclusion, or
+does he think it necessary to suppress this detail altogether? Erika is
+indignant at such discretion. When he has finished, she says, calmly,
+"You have forgotten one trifling incident, Herr Lozoncyi: you set a
+price upon your picture of me----" She pauses, and then, coolly
+surveying her listeners, she goes on, "I had to promise Herr Lozoncyi
+to give him a kiss for my portrait."
+
+"And may I ask if you kept your word, Countess?" asks Count
+Treurenberg, laughing.
+
+"Yes," Erika replies, curtly.
+
+"Charming!" exclaims Count Treurenberg. "And, between ourselves, I
+would not have believed it of you, Countess! You were a lucky fellow,
+Lozoncyi."
+
+Erika is visibly embarrassed, but Lozoncyi steps a little nearer to
+her, and says, with a very kindly smile, "What a gloomy face! Ah,
+Countess, can you regret the alms bestowed upon a poor lad by an infant
+nine years old? If you only knew how often the memory of your childish
+kindness has strengthened and encouraged me, you would not grudge it."
+
+The matter could not have been adjusted with more amiable tact, and
+Erika begins to laugh, and confesses that she has been foolish,--a fact
+which her grandmother confirms gaily. The old lady is delighted with
+the little story: the part played therein by Strachinsky gives it an
+additional relish. She is charmed with Lozoncyi.
+
+They leave the damp, musty library, and go out into the cloisters that
+encircle the garden of the monastery. The scent of roses is in the air,
+and from the monastery kitchen comes the odour of freshly-roasted
+coffee. Count Treurenberg is glad of the opportunity to cover his bald
+head with his English gray felt hat, and as he does so anathematizes
+the Western idea of courtesy which makes it necessary for a gentleman
+to catch cold in his head so frequently. He walks in front with the old
+Countess, and Erika and Lozoncyi follow. The two old people talk
+incessantly; the younger couple scarcely speak.
+
+Lozoncyi is the first to break the silence. "Strange, that chance
+should have brought us together again," he says.
+
+She clears her throat and seems about to speak, but is mute.
+
+"You were saying, Countess----?" he asks, smiling.
+
+"I said nothing."
+
+"You were thinking, then----?"
+
+"Yes, I was thinking, in fact, that it is strange that you should have
+left it to chance to bring about our meeting." The words are amiable
+enough, but they sound cold and constrained as Erika utters them.
+
+"Do you imagine that I have made no attempt to find you again,
+Countess?"
+
+"I imagine that if you had seriously desired to find me it would not
+have been difficult."
+
+He does not speak for a moment, and then he begins afresh: "You are
+right,--and you do me injustice. When I learned that my dear little
+poorly-clad princess had become a great lady, I did, it is true, make
+no attempt to approach her; but before then---- Do you care to hear of
+my unfortunate pilgrimage?"
+
+"Most assuredly I do."
+
+"Well, eight years after our childish interview I had my first couple
+of hundred marks in my pocket. I bought a new suit of clothes--yes,
+smile if yon choose,--a new suit, which I admired exceedingly--and
+journeyed to Bohemia. I found the village, the brook, and the
+bridge, and likewise the castle; but all had gone who had once lived
+there,--even the amiable Herr von Strachinsky,--and no one knew
+anything of my little princess. I was very sad,--too sad for a fellow
+of three-and-twenty."
+
+He pauses.
+
+"And was that the end of your efforts?" asks the old Countess, whose
+sharp ears have lost nothing of the story, and who now turns to the
+pair with a laugh. "You showed no amount of persistence to boast of."
+
+"When, overtaken by the rain, I took refuge in the parsonage of the
+nearest village," he continues, "I made inquiries there for my little
+friend. The priest gave me more information than I had been able to
+procure elsewhere. He told me that one fine day some one had come from
+Berlin to carry little Rika away,--that she was now a very grand
+lady----"
+
+"And then----?" the old lady persists.
+
+"I sought no further: the bridge between my sphere in life and that of
+my princess was destroyed. I quietly returned to Munich. I was very
+unhappy: the goal to which I had looked forward seemed to have been
+suddenly snatched from me."
+
+"Oho!" exclaims the old Countess, "you can be sentimental too, then?
+You are truly many-sided."
+
+"That was years ago. I have changed very much since then."
+
+After which Count Treurenberg contrives to interest the old lady in the
+latest piece of Venetian gossip.
+
+"You understand now why I did not appear before you, Countess Erika?"
+
+But Erika shook her head: "I do not understand at all. I think you were
+excessively foolish to avoid me for such a reason."
+
+"Erika is quite right," the grandmother called back over her shoulder
+in the midst of one of Count Treurenberg's most interesting anecdotes.
+"Your failing to seek us out only proves that you must have thought us
+a couple of geese; otherwise you would have been quite sure of a
+friendly reception."
+
+"No, it proves only that I had been hardly treated by fate, that I was
+a well-whipped young dog," said Lozoncyi. "Now I have no doubt that I
+should have been graciously received by both of you; but it would not
+have amounted to much. You would soon have tired of me. A very young
+artist is sadly out of place in a drawing-room; I was like all the rest
+of the race."
+
+"That I find hard to believe," the old Countess said, kindly, still
+over her shoulder; then, turning again to Count Treurenberg, "Go on,
+Count. You were saying----"
+
+"I shall say nothing more," Treurenberg exclaimed, provoked. "I have
+had enough of this: at the most interesting part of my story you turn
+and listen to what Lozoncyi is saying to your grand-daughter. The fact
+is that when Lozoncyi is present no one else can claim a lady's
+attention." The words were spoken half in jest, half in irritation.
+
+"Count Treurenberg is skilled in rendering me obnoxious in society,"
+Lozoncyi murmurs.
+
+"Oh, I never pay any attention to him," the old Countess assures him.
+"I should like to know what you did after you learned that Erika
+had----"
+
+"Had become a grand lady?" Lozoncyi interrupts her. "Oh, I packed up my
+belongings and went to Rome."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"There I had an attack of Roman fever," he says, slowly, and his face
+grows dark. He looks around for Erika, but she is no longer at his
+side: she has lingered behind, and has fallen into conversation with a
+tall, dignified monk. She now calls out to the rest, "Has no one any
+desire to see the tree beneath which Lord Byron used to write poems?"
+
+They all follow her as the monk leads the way to the very shore of the
+island and there with pride points to a table beneath a tree, where he
+assures them Lord Byron used often to sit and write.
+
+His hospitality culminates at last in regaling his guests with fragrant
+black coffee, after which he leaves them.
+
+They sit and sip their coffee under the famous tree. Lozoncyi expresses
+a modest doubt as to the identity of the table. Count Treurenberg
+relates an anecdote, at which Erika frowns, and gazes up into the blue
+sky showing here and there among the branches of the old tree.
+
+Suddenly an affected voice is heard to say, "_Enfin le voilà_."
+
+They look up, and see two ladies: one is no other than Frau von
+Geroldstein, very affected, and looking about, as usual, for fine
+acquaintances; the other is very much dressed, rouged, and very pretty.
+Frau von Geroldstein is enthusiastically glad to see her Berlin
+friends, and presents her companion,--the Princess Gregoriewitsch.
+
+The old Countess, however, is not very amiably disposed towards the
+new-comers. "Do not let us keep you from your friends," she says to the
+artist: "it is late, and we must go. Adieu. I should be glad if you
+could find time to come and see us."
+
+Count Treurenberg conducts the grandmother and grand-daughter to their
+gondola. Lozoncyi remains with his two admirers.
+
+"Who was that queer Princess?" Countess Anna asks of Count Treurenberg,
+in a rather depreciative tone, just before they reach their gondola.
+
+"Oh, one of Lozoncyi's thousand adorers. She has a huge palace and
+entertains a great deal. A pretty woman, but terribly stupid. Lozoncyi
+is tied to a different apron-string every day."
+
+
+The _table-d'hôte_ is long past: the Lenzdorffs are dining in a small
+island of light at one end of the large dining-hall.
+
+They are unusually late to-night. After their return from the Armenian
+monastery both ladies have dressed for the evening, before coming to
+table. At the old Countess's entreaty, Erika has consented to go into
+society this evening,--that is, to the Countess Mühlberg, who has been
+legally separated from her husband for some time and is living very
+quietly at Venice, where she receives a few friends every Wednesday.
+The old Countess is unusually gay; Erika scarcely speaks.
+
+The glass door leading from the dining-hall into the garden has been
+left open for their special benefit. The warm air brings in an odour of
+fresh earth, mossy stones, and the faintly impure breath of the
+lagoons, which haunts all the poetic beauty of Venice like an unclean
+spirit. The soft plash of the water against the walls of the old
+palaces, the creaking of the gondolas tied to their posts, a monotonous
+stroke of oars, the distant echo of a street song, are the mingled
+sounds that fall upon the ear.
+
+When the meal is ended the old Countess calls for pen and ink, and
+writes a note at the table where they have just dined. Erika walks out
+into the garden. With head bare and a light wrap about her shoulders,
+she strolls along the gravel path, past the monthly roses that have
+scarcely ceased to bloom throughout the winter, past the taller
+rose-trees in which the life of spring is stirring. From time to time
+she turns her head to catch the distant melody more clearly, but it
+comes no nearer. Above her arches the sky, no longer pale as it had
+been to-day amid the boughs of the historic tree, but dark blue, and
+twinkling with countless stars.
+
+She has walked several times up and down the garden as far as the
+breast-work that separates it from the Grand Canal. Now as she nears
+the dining-room she hears voices: her grandmother is no longer alone;
+beside the table at which she is writing stands Count Treurenberg. He
+is speaking: "'Tis a pity! he really is a very clever fellow with men,
+but the women spoil him. Just now he is the plaything of all the women
+who think themselves art-critics in Venice."
+
+Erika pauses to listen. "Indeed! Well, it does not surprise me," her
+grandmother rejoins, indifferently, and Treurenberg goes on: "He is the
+very deuce of a fellow: with all his fine feeling, he combines just
+enough cynicism and honest contempt for women to make him irresistible
+to the other sex."
+
+"You are complimentary, Count!" Erika calls into the dining-hall.
+
+He looks up. She is standing in the door-way; the wrap has fallen back
+from her shoulders, revealing the dazzling whiteness of her neck and
+arms, her left hand rests against the door-post, and she is looking
+full at the speaker.
+
+Old Treurenberg, who has just taken a seat beside the Countess, springs
+up, gazes admiringly at the girl, bows low, and says, "Pray remember
+that any uncomplimentary remarks I may make in your presence with
+regard to the weaker sex have no reference to you. When I talk of your
+sex in general I never think of you: you are an exception."
+
+"We have both known that for a long while: have we not, Erika?" her
+grandmother says, laughing.
+
+"But what is the cause of all this splendour, Countess Erika?" asks
+Treurenberg, changing the subject. "It is the first time that I have
+had the pleasure of seeing you in full dress."
+
+"Erika is beginning to go out a little to please me," the old Countess
+explains. "I told her that, thanks to her passion for retirement, it
+would shortly be reported that she was either out of her mind or
+suffering from a disappointment in love. As this does not seem to her
+desirable, she has consented to go with me to Constance Mühlberg."
+
+"I should have gone to Constance Mühlberg at all events, only I should
+not have chosen her reception-day for my visit," Erika declares, taking
+a seat beside her grandmother, leaning her white elbows upon the table,
+and resting her chin on her clasped hands.
+
+Connoisseur in beauty that he is, the old Count cannot take his eyes
+off her. "When a woman is so thoroughly formed for society as you are,
+Countess Erika, she has no right to retire from it," he declares.
+
+She makes no reply, and her grandmother asks, "Shall we see you at
+Countess Mühlberg's, Count?"
+
+"Not to-night. I must go to-night to the Rambouillet of Venice."
+
+"Oh! to the Neerwinden?"
+
+"Yes. Why do you ladies never go there?"
+
+"To speak frankly, I had no idea that one ought to go," the Countess
+says, laughing.
+
+"Why not? Because of the Countess's reputation? Let me assure you that
+all ruins are the fashion in Venice. You are quite wrong to stay away
+from the Salon Neerwinden: it is an historical curiosity, and, to me,
+more interesting than the Doge's palace."
+
+"But even if I should go to the Neerwinden I could not take this child
+with me!"
+
+"Why not? The Salon Neerwinden is by no means such a pest-house of
+infectious moral disease as you seem to think. And then nothing could
+harm the Countess Erika: her life is a charmed one."
+
+At this moment a thick-set, gray-bearded individual enters the
+dining-hall, very affected, and very anxious to induce his eye-glass
+to fit into the hollow of his right eye. He is a Viennese banker,
+Schmidt--he spells it Schmytt--von Werdenthal. Bowing with ease to the
+ladies, he approaches Treurenberg. "Do I intrude, Hans?" he asks.
+
+"You always intrude."
+
+The banker smiles at the jest: awkward as he may be, he displays a
+certain agility in ignoring a rude remark. "You know, Hans, we must go
+first to the Gregoriewitsch; and we shall be late."
+
+"Confound the fellow!" murmurs the Count; nevertheless he rises to
+follow Schmytt, and kisses the fingertips of each lady in token of
+farewell. "Countess Erika," he says, with a final glance of admiration,
+"if I were but thirty years younger!--Ah, you think it would have been
+of no use," he adds, turning to the grandmother; "but there's no
+knowing. If I am not mistaken, the Countess Erika is zealous in the
+conversion of sinners, and I should have been so easily converted in
+view of the reward. But do me the favour to leave a card upon the
+Neerwinden: you will not repent it. One is never so well entertained as
+at her evenings; and if you would like to see Lozoncyi in all his
+glory----"
+
+"But, Hans, the Princess will be waiting," Schmytt interposes.
+
+"I am coming." And Count Treurenberg vanishes. The old Countess looks
+after him with a smile.
+
+"I cannot help it, but I have a slight weakness for that old sinner,"
+she says. "He is so typical,--a genuine Austrian cavalier,--_fin de
+siècle_, witty without depth, good-natured with no heart, aristocrat to
+his finger-tips, without one single unprejudiced conviction. How you
+impressed him to-night! I do not wonder. Lozoncyi ought to see you now:
+what a splendid portrait he would make of you! H'm! do you know I
+really should like to go to a Neerwinden evening?"
+
+"That you may have the pleasure of seeing Herr von Lozoncyi in all his
+glory?" asks Erika.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+Curiosity carried the day. The Countess Lenzdorff left her card at the
+Palazzo Luzani, and as a consequence the Baroness Neerwinden called
+upon both ladies and left a written invitation for them which informed
+them that "my dear friend Minona von Rattenfels will delight us by
+reading aloud her latest, and unpublished, work."
+
+To her grandmother's surprise, Erika seemed quite willing to go to this
+one of the Baroness Neerwinden's entertainments, and Constance Mühlberg
+accompanied them. The party was full of laughing expectation, much as
+if the pleasure in prospect had been a masquerade.
+
+Expectation on this occasion did not much exceed reality: the old
+Countess and Constance Mühlberg were extremely entertained. And
+Erika----? Well, they arrived at a tolerably early hour, ten o'clock,
+and found the three immense rooms in which the Neerwinden was wont to
+receive almost empty.
+
+The lady of the house, when they entered, was seated on a small divan,
+beneath a kind of canopy of antique stuffs in the remotest of these
+rooms. Her black eyes were still fine; her features were not ignoble,
+but were hard and unattractive.
+
+She received the Countess Lenzdorff with effusive cordiality, referred
+to several youthful reminiscences which they possessed in common, and
+was quite gracious to both the younger ladies. After several
+commonplace remarks, she dashed boldly into a discourse upon the final
+destiny of the earth and the adjacent stars.
+
+She had just informed her guests that she was privately engaged upon
+the improvement of the electric light, and should soon have completed a
+system of universal religion, when a sudden influx of guests caused her
+to stop in the middle of a sentence, leaving her hearers in doubt as to
+whether the catechism of the new faith was to be printed in Volapük or
+in French, in which latter language most of the Baroness's intellectual
+efforts were given to the world.
+
+Erika was obliged to leave her place beside the hostess and to mingle
+in the crowd that now rapidly filled the three reception-rooms.
+
+She found very few acquaintances, and made the rather annoying
+discovery that, with the exception of a couple of flat-chested English
+girls, she was the only young girl present. If Count Treurenberg had
+not made his appearance to play cicerone, she must have utterly failed
+to understand what was going on around her.
+
+The masculine element was the more strongly represented, but the
+feminine contingent was undoubtedly the more aristocratic. It consisted
+chiefly of very beautiful and distinguished women of rank who almost
+without exception had by some fatality rendered their reception at
+court impossible. Most of them were divorced, although upon what
+grounds was not clear.
+
+The strictly orthodox Venetian and Austrian families avoided these
+entertainments, not so much upon moral grounds as because it was
+embarrassing to meet _déclassées_ of their own rank, and because,
+besides, they believed this salon to be a hotbed of the rankest
+radicalism, both in morals and in politics.
+
+In this they were not altogether wrong. There was nothing here of the
+Kapilavastu system of which the old Countess was wont to complain in
+Berlin; no, every imaginable topic was discussed, and after the most
+heterogeneous fashion. Consequently the salon was in its way an amusing
+one, its tiresome side being the determination on the part of the
+hostess not to allow her guests to amuse themselves, but always to
+offer them a _plat de résistance_ in some shape or other.
+
+On this evening this _plat_ was Fräulein Minona von Rattenfels; and in
+the midst of Count Treurenberg's most amusing witticisms the guests
+were all bidden to assemble for the reading in the largest of the three
+rooms.
+
+Here she sat, with her manuscript already open, and the conventional
+glass of water on a spindle-legged table beside her.
+
+She was about fifty years old, large-boned, stout, and very florid,
+dressed in a red gown shot with black, which gave her the appearance of
+a half-boiled lobster, and with strings of false coin around her neck
+and in her hair.
+
+Before the performance began, the electric lights were turned off, and
+the only illumination proceeded from two wax candles with pink shades
+on the table beside Minona. The literary essay was preceded by a
+musical prologue rendered by the pianist G----, who happened to be in
+Venice at the time.
+
+He played a paraphrase of Siegmund's and Sieglinda's love-duet,
+gradually gliding into the motive of Isolde's death, all of which
+naturally increased the receptive capacity of the audience for the
+coming treat. The last tone died away. Minona von Rattenfels cleared
+her throat.
+
+"Tombs!" She hurled the word, as it were, in a very deep voice into the
+midst of her audience. This was the pleasing title of her latest
+collection of love-songs.
+
+It consisted of two parts, 'Love-Life' and 'Love-Death.' In the first
+part there was a great deal said about Dawn and Dew-drops, and in the
+second part quite as much about Worms and Withered Flowers, while in
+both there was such an amount of ardent passion that one could not but
+be grateful to the Baroness for her Bayreuth fashion of darkening the
+auditorium, thus veiling the blushes of certain sensitive ladies, as
+well as the sneering looks of others.
+
+Of course Minona's delivery was highly dramatic. She screamed until her
+voice failed her, she rolled her eyes until she fairly squinted, and
+Count Treurenberg offered to wager an entire set of her works that one
+of her eyes was glass.
+
+In most of her verses the lover was cold, hard, or faithless, but now
+and then she revelled in an 'oasis in the desert of life.' Then she
+became unutterably grotesque, the only distinguishable word in a
+languishing murmur being "L--o--ve!"
+
+Suddenly in the midst of this extraordinary performance was heard the
+clicking of a couple of steel knitting needles, and shortly afterwards
+the reading came to an end.
+
+
+Again the room was flooded with light. In the silence that reigned the
+clicking needles made the only sound. Erika looked to see whence the
+noise proceeded, and perceived an elderly lady with gray hair brushed
+smoothly over her temples, and a shrewd--almost masculine--face,
+sitting very erect, and dressed in a charming old-fashioned gown. Her
+brows were lifted, and her face showed unmistakably her decided
+disapproval of the performance. In the midst of the heated atmosphere
+she produced the impression of a stainless block of ice.
+
+"Who is that?" Erika asked the Countess Mühlberg, who sat beside her.
+
+"Fräulein Agatha von Horn. Shall I present you?"
+
+Erika assented, and the Countess led her to the lady in question, who,
+still knitting, was seated on a sofa with three young, very shy
+artists, and overshadowed by a tall fan-palm.
+
+The Countess presented Erika. The artists rose, and the two ladies took
+their seats on the sofa beside Fräulein von Horn.
+
+The Fräulein sighed, and conversation began.
+
+"If I am not mistaken, you are a dear friend of the gifted lady whom we
+have to thank this evening for so much pleasure," said Constance
+Mühlberg.
+
+"We travel together, because it is cheaper," Fräulein von Horn replied,
+calmly, "but; as with certain married couples, we have nothing in
+common save our means of living."
+
+"Indeed?" said Constance. "I am glad to hear it; for in that case we
+can express our sentiments freely with regard to the poetess."
+
+"Quite freely."
+
+Just then Count Treurenberg joined the group, and informed the ladies
+that he had been congratulating Minona upon her magnificent success.
+
+"What did you say to her?" the truth-loving Agatha asked, almost
+angrily.
+
+"'In you I hail our modern Sappho.' That is what I told her."
+
+"And she replied----?" asked Constance Mühlberg.
+
+The Count fanned himself with his opera-hat with a languishing air, and
+lisped, "'_Ah, oui, Sappho; c'est bien Sappho, toujours la même
+histoire_, after more than two thousand years.'"
+
+"Poor Minona! and to think that she cudgels it all out of her
+imagination!" Fräulein Agatha remarked, ironically. "She has no more
+personal experience than--well, than I."
+
+"'Sh!--not so loud," Constance whispered, laughing. "She never would
+forgive you for betraying her thus."
+
+"I have known her from a child," Fräulein von Horn continued,
+composedly. "She once exchanged love-letters with her brother's tutor,
+and since then she has always played the game with a dummy."
+
+The dry way in which she imparted this piece of information was
+irresistibly comical, but in the midst of the laughter which it
+provoked a loud voice was heard declaiming at the other end of
+the room, where, in the midst of a circle of listeners, stood a
+black-bearded individual with a Mephistophelian cast of countenance,
+holding forth upon some subject.
+
+"Who is that?" asked Countess Mühlberg.
+
+"I do not know the fellow," said the Count. "Not in my line."
+
+"A writer from Vienna," Fräulein von Horn explained. "He was invited
+here, that he might write an article upon Minona."
+
+"What is he talking about?" asked the Count.
+
+Countess Mühlberg, who had been stretching her delicate neck to listen,
+replied, "About love."
+
+"Indeed!" exclaimed Count Treurenberg, springing up from his seat: "I
+must hear what the fellow has to say." And, followed shortly afterwards
+by Constance Mühlberg, he joined the circle about the black-bearded
+seer.
+
+Erika remained sitting with Fräulein Agatha on the sofa beneath the
+palm. They could hear the seer's drawling voice as he announced very
+distinctly, "Love is the instinctive desire of an individual for union
+with a certain individual of the opposite sex."
+
+Fräulein von Horn meditatively smoothed her gray hair with one of her
+long knitting-needles, and said, carelessly, "I know that definition:
+it is Max Norden's." Whereupon she left her seat beside Erika to devote
+herself to the three artists, her _protégés_.
+
+Erika was left entirely alone under the palm, in a state of angry
+discontent. Never before, wherever she had been, had she been so
+little regarded. She was of no more importance here than Fräulein
+Agatha,--hardly of as much. For the first time it occurred to her that
+under certain circumstances it was quite inconvenient to be unmarried.
+
+At the same time she was conscious of a great disappointment: she
+had not come hither to study the Baroness Neerwinden's eccentricities,
+or to listen to Minona von Rattenfels's love-plaints: she had
+come---- What, in fact, had she come for?
+
+From the other end of the room came the seer's voice: "The only
+strictly moral union is founded upon elective affinity."
+
+"Very true!" exclaimed Frau von Neerwinden.
+
+A short pause followed. The servants handed about refreshments.
+Rosenberg, the black-bearded seer, stood with his left elbow propped
+upon the back of his friend Minona's chair; in his right he held his
+opera-hat.
+
+A French _littérateur_, who had understood enough of the whole
+performance to be jealous of his German colleague, began to proclaim
+his view of love: "_L'amour est une illusion, qui--que_----" There he
+stuck fast.
+
+Then somebody whom Erika did not know exclaimed, "Where is Lozoncyi? He
+knows more of the subject than we do; he ought to be able to help us."
+
+"I think his knowledge is practical rather than theoretical," said
+Count Treurenberg.
+
+Not long afterwards a few guests took leave, as it was growing late.
+The circle was smaller, and Erika discovered Lozoncyi seated on a
+lounge between two ladies, Frau von Geroldstein and the Princess
+Gregoriewitsch. The Princess was a beauty in her way, tall, stout, very
+_décolletée_, and with long, languishing eyes. Lozoncyi was leaning
+towards her, and whispering in her ear.
+
+Erika rose with a sensation of disgust and walked out upon a balcony,
+where she had scarcely cast a glance upon the veiled magnificence of
+the opposite palaces when Lozoncyi stood beside her. "Good-evening,
+Countess. I had no idea that you were here; I discovered you only this
+moment."
+
+In her irritated mood she did not offer him her hand. "You are
+astonished that my grandmother should have brought me here," she said,
+with a shrug.
+
+But, to her surprise, she perceived that nothing of the kind had
+occurred to him: his sense of what was going on about him was evidently
+blunted.
+
+"Why?" he asked. "Because--because of the antecedents of the hostess?
+It is long since people have troubled themselves about those, and it is
+the brightest salon in Venice."
+
+"There has certainly been nothing lacking in the way of animation
+to-night," Erika observed, coldly.
+
+She was leaning with both hands on the balustrade of the balcony, and
+she spoke to him over her shoulder. He cared little for what she said,
+but her beauty intoxicated him. Always strongly influenced by his
+surroundings, the least noble part of his nature had the upper hand
+with him to-night.
+
+"Rosenberg has taken great pains to entertain his audience," he
+remarked, carelessly.
+
+"And his efforts have assuredly been crowned with success," Erika
+replied, contemptuously. Then, with a shade more of scorn in her voice,
+she asked, "Is there always as much--as much talk of love here?"
+
+"It is frequently discussed," he replied. "And why not? It is the most
+important thing in the world." Then, with his admiring artist-stare, he
+added, in a lower tone, "As you will discover for yourself."
+
+She frowned, turned away, and re-entered the room.
+
+He stayed outside, suddenly conscious of his want of tact, but inclined
+to lay the fault of it at her door. "'Tis a pity she is so whimsical a
+creature," he muttered between his teeth; "and so gloriously beautiful;
+a great pity!" Nevertheless he was vexed with himself, and was firmly
+resolved, if chance ever gave him another interview with her, to make
+better use of his opportunity.
+
+Shortly afterwards Countess Lenzdorff, with Erika and Constance
+Mühlberg, took her leave. She was in a very good humour, and exchanged
+all sorts of witticisms with Constance with regard to their evening.
+
+"And how did you enjoy yourself?" she asked Erika, when, after leaving
+Constance at home, the two were alone in the gondola on their way to
+the 'Britannia.'
+
+"I?" asked Erika, with a contemptuous depression of the corners of her
+mouth. "How could I enjoy myself in an assemblage where there was
+nothing talked of but love?"
+
+Her grandmother laughed heartily: "Yes, it was rather a silly way to
+pass the time, I confess. I cannot conceive why they waste so many
+words upon what is perfectly plain to any one with eyes. They grope
+about, and no one explains in the least the nature of love." She threw
+back her head, and, without for an instant losing the slightly mocking
+smile which was so characteristic of her beautiful old face, she said,
+"Love is an irritation of the fancy, produced by certain natural
+conditions, which expresses itself, so long as it lasts, in the
+exclusive glorification of one single individual, and robs the human
+being who is its victim of all power of discernment. All things
+considered, those people are very lucky who, when the torch of passion
+is extinguished, can find anything save humiliation in the memory of
+their love."
+
+The old Countess was privately very proud of her definition, and looked
+round at Erika with an air of self-satisfaction at having clothed what
+was so self-evident, so cheerful a view, in such uncommonly appropriate
+words. But Erika's face had assumed a dark, pained expression. Her
+grandmother's words had aroused in her the old anguish,--anguish for
+her mother. It was not to be denied that in some cases her
+grandmother's view was the true one. Was it true always? No! Something
+in the girl's nature rebelled against such a thought. No! a thousand
+times no!
+
+"But the love of which you speak, grandmother, is only sham love," she
+said, in a husky, trembling voice. "There is surely another kind,--a
+genuine, sacred, ennobling love!"
+
+"There may be," said her grandmother. "The pity is that one never knows
+the true from the false until it is past."
+
+Erika said no more.
+
+The air was mild; the scent of roses was wafted across the sluggish
+water of the lagoon; there was a faint sound of distant music. But an
+icy chill crept over Erika, and in her heart there was a strange,
+aching, yearning pain.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+Three weeks had passed since Minona von Rattenfels had so effectively
+given vent to her languishing love-plaints.
+
+A striking change was evident in Erika. She was much more cheerful, or,
+at least, more accessible; she no longer withdrew from the world in
+morbid misanthropy, but went into society whenever her grandmother
+requested her to do so. Wherever she went she was fêted and admired.
+Since her first season in Berlin she had never received so much homage.
+It seemed to give her pleasure, and, what was still more remarkable,
+she seemed to exert herself somewhat--a very little--to obtain it.
+
+Wherever she went she met Lozoncyi,--Lozoncyi, who scarcely took his
+eyes off her, but who made no attempt to approach her in any way that
+could attract notice. His bearing towards her was not only exemplary,
+but touching. Always at hand to render her any little service,--to
+procure her an ice, to relieve her of an empty teacup, to find her
+missing fan or gloves,--he immediately retired to give place to her
+other admirers. Among these Prince Helmy Nimbsch was foremost: the
+entire international society of Venice were daily expecting the
+announcement of a betrothal, and one afternoon, at a lawn-tennis party
+at Lady Stairs's, he had given Erika unmistakable proofs of his
+intentions. She was a little startled, and, while she was endeavouring
+to lead the conversation with him away from the perilously sentimental
+tone it had assumed, her eyes accidentally encountered Lozoncyi's.
+
+Shortly afterwards she managed to get rid of the Prince; and as, after
+a last game of lawn-tennis, she was retiring from the field, her cheeks
+flushed, her eyes sparkling from the exercise, Lozoncyi came up to her
+to relieve her of her racket. "You see how right the poor painter was,
+not to venture to approach his little fairy," he murmured. The words,
+his tone, aroused her sympathy and compassion, but before she could
+reply he had vanished. He did not come near her again that afternoon,
+but she could not help perceiving that his looks sought herself and
+Prince Nimbsch alternately, at first inquiringly, and afterwards with
+an expression of relief.
+
+
+Dinner has been over for some time. The lamps are gleaming red along
+the Grand Canal, and their broken reflections quiver in long streaks
+upon the waters of the lagoon. The little drawing-room is but dimly
+lighted, and Erika is seated at the piano, playing bits of 'Parsifal,'
+her fingers gliding into the motive of sinful, worldly pleasure.
+
+The old Countess enters, and, after wandering aimlessly about the room
+for a moment, goes, after her fashion, directly to the point. She
+pauses beside Erika, and observes, "Prince Nimbsch is courting you.
+People are talking about it."
+
+"Nonsense!" Erika rejoins, running her fingers over the keys. "He is
+only amusing himself."
+
+"H'm! he seems to me to be very much in earnest," murmurs the old lady;
+"and there is no denying that it would be a brilliant match."
+
+Erika drops her hands in her lap. "Grandmother!" she exclaims, half
+laughing, "what are you thinking of? He is a mere boy!"
+
+"A boy? He is full four years older than you; and I need not remind you
+that you are no child. At all events, you must consider well----"
+
+"Before I enter into another engagement," Erika interrupts her. "I
+promise you I will; nay, more than that, I promise you solemnly that I
+will not engage myself to Prince Nimbsch."
+
+"In fact, I must confess that I do not think him your equal." There is
+a certain relief in the old lady's tone, although she adds, with some
+hesitation, "But the position is tempting, very tempting."
+
+"Ah, grandmother!" Erika exclaims, with reproach in her tone, as,
+rising, she puts her arm around the old Countess's shoulder and kisses
+her gray head, "do you know me so little?"
+
+Her grandmother returns her caress with emotion, murmuring the while,
+as if talking to herself, "As if you knew yourself, my poor, dear
+child!"
+
+"I know myself so far," Erika declares, "as to be sure that after my
+first unfortunate mistake I am cured of all worldly ambition."
+
+"Oh, that was quite another thing!" her grandmother sighs. "Your
+marriage with Lord Langley would have been positively unnatural; but
+Prince Helmy Nimbsch is a fine, gallant young fellow."
+
+"It all amounts to the same thing: old or young, he is a man whom I do
+not love, and never could love."
+
+The old lady shakes her head impatiently: "Are you beginning upon that?
+Love? I thought you had more sense. Love!--love! Heaven preserve you
+from that disease! The only sound foundations for a happy marriage are
+unbounded esteem and warm sympathy: anything more is an evil."
+
+Erika is silent, and the old Countess continues: "No respectable woman
+should indulge in passion. Passion is an intoxication, and nausea is
+sure to follow upon intoxication. Therefore a respectable woman, who
+can at the most indulge but once in such intoxication, condemns
+herself, after a short period of bliss, to nausea for the rest of her
+life. Only the unprincipled woman who cures her nausea by a fresh
+passion can permit herself such indulgence. It is all nonsense for one
+of us."
+
+During this long speech the Countess has seated herself in an arm-chair
+with a volume of Taine's 'Les Origines de la France' open in her lap,
+and to lend emphasis to her words she taps the book from time to time
+with a large Japanese paper-knife.
+
+Erika stands near her, leaning upon the piano, tall and graceful in her
+white gown. "And what am I to infer from your preachment? That I must
+marry Helmy Nimbsch, even without love?"
+
+"Helmy Nimbsch? Who is talking of him?" The old lady almost starts from
+her chair.
+
+"I thought you were, grandmother," Erika says, with a mischievous
+smile. "If I am not mistaken, he was the subject of our conversation."
+
+"Nonsense! Helmy Nimbsch! _Ce n'est pas serieux!_"
+
+"Of whom, then, are you talking?" Erika asks, looking her grandmother
+full in the face.
+
+"Oh, of no one: I was talking in general," her grandmother replies,
+with some irritation, adding, still more petulantly, after a pause, "If
+you have unbounded esteem and warm sympathy for young Nimbsch, why,
+marry him, by all means."
+
+Instead of replying, Erika begins to arrange the sheets of music on the
+piano.
+
+A long pause ensues. From below come the murmur of voices, the ringing
+of bells, and the moving of trunks,--in short, all the bustle
+consequent upon the arrival of fresh guests at a large hotel. Countess
+Lenzdorff takes the opportunity to complain of so much noise, and to
+declare, "In fact, I am quite tired of this wandering about from place
+to place."
+
+"What, grandmother? Why, you were so delighted here! Only yesterday you
+told me how 'refreshing' you considered your Venetian life."
+
+"Yes, yes; but it has lasted too long for me. While you were playing
+lawn-tennis this afternoon with Constance Mühlberg, I went to see
+Hedwig Norbin. She arrived yesterday, and is at the 'Europe;' but she
+is only stopping for a day or so on her way home. 'Tis a pity."
+
+"And she gave you such an alluring description of Berlin that you are
+anxious to fold your tent and fly back to Bellevue Street now, in the
+midst of this wondrous Southern spring?" Erika asks, coldly.
+
+"Oh, spring is lovely everywhere!--lovelier in Berlin than in Venice:
+there is nothing more beautiful than the Thiergarten in May. And then I
+find there all my old habits, my old friends."
+
+"I have no friends in Berlin," says Erika, with a strange emphasis,
+"and that is why I beg you to stay away from Berlin for a while longer.
+Next autumn you may do with me what you please. Have a little patience
+with me."
+
+"Patience! patience!" The old Countess taps her book more energetically
+than ever.
+
+After a while Erika begins: "Did Frau von Norbin tell you anything
+about Dorothea von Sydow? How is her position regarded by society?"
+
+"How?" her grandmother exclaims. "How should society regard the
+critical position of a woman who has never shown the slightest
+consideration for any one, never conferred a benefit upon any one,
+scarcely even treated any one with courtesy, but lived only for her own
+frivolous gratification? Society acknowledges a woman in her position
+only when it would lose something by dropping her. Who would lose
+anything if Dorothea were stricken from its list? A couple of young
+men, perhaps; and they would be at liberty to make love to her outside
+of the ranks of society. The world has turned its back upon her: Hedwig
+tells me that she is positively shunned."
+
+"And how does she accommodate herself to her destiny?" asks Erika.
+
+"As poorly as possible. One would suppose that she would have left
+Berlin. For my part, I never imagined that she cared so much for her
+social position; but she appears to be clutching it in a kind of
+panic."
+
+"How unpleasant for--for the dead man's brother!" says Erika. Several
+months have passed since she has spoken Goswyn's name: it would seem as
+if her lips refused to utter it.
+
+"For Goswyn!" her grandmother exclaims, in a tone of sincere distress.
+"Terrible! They say he is altered almost beyond recognition. I did not
+know he was so devoted to Otto. But, to be sure, the circumstances
+attendant upon his death were frightful. Goswyn always found fault with
+me, but, after all, since his mother's death I have stood nearest to
+him in this world. I know he would be glad to pour out his heart to
+me."
+
+Erika draws a long breath; her large clear eyes flash. "Ah!"
+she exclaims, "this, then, is your reason for wishing to go to
+Berlin,--that you may console Herr Goswyn von Sydow? I always knew that
+he was dear to you: I learn now for the first time that he is dearer to
+you than I am!"
+
+"Oh, Erika!--dearer than you!" The old lady rises and strokes the
+girl's arm tenderly. "I am often sorry that I cannot love you both
+together!" she adds, half timidly, in an undertone.
+
+But this time Erika repulses almost angrily the caress usually so dear
+to her. "I cannot understand you!" she says: "it is a positive mania of
+yours. You are always reproaching me for not having married Goswyn, or
+hinting that I ought to marry him,--a man who has not wasted a thought
+upon me for years!"
+
+"Oh, Erika! how can you talk so? Remember Bayreuth."
+
+"What if I do remember Bayreuth? Yes, he still thought of me then; that
+is, he remembered the young girl with whom he had ridden in the
+Thiergarten, and he brought her memory with him to Bayreuth; but he
+discovered it did not fit with what he found there: that was the end of
+it all!" Erika silently paces the room to and fro once or twice, then,
+pausing before her grandmother, she continues: "It stings me whenever
+you speak of Goswyn and lose yourself in the contemplation of his
+measureless magnanimity. Magnanimity! Yes, but it is a cold, sterile,
+arrogant magnanimity! He is a thoroughly just man, but he is a man who
+never forgives a weakness, because none ever beset him,--none, at
+least, of which he is conscious. He---- Oh, yes----,"--the girl's voice
+grows hoarse, she catches her breath and goes on with increasing
+volubility,--"I have no doubt that he would spring into the water at
+any moment to save the life, at the risk of his own, of any worthless
+wretch, but as soon as he brought him to land he would turn his back
+upon him and march away with his head proudly erect, without even
+casting a look upon the man he had rescued, let alone giving him a kind
+word. Witness his behaviour towards me. I refer to it expressly that we
+may correct once for all your painful and humiliating misapprehension.
+He did, as you know, do me a service in Bayreuth which I could not have
+expected of any one else. Granted. But he has never forgiven me for
+being betrothed for six or eight weeks to Lord Langley. Good heavens!
+it was a mistake of mine, a stupidity, the result of vanity and
+ambition on my part. But it was nothing more; and yet it was enough to
+cause--to cause Herr von Sydow to banish me from grace forever. This is
+your wonderful Goswyn. It is a matter of perfect indifference to me: I
+take not the slightest interest in him, thank God! If I had been
+interested in him I might have fretted myself nearly to death; but, as
+it is, I am merely vexed that I should have overrated him,--that is
+all."
+
+Her grandmother listened in amazement. She had never before seen Erika
+so excited, had never imagined that her voice was capable of such
+intonations. At times it was the voice of a stubborn, angry child, and
+anon that of a proud, passionate woman.
+
+"Why, Erika!" she exclaimed when the girl paused, "this is all
+nonsense,--cleverly-invented nonsense, the worst of all kinds. There is
+not one word of truth in it. I know that he adores you just as he
+always did."
+
+"You have a lively imagination," Erika said, sarcastically. "It is
+remarkable that Goswyn has had nothing to say about his adoration all
+this time."
+
+"My dear child," replied her grandmother, "that is quite another thing.
+In certain respects Goswyn is petty: I have always told you so. His
+poverty and your wealth have always been of too much consequence in his
+eyes. It is a folly which may have cost him the happiness of his life.
+Say what you will, I am convinced that his poverty alone has prevented
+him from renewing his suit."
+
+"Indeed!" said Erika, tossing her head disdainfully. "Well, his poverty
+is at an end!"
+
+"Oh, Erika, with your wonderful sensibility you ought to understand
+that a man like Goswyn cannot bring himself all in a moment to profit
+by his brother's death,--a death, too, so terrible in its attendant
+circumstances."
+
+Erika was silent for a minute; her lips quivered; then she said, in a
+low tone, "True, grandmother; it would be odious of him to renew his
+suit instantly; but, you see, if such a misfortune as has befallen him
+had happened to me, I should long to carry my pain to those who were
+nearest my heart. You are ready to return to Berlin for his sake. If
+all that you fancy were true, he would have come to Venice: he could
+easily have obtained a leave. And now we have done with this subject
+once for all. Fortunately, I do not care for him in the least,--not in
+the least. I tell you all this only that you may not request me to ride
+posthaste with you to Berlin, that the world there, already so
+predisposed in my favour, may say, 'She is running after Goswyn von
+Sydow, now that he has inherited the family estates.'"
+
+The grandmother laid her hands on Erika's shoulders, then drew the
+proud young head towards her, and kissed her on the forehead. At
+that moment Lüdecke, the indispensable, entered and presented a
+visiting-card.
+
+"Paul von Lozoncyi," Countess Lenzdorff read from the card, and then
+dropped it upon the salver again. "Are you in the mood to receive
+strangers?"
+
+"Yes. Why not?" asked Erika.
+
+
+Shortly afterwards Lozoncyi entered Erika's pretty little boudoir, now
+illuminated by a couple of shaded lamps.
+
+Erika received him most amiably. The old Countess, on the other hand,
+was at first rather formal in her manner towards him. She was not
+accustomed to have young men delay so long in taking advantage of an
+invitation extended by herself to visit her. But before Lozoncyi had
+been five minutes in the room her displeasure melted like snow in
+sunshine.
+
+Without the slightest attempt to excuse his dilatoriness, the artist
+was at pains to impress his hostesses with his delight in having at
+last found the way to them. "How charming!" he said, looking around the
+room and rubbing his slender hands, after his characteristic fashion.
+"One never would dream that this was a hotel."
+
+"This is my grand-daughter's sanctum," said the old Countess. "My own
+reception-room is several shades barer."
+
+"Indeed? Ah, I know it does not become me, the first time I am
+permitted to enjoy this privilege, to stare about at your treasures
+like the private agent of some dealer in antiquities, but we artists
+delight in the pride of the eye. It is remarkable how well you have
+suited the frame to the picture. Look, your Excellency."
+
+He drew the old lady's attention to the picture formed at that moment
+by her grand-daughter, who was sitting in a negligent attitude in a
+high-backed antique chair, the gilt leather covering of which made a
+charming background for her auburn hair.
+
+"It is enchanting, the white figure against the golden gleam of the
+leather, and with that vase of jonquils beside it. If one could only
+perpetuate it!" He sighed.
+
+"You will embarrass the child," the grandmother admonished him,
+although in her heart she was delighted. "Instead of turning the
+Countess Erika's head, tell us why you have been so long finding your
+way hither."
+
+He raised his eyes, looked her full in the face, and then dropped them
+again, as he said, in a low tone, "Rather ask me why I have come at
+all."
+
+"No, I ask you expressly why you did not come before," the old lady
+persisted, laughing.
+
+"Why?" He hesitated a moment, and then replied, calmly, "Because I have
+no wish to be the last among the Countess Erika's adorers to drag her
+triumphal car. Now you know. Such plain questions provoke plain
+answers." He looked at the old lady as he spoke, to see if he had gone
+too far. No, he was one of those favoured individuals to whom thrice as
+much is forgiven as to other men. Something in the intonation of his
+gentle, cordial voice, his frank yet melancholy glance, and especially
+his smile, his charming insinuating smile, instantly prepossessed
+people in his favour. It was the same smile with which as a lad of
+seventeen he had beguiled little Erika's tender heart, the merry,
+careless smile which he must have inherited from an amiable,
+light-hearted mother.
+
+The old lady only laughed at his confession, and then asked, mockingly,
+"And now you are content to be the very last, etc., etc.?"
+
+He shook his head: "Now it has occurred to me that perhaps I can offer
+the Countess Erika a small pleasure which none other among her adorers
+can give her, and I come to ask if she will give me leave to do so."
+
+Erika was silent. Countess Lenzdorff said, "Herr von Lozoncyi, you
+speak in riddles."
+
+Lozoncyi turned from one to the other of the ladies with a look
+calculated to go directly to their hearts, and then, addressing the
+younger one, said, "You perhaps remember that I am in your debt,
+Countess Erika?"
+
+"Yes; I once lent you five guilders."
+
+"Five guilders," he repeated. "It seems a trifle; but then it was much
+for me. Without those five guilders I should probably never have been
+able to reach my aunt Illona in Munich, and I might have starved in a
+ditch. You see that I owe you much; and in consideration of this fact I
+have come to ask if you will allow me to paint your portrait."
+
+Erika gazed at him blankly.
+
+"For five guilders?" exclaimed the old Countess, with comical emphasis.
+Every one knew how difficult it was to persuade Lozoncyi to paint a
+portrait, and what a fabulous price he asked when induced to do so.
+
+"I entreat you not to refuse me, Countess Erika," he begged, with
+clasped hands.
+
+"I advise you to accept the offer," said her grandmother: "it will
+hardly be made a second time."
+
+"You shall not be subjected to the slightest inconvenience," he went on
+to Erika, "except that of being bored for a few hours. I know that you
+do not, as a rule, like my pictures, and therefore I promise you that I
+will burn this one if it does not please you, even though I should
+consider it a masterpiece. But should I succeed in pleasing you, the
+picture may serve to remind you sometimes of a poor fellow who----"
+
+The sentence was cut short by the entrance of several visitors, and
+much talk and laughter ensued.
+
+Lozoncyi stayed until all the rest had gone.
+
+"When shall I have the first sitting?" he asked.
+
+"Whenever you please," Erika made reply.
+
+"To-morrow?"
+
+"To-morrow? No; to-morrow will not do; but the day after to-morrow, in
+the forenoon, if you like."
+
+His eyes sparkled. "About eleven?"
+
+She assented.
+
+"There goes another man whose head you have turned, Erika," remarked
+the old Countess, as the door closed behind the artist. She laughed as
+she said it. Good heavens! what did it matter?
+
+
+At the appointed time Lüdecke carried down to the gondola the
+portmanteau containing the gown in which Lozoncyi had seen Erika at
+Frau von Neerwinden's, and in which he had wished to immortalize her.
+The two ladies were not accompanied even by a maid, Erika declaring
+that she needed no help in arranging her toilette for the portrait.
+
+The sky was cloudless, the air warm but not oppressive. The gondoliers
+rowed merrily and quickly.
+
+Lozoncyi's studio was back of the Rialto, on one of the narrower
+water-ways to the left of the Grand Canal. In about a quarter of an
+hour the gondola stopped before a light-green door with an iron lion's
+head in the centre of it. One of the gondoliers knocked with the ring
+depending from the lion's mouth.
+
+Lozoncyi himself opened the door. He wore a faded linen blouse, and
+appeared greatly elated. "To the very last moment I was afraid of an
+excuse, and here you are, only a quarter of an hour late!" he cried, in
+a tone of cordial welcome; then, taking the portmanteau from the
+attendant gondolier, he called loudly, "Lucrezia! Lucrezia!" "You must
+excuse me, ladies," he said: "my house does not boast electric bells."
+
+From a passage at the head of the stone staircase there appeared an old
+Venetian woman, with large earrings in her ears, and thick waving gray
+hair brushed back from her temples and coiled in a knot at the back of
+her head, the antique style of which suited admirably her regular
+classic features. She smiled a welcome to the ladies, thereby
+displaying a double row of dazzling white teeth, while Lozoncyi in
+fluent Italian ordered her to take the portmanteau to the dressing-room
+and unpack it.
+
+Along the narrow passage leading directly through the house from the
+water, they walked into the garden, a tangle of luxuriant growth. The
+bushes were already clothed in tender green, and here and there through
+the young leaves could be seen a spray of white hawthorn.
+
+"Oh, how charming!" exclaimed Erika.
+
+"Is it not?" said the painter. "I came here for the sake of the garden.
+A spot of earth is so precious in this watery Venice."
+
+"Do not forget your Lucrezia: her beauty exceeds that of your garden,"
+the old Countess remarked.
+
+"My old factotum? Yes, she has a fine face, magnificent features. I
+cannot endure anything ugly about me. But did you notice how short and
+stout she is?" He asked the question with so genuine an air of
+annoyance that the old Countess could not help laughing.
+
+"What of that? Is it a crime in your eyes?"
+
+"No," he said, thoughtfully, "but it makes her useless for artistic
+purposes. I tried to pose her the other day,--in vain. She might do for
+Juliet's nurse, or for a modern fortune-teller, but that is not my
+line. I find plenty of handsome faces among these Venetians, and fine
+shoulders, too, but nothing more. Their bodies are too long, their
+legs too short; there are no sweeping lines, no grace of movement. And
+when one finds a model whose limbs are long enough, she is like a
+stork. I have a deal of trouble in this respect. When I was painting
+'Spring,'--the picture that Countess Erika does not like,--I was in
+despair because I could find no model for my female figure. Then one
+day on the Rialto I found a person, no longer young, rouged, but
+magnificently formed,--as tall as Countess Erika, only not----"
+
+He broke off and grew very red. A moment afterwards, however, he had
+forgotten his embarrassment in a new inspiration. At the door of the
+studio Erika lifted her arm to pluck a spray of wistaria.
+
+"Stay just as you are, for one instant, Countess!" he cried, and,
+rushing into his studio, he returned instantly with a sketch-book and a
+basket-chair. The latter he placed in the shade for the old Countess,
+and then began to sketch rapidly.
+
+"Only look at that curve!" he exclaimed to the grandmother. "It is
+music! And the line of the hips!"
+
+His manner of unceasingly dwelling upon the beauty or ugliness of the
+human body, the exact analysis which he was perpetually making of its
+structure, in connection with his profession, was at times offensive.
+But neither of the ladies took exception to it, Erika partly from
+inexperience and partly from flattered vanity, the old Countess because
+her sensitiveness in this respect had become dulled of late, and also
+because Lozoncyi expressed himself in so naïve a fashion that he seemed
+at the worst to be merely guilty of a breach of good taste. One had to
+know him very intimately to discover what a profound impression upon
+his inmost nature this perpetual study of the human figure had
+produced.
+
+"How thoroughly you understand how to dress yourself!" he exclaimed,
+continuing to look fixedly at the girl, who wore a gown of some white
+woollen stuff, with a large straw hat trimmed with heavy old Venetian
+lace.
+
+"I have half a mind to paint you thus, instead of in evening dress," he
+murmured. "But no; your portrait should be in full dress. Only, be
+generous; we will begin the portrait to-morrow, give me an hour for
+myself to-day: I want to make a water-colour sketch of you. Does it
+tire you too much to stretch your arm out so far?"
+
+"A woman does not grow tired when she is conscious of being admired,"
+the old Countess declared; "but the situation is less entertaining for
+me. Have you not some book to give me?"
+
+
+Erika grew weary at last, in spite of the admiration lavished upon her
+by Lozoncyi while he sketched. The painter improvised a lunch for his
+guests beneath a mulberry-tree, upon a little rickety table. It was
+excellently prepared and delicately served, and he enjoyed seeing the
+ladies do ample justice to it. Lucrezia had just served the coffee, and
+was standing with a smiling face and arms akimbo, listening to the old
+Countess's praise of her skill in cookery, when there came a knock at
+the door.
+
+"Confound it!" muttered Lozoncyi, "not a visitor, I trust."
+
+It was no visitor, but a letter brought by Lozoncyi's gondolier, a
+handsome dark-skinned lad in a sailor dress, with a red scarf about his
+waist. Involuntarily Erika glanced at the letter. The address was in a
+feminine hand; the post-mark was Paris.
+
+Lozoncyi gave an impatient shrug at sight of the handwriting; then,
+crushing the letter in his hand, he slipped it unopened into his
+pocket. "Will you not look into my workshop?" he asked the ladies.
+
+"I was just about to ask you to show us your studio," replied the old
+Countess. "I am curious with regard to your 'Bad Dreams.'"
+
+"Yes,"--he shivered,--"'bad dreams,'--that is the word!"
+
+The atelier, which they entered from the garden by a glass door, was an
+unusually high and spacious apartment, but very plainly furnished, and
+in dusty confusion,--the workshop of a very nervous artist, who can
+endure no 'clearing up,' who cannot do without the rubbish of his art.
+Erika's gaze was instantly attracted by a remarkable and horrible
+picture.
+
+A single figure in a close, clinging garment of undecided hue, the head
+thrust forward, the arms stretched out, the whole form expressing
+yearning, torturing desire, was groping its way towards a swamp
+above which hovered a will-o'-the-wisp. Above in the dark heavens
+gleamed the pure light of the stars. It was all a marvel of tone and
+expression,--the sad harmony of colour, the star-lit sky, the dreary
+swamp, and above all the figure, its every feature, every fingertip,
+every fold even of its garment, expressing desire.
+
+"What did you mean it to represent?" asked the old Countess.
+
+"Can you not guess?"
+
+No, she could not guess; but Erika instantly exclaimed, "Blind Love!"
+
+He looked at her more curiously than he had done hitherto, and then
+asked, "How did you know?"
+
+"I see how the figure is creeping towards the will-o'-the-wisp, not
+heeding the stars sparkling above it. Look how it is sinking into the
+swamp, grandmother. It is horrible!"
+
+"Blind Love," her grandmother repeated, thoughtfully. The subject did
+not appeal to her.
+
+"Yes," said Lozoncyi, "blind love,--the misery of debasing passion."
+With a bitter smile he added, "Well, the only comfort is that one can
+sometimes attain to the will-o'-the-wisp, though he can never reach the
+stars, however he may gaze up at them."
+
+"No," Erika exclaimed, indignantly, "that is no comfort. Rather--a
+thousand times rather--reach up in vain for the stars, and expand and
+grow in longing for the unattainable, than stoop to a happiness to be
+found only in a swamp!"
+
+He made an inclination towards her, and said, half aloud, "What you say
+is very beautiful; but you do not understand."
+
+
+"Well, you certainly have turned that poor fellow's head," Countess
+Lenzdorff remarked, leaning back comfortably among the cushions of the
+gondola as she and Erika were being rowed home. "It will do him no
+harm: on the contrary, it is good for such young artists, too apt to be
+self-indulgent, to reach after the unattainable; it enlarges their
+minds." Then after a while she went on: "I wonder whom the letter that
+so provoked him was from. Perhaps from that blonde who was with him at
+Bayreuth."
+
+Erika did not reply; she looked down at a spray of wistaria he had
+plucked for her as she took leave of him. Suddenly she started: a large
+black caterpillar crept out from among the fragrant blossoms. With a
+little cry of disgust she flung the spray into the water.
+
+
+At the same time Lozoncyi was standing in his studio, looking at the
+water-colour sketch he had made of Erika.
+
+"A glorious creature," he muttered to himself; "glorious! I do not
+remember ever to have seen anything more beautiful, and, with all her
+distinction, and that pallor too, thoroughly healthy, fully developed,
+nothing maimed or deformed about her. She must be at least twenty-four.
+How is it that she is not married? Some unhappy love-affair? Hardly.
+She seems entirely fancy free, as if she had never in her life cared
+for a lover. How proudly she carries her head! Her kind is entirely
+unknown to me. Well, there are always women enough to do the dirty work
+of life; some there must be to guard the Holy Grail." He turned to the
+door of the studio that led out into the garden. A light vapour was
+rising from the earth, enveloping the blossoms in mist. He smiled
+strangely and not very pleasantly. "The spring cares not a whit for the
+Holy Grail. It goes on its way; it goes on its way."
+
+
+At first she had been repelled by him; then he had flattered her
+vanity; by and by he interested her, but from the very beginning he had
+excited her imagination as no other man had ever done. And this in
+spite of the fact that his views of life, which he scarcely concealed,
+aroused within her painful indignation. She was quite aware that there
+were dark recesses in his soul which she might not explore, and that,
+courteous and faultless as was his behaviour towards women like her
+grandmother and herself, he respected them as curious specimens of the
+sex, interesting, because not often encountered. Upon all this she
+pondered, sick at heart, as she turned her head to and fro upon her
+pillow, so many nights, seeking the refreshment of sleep.
+
+The outcome of it was a strange, pathetic, foolishly ambitious project.
+She set herself the task of converting him to nobler views of life.
+
+How many unfortunates have been ruined in their zeal for conversion!
+
+
+That Erika should unconsciously play with fire was not astonishing, but
+that her grandmother should look on in smiling indifference while her
+grand-daughter was thus occupied was amazing.
+
+There are learned fanatics who in their determination to establish some
+theory of their own lavish all their powers in an effort to elaborate
+it, shutting their eyes to any light which may steal in upon them,
+while thus engaged, from an opposite quarter.
+
+
+At first the portrait progressed with great rapidity; but now weeks had
+gone by, and it seemed as if Lozoncyi were unable to finish it.
+
+It was life-size, a three-fourths figure, and, in order not to fatigue
+Erika, she was taken sitting in an antique chair, her lap heaped with
+pale-lilac wistaria blossoms. There was no straining for effect, not a
+trace of conventionality.
+
+"Take the position that you find most comfortable," he had instructed
+his beautiful model. "You can take none that will not be lovely."
+
+The long spring days glided slowly by. When the two ladies first
+went to Lozoncyi's studio the gray stone of the garden wall was easily
+seen behind the vines and bushes; now the green alone showed
+everywhere,--the roses were in bloom, and the hawthorn had nearly
+faded.
+
+The studio, too, was changed. When they first came, it had been
+absolutely bare of all decoration; now when they came, which was three
+or four times a week, it was filled with the loveliest flowers.
+
+When they left he heaped up all of these that had not been touched by
+the heat in their gondola, which sometimes returned alone to the Hotel
+Britannia, laden with the flowers, while Lozoncyi escorted his guests
+to their home by some picturesque roundabout way.
+
+It was a great pleasure to walk with him. No one knew as he did how to
+call attention to some artistic effect, some bit of colour that might
+have easily escaped one less sensitive to picturesque detail.
+
+"Good heavens!" said the old Countess, "I have been through these
+alleys a hundred times, but you make me feel as if I never had been
+here before. You have a special gift for teaching one the beauty of
+life."
+
+"Indeed? Have I?" he murmured. "It is a gift, then, for teaching what I
+cannot learn myself."
+
+By degrees Erika came to see with his eyes, and sometimes more quickly
+than he was wont to do. She was especially pleased when she could first
+call his attention to some artistic effect that had escaped him, and he
+always exaggerated the value of these discoveries of hers, assuring her
+that he had never seen a woman with so keen a sense of the beautiful,
+and rallying her upon her artistic skill. Once when the old Countess
+asked what they were talking about, Lozoncyi replied, "The Countess
+Erika and I are teaching each other to find life beautiful." And once
+he turned to Erika and said, sadly, "It is a pity that it must all come
+to an end so soon."
+
+All the sentences abruptly broken off which just touched the brink of a
+declaration of love, but were never really such, Erika naturally
+interpreted in one way: "He loves me, but dares not venture to hope for
+a return of his affection: he is convinced that I am too far above
+him."
+
+At first she was proud of having inspired a man so rare, so gifted, so
+flattered, with so profound a sentiment; then----
+
+
+"To what can this lead?"
+
+For the hundredth time Lozoncyi asked himself this question.
+
+"To what can this lead?"
+
+He was standing in his studio before Erika's unfinished
+portrait--unfinished!
+
+"It must be finished at the next sitting. For the last ten days I have
+simply put off its completion from one sitting to the next, and all
+because I cannot tell how I can endure seeing her no more. And, yet, to
+what can it all lead?"
+
+He was very pale, and the moisture stood upon his forehead. He would
+have turned away from the portrait, but was drawn towards it as by a
+spell. "A glorious creature!" he murmured; "and not only beautiful, but
+absolutely unique. It raises a man's moral standard to be with such a
+creature. H'm! before I knew her I was not aware that I had a moral
+standard." He laughed bitterly, and continued to gaze at the picture.
+"She is beautiful!" he muttered between his teeth. "It is folly for a
+being like her to be so beautiful,--a waste,--a contradiction of
+nature!" He stamped his foot, vexed that any but the purest thoughts
+should intrude upon his admiration of Erika. "A strange creature! What
+eyes!--so clear, so deep, so penetrating!" He could think of nothing
+save of her; his nerves thrilled with passion for her.
+
+Strive as he might, his artist imagination could not force itself from
+the contemplation of her beauty.
+
+He loved her; he had known that for some time. But hitherto his love
+for her had been a tender, noble sentiment, something of which he had
+not supposed himself capable, something that exalted him in his own
+estimation. He had been refreshed, revived, by her presence, by
+intercourse with her. But that was past.
+
+"The charm of love is the dream that precedes it," he murmured. The
+dream was over: what now?
+
+Then an insane idea occurred to him: "She is unlike all others: there
+is a magnanimous, exaggerated strain in her composition, which exalts
+her above all pettiness. If she loved me, could she ever have been
+induced to marry me?"
+
+He shivered. "No! no! it is worse than folly to imagine it. In spite of
+all her enthusiasm, in spite of her immense power of compassion, she is
+too much the Countess to ever dream of such a possibility."
+
+His lips were dry; an iron hand seemed clutching his throat. He turned
+his back to the picture and went out into the garden. The skies were
+covered with gray clouds: the flowers drooped; there was a distant
+mutter of thunder.
+
+"Yet if it could be!" he murmured.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+Erika was sitting by the window in her boudoir. Although outside the
+night had not yet fallen upon the earth, it was too dark to read. Her
+window looked out upon the hotel-garden,--which at this season of the
+year was like one huge bed of roses intersected by a narrow gravel
+path. The sweet breath of the roses was wafted in at the window, but
+with it there mingled always the sickening odour of the lagoon.
+
+A couple of distant clocks were striking the hour, and the water was
+lapping the feet of the old palaces.
+
+Lost in thought the girl sat there. The mission in life for which she
+had so yearned was revealed to her in the noblest, most attractive
+form.
+
+She could not doubt that Lozoncyi loved her. Mistrustful as she usually
+was concerning the sentiments she was wont to arouse, there could be no
+uncertainty in this case.
+
+The future lay before her bright and alluring. How could she have
+despaired in this wonderful life of ours? She seemed to have always
+known that she was foreordained for some special service.
+
+Why had he never yet made a direct confession of his sentiments? Her
+pride replied to this question, "He dare not venture."
+
+It was for her to take one step to meet him. Reserved as she was, the
+mere thought of so doing sent the blood to her cheeks, but she took
+herself sternly to task, admonishing herself that cowardice on her part
+would be paltry in the extreme.
+
+It would surely be possible to allow him to read her heart, without any
+indelicate frankness on her part.
+
+Thus far her thoughts had led her, when Marianne brought her a card:
+"Herr von Lozoncyi."
+
+"Did you tell him I was at home?"
+
+"No; I said I would see. When her Excellency is away I never say
+anything decided," replied the maid.
+
+The old Countess had gone out a little while before, to pay a short
+visit in the neighbourhood; Lüdecke had accompanied her.
+
+Erika hesitated a moment, then turned up the electric light and told
+Marianne to show in the visitor. Immediately afterwards he entered, and
+she arose to receive him. She was startled as she looked at his face,
+it was so pale and wan.
+
+"Are you ill?" she exclaimed; "or have you come to tell us of some
+misfortune that has befallen you?" The sympathy expressed in her tone
+agitated him still further.
+
+"Neither is the case," he replied, trying to assume an easy air. "I
+came only to----" There he paused. Why had he come? The thought that
+she might entertain a warmer sentiment for him--a thought that had
+occurred to him to-day for the first time--would not be banished. He
+had dragged the sweet, racking uncertainty about with him for an hour
+through the loneliest streets of Venice, without being able to rid
+himself of it. He would see her,--would have certainty; and then----
+
+Ah, he could not gain that certainty: he could only long for her.
+
+He had invented some explanation of his visit, but he could not
+remember it; instead he said, "You are very kind to receive me in
+Countess Lenzdorff's absence, and I will show my appreciation of your
+kindness by making my visit a short one."
+
+"On the contrary," she rejoined, "I hope you will spend the evening
+with us. My grandmother will be here in a few minutes, and will be very
+glad to find you here."
+
+How soft and sweet her voice was! Could it be--could it be----?
+
+His agitation became almost intolerable. He knew that he ought not to
+stay, but he could not bring himself to leave.
+
+The evening minstrels of Venice were beginning their rounds, and in the
+distance they sang "_Io son felice--t'attendo in ciel!_"
+
+"Bring your present expression to the studio tomorrow!" Lozoncyi said,
+hoarsely: "I will transfer it to the canvas as well as I can, in memory
+of the noblest creature I have ever met. You are coming to-morrow?"
+
+"Certainly. The portrait is almost finished, is it not?"
+
+"Yes; I think to-morrow will be the last sitting; and then----"
+
+"And then----?" she repeated.
+
+"Then it will all be over!"
+
+There was a pause. He turned his head aside. Suddenly a low sweet
+voice, that went directly to his heart, said, softly, "Then you will
+wish to know nothing more of me!"
+
+He started as if from an electric shock; the room swam before his eyes,
+when----the door opened, the Countess Mühlberg appeared, and Lozoncyi
+arose to take leave, thanking Heaven for this unexpected interruption.
+
+"Will you not wait until my grandmother returns?" Erika asked.
+
+"Unfortunately, it is impossible."
+
+"Adieu, then. To-morrow at eleven," she called after him. He made no
+reply.
+
+
+It lightened and thundered all through the night, but scarcely a drop
+of rain fell; the air the next morning was as sultry as it had been on
+the previous day.
+
+When Erika, with her grandmother, entered Lozoncyi's garden punctually
+at eleven o'clock, everything there looked withered and drooping.
+Lozoncyi himself was pale; his motions had lost their wonted
+elasticity, and his face was grave. When the old Countess asked him if
+he were ill, he ascribed his condition to the sirocco.
+
+Erika noticed that there were no fresh flowers in the studio: he had
+taken no pains to decorate it for his guests, and she was conscious of
+a foreboding of misfortune.
+
+"I must subject you to some fatigue to-day, I fear, that the picture
+may at last be finished," he said, speaking very quickly. "You must
+have patience this last time. I should not like to give you a picture
+that was not as good as I knew how to make it."
+
+"You have already bestowed too much of your valuable time upon the
+Countess Erika," the old Countess said, kindly.
+
+"Indeed? do you think so?" he murmured, with a bitterness he had never
+displayed before. "Do you think we artists should not be allowed to
+devote so much time to enjoyment? 'Tis true," he added, in an
+undertone, "that we have to pay for it."
+
+Erika looked at him in startled wonder: his words were perfectly
+incomprehensible to her, but the expression of his pale face was one of
+such anguish that her compassion, always too easily aroused, increased
+momentarily.
+
+As usual, she repaired to the adjoining room to change her dress with
+Lucrezia's assistance. When she returned to the studio Lozoncyi was
+standing with his back to the chimney-piece, his hands in the pockets
+of his jacket, while her grandmother, sitting opposite him in her
+favourite chair, was asking him, "What is the matter with you,
+Lozoncyi? Have you lost money in the stock market?"
+
+He shook his head. "No," he said, trying to answer the question in the
+same jesting tone as that in which it had been asked.
+
+"Then what is wrong? Confide in me."
+
+He cleared his throat. "In fact, I----" he began.
+
+Then, perceiving Erika, "Ah, ready so soon?" he cried. "Let us go to
+work."
+
+She could not find the pose immediately: he was obliged to move her
+right arm. His hand was as hot as if burning with fever, and he had
+scarcely touched the girl's arm with it when he withdrew it hastily.
+
+He went to the easel, gazed long and with half-closed eyes at his
+model, then turned and began to paint.
+
+Usually there was a constant flow of conversation between Erika and
+himself. To-day he spoke not a word; perfect silence reigned in the
+studio; the turning of the leaves of the novel which the old Countess
+was reading and the twittering of the birds in the garden outside, were
+audible; one could even hear now and then the sweep of the brush upon
+the canvas.
+
+Thus an hour passed. Then, stepping back a few paces from the picture,
+he fixed his eyes upon Erika, added a few touches with his brush, and
+looked from her to the portrait.
+
+"Look at it yourself," he said, with a hard emphasis on each syllable.
+"So far as I can finish it, it is done. I cannot improve it!"
+
+Both ladies went and stood before it. "I do not know whether it is
+like," said Erika, "but it certainly is a masterpiece."
+
+"It is magnificent!" exclaimed her grandmother. "You have flattered the
+child, and have done it most delicately,--_en homme d'esprit_."
+
+"Flattered!" he cried. "Hardly! I have tried to produce the expression
+which not every one can see in the face. That is the only merit of my
+poor performance: otherwise it is a daub. I have never seemed to myself
+so poor a painter as when at work upon this picture." As he spoke he
+tossed the entire sheaf of brushes which he held in his hand into the
+chimney place.
+
+"What are you about?" exclaimed the old Countess. "You are in a very
+odd mood to-day."
+
+"Oh, the brushes were worn out," he replied. "I could not have painted
+another picture with them."
+
+The blood mounted to Erika's cheek with gratification. She understood
+him. His agitation and sorrow did not disquiet her now, so convinced
+was she that it was in her power to dispel them by a single word.
+
+"You must leave the picture with me for a time. When it is dry I will
+varnish it and send it to you: I must ask you, however, to what
+address?"
+
+"I hope we shall still continue to see you," the old Countess replied.
+"I assure you that I entertain a sincere friendship for you. The visits
+to your studio, although my part in them has been a secondary one, have
+come to be a pleasant habit, which I shall find it hard to discontinue.
+We shall always be glad to welcome you wherever we are."
+
+Erika, meanwhile, had approached the painter. "I do not know how to
+thank you," she said.
+
+"I have done nothing for which thanks are due," he rejoined. "The
+thanks should come from me. All I ask of you is to bestow a thought now
+and then upon the poor painter who has enjoyed the sight of you for so
+long. No, there is one thing more. You will allow me to make a copy of
+the picture for myself?"
+
+The grandmother interposed: "Go change your dress, Erika."
+
+And Lozoncyi asked, "Will you take your portmanteau with you, or shall
+I send it to you?"
+
+Erika went into the next room. Hurriedly, impatiently, she took off the
+white gown and put on her street dress. "Stuff everything into the
+portmanteau," she ordered Lucrezia, slipping a gold coin into the
+servant's hand.
+
+She was in a strange mood: she felt her heart throb up in her throat.
+"Shall I have one moment in which to speak to him alone?" she asked
+herself.
+
+"Ready? You have been quick," her grandmother said when she re-entered
+the studio. "Have you summoned our gondola, Lozoncyi?"
+
+"Yes, Countess. I wonder it is not here. Meanwhile, I must cut the
+roses in my garden for you. I cannot tell for whom they will bloom when
+you come no longer."
+
+He went out into the garden. For one moment Erika hesitated; then she
+followed him. The skies were one uniform gray; every branch and blossom
+drooped wearily. The roses which Lozoncyi tried to cut for Erika fell
+to pieces beneath his touch, strewing the earth with pink and white
+petals.
+
+Lozoncyi did not look around, but cut unmercifully, with a large pair
+of garden scissors. Before he knew it, Erika stood beside him. "I may
+be overbold," she half whispered, lightly touching his arm, "but I
+cannot help feeling that I have a right to know your troubles. Is
+anything distressing you?"
+
+He looked at her and tried to smile. "To say farewell distresses me,
+Countess, as you must be aware."
+
+She was overpowered by timidity, but her compassion gave her courage.
+She collected herself: they must understand each other. "If to say
+farewell really distresses you, I--I cannot see why it should be said,"
+she whispered. The tears stood in her eyes, and he----? He was ashy
+pale, and the roses dropped from his hands.
+
+At this moment the bell rang loudly, and a woman's voice asked, in
+French with a strong Prussian accent, "Does the artist, Paul Lozoncyi,
+live here?"
+
+Erika was startled. Where had she heard that voice before? Out into the
+drooping garden came a tall, well-formed woman, with regular features,
+fair, slightly rouged, every fold of her dress, every curl of her fair
+hair,--yes, even the perfume which breathed about her,--betraying her
+cult of physical perfection. A scarlet veil was drawn tightly about her
+face: otherwise her dress was simple and becoming.
+
+Erika recognized her instantly, and guessed the truth. For a moment the
+garden swam before her eyes: she was afraid she should fall. Meanwhile,
+the new-comer laid a very shapely and well-gloved hand upon the
+artist's arm, and cried, "_Une surprise--hein, mon bébé! Tu ne t'y
+attendais pas--dis?_"
+
+"No," he replied, sharply.
+
+She frowned, and, challenging Erika with a look, she said, "Have the
+kindness to introduce me."
+
+He cleared his throat, and then, sharp and hard as the blow of an axe,
+the words fell from his lips, "My wife."
+
+Erika had recovered her self-possession. She had advanced sufficiently
+in knowledge of the world since Bayreuth to know that no one, not even
+Frau Lozoncyi, could expect her to be cordial. She contented herself
+with acknowledging Lozoncyi's introduction by a slight inclination.
+
+Meanwhile, the old Countess appeared from the studio to see what was
+going on. She took no pains to conceal her astonishment, and when
+Lozoncyi presented his wife her inclination was, if possible, colder
+and haughtier than Erika's had been, as she scanned the stranger
+through her eye-glass. Lozoncyi's servant announced the gondola.
+
+Erika offered her hand to Lozoncyi and had the courage to smile.
+
+The old lady also held out her hand to him, but did not smile. Her
+manner was very cool as she said, "Thank you for all the kindness you
+have shown us. I had hoped you would dine with us to-night; but you
+will not wish this first day to leave--to leave Frau von Lozoncyi."
+
+The gondola pushed off. The water gurgled beneath the first stroke of
+the oar, and the wood creaked slightly. For an instant the artist stood
+upon his threshold, looking after Erika; then he went into the house,
+and the light-green door which she knew so well closed behind him.
+
+How did she feel? She had no time to think of that. All her strength
+was expended in concealing her agitation. She arranged her dress, and
+remarked that the water was unusually muddy. In fact, it had an opaque
+greenish hue. The old Countess did not notice it.
+
+"I never suspected that he was married!" she exclaimed. "He should have
+told us. A man has no right to conceal such a fact."
+
+And Erika replied, with an air of easy indifference that surprised even
+herself, "I suppose, grandmother, he did not imagine that the
+circumstance could possess the slightest interest for us."
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+In addition to many trying and strange characteristics possessed by
+Erika, Providence had bestowed upon her one which at this time stood
+her in stead. Upon any severe agitating experience a few hours of cool,
+hard self-consciousness were sure to ensue,--hours in which she was
+perfectly able to appear in the world with dry eyes, and not even the
+keenest observer could perceive any change in her, save that her laugh
+was perhaps more frequent and more silvery.
+
+This condition of mind was far from being an agreeable one: moreover,
+the reaction afterwards was terrible: nevertheless, thanks to this
+moral paralysis, Erika was able in critical moments to preserve
+appearances.
+
+The day on which, as she supposed, her happiness, her faith, the entire
+purpose of her life, lay in ruins about her, was occupied with social
+duties of every description. She performed them all,--an afternoon tea,
+with lawn-tennis, a dinner, and at last a supper with music at the
+Austrian Consul's.
+
+And even when the old Countess on their way home from the Consul's
+proposed that they should look in at Frau von Neerwinden's, upon whom
+they had not called since the memorable evening when Minona read, Erika
+declared herself quite willing to do so. Perhaps this was because she
+had a secret hope of meeting Lozoncyi there; for she longed to see him,
+to show him how entirely he had been mistaken if he had supposed----
+
+Ah! what pretexts we invent to deceive ourselves as to the cowardly
+impulses of our desires!
+
+But he was not at Frau von Neerwinden's, where the old Countess found
+herself so well entertained, however, that she passed an hour,
+discussing the latest Venetian scandal, in which Erika took no
+interest. She strolled away from the group of elderly guests and
+through the open glass doors leading out upon a balcony above the
+water, where she seemed quite forgotten by those within the apartment.
+
+Beneath her on the dark surface of the lagoon the gondolas were
+crowding from all quarters around a bark whence came music and song.
+They glided past over the black water, a broad stream of humanity
+attracted as by a magnetic needle, lured by a voice. Nearer and nearer
+came the song, until it swept past beneath Erika's balcony:
+
+
+ "Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie,
+ Toi, qui n'as pas d'amour?"
+
+
+And above her glimmered the stars, myriads of worlds, sparkling, and
+shining down disdainfully upon wretched humanity writhing and striving
+in its efforts to attain paltry ends, so vastly important in its own
+estimation.
+
+
+Erika lay awake all night long, oppressed by a terrible burden,--not
+grief for a happiness of which she had dreamed and which had proved to
+be impossible, but something infinitely harder to be borne by a person
+of her temperament, the sense of disgrace.
+
+So long as she had been firmly convinced that he loved her, far from
+resenting the unconventional expression of his admiration, she had
+taken pleasure in it. But now the whole matter bore another aspect in
+her eyes. She remembered with painful distinctness the superficial,
+frivolous theories of life which he had advanced upon their first
+acquaintance. Love! yes, he might perhaps have experienced what he
+designated thus, but at the thought her cheeks burned. She had pleased
+him, as hundreds before her had done, and in the full consciousness of
+the ties of marriage by which he was bound he had allowed himself to
+make love to her as he would have done to any common flirt. When at
+last, in entire faith in the sincerity--yes, in the sacredness--of his
+feeling for her, she had generously laid bare her heart before him, he
+had been simply terrified by the revelation.
+
+"He is probably laughing at me now," she said to herself, trembling in
+every limb. Then, with infinite bitterness, she added, "No; he is
+probably reproaching himself, and wondering at my folly."
+
+It was enough to drive her insane. She buried her burning face in her
+pillow, and groaned aloud.
+
+She shed not a tear throughout the night, and she appeared punctually
+as usual at the breakfast-table, but in the midst of the pleasant
+little meal, which was always taken in her grandmother's boudoir, she
+was overcome by an intense weariness; she longed to flee to some dark
+corner where no one could find her and there let the tears flow freely.
+
+The meal was, however, unusually prolonged. The old Countess, who had
+quite forgotten her vexation at Lozoncyi's concealment of his marriage,
+and who had been vastly entertained the previous evening at Frau von
+Neerwinden's, was in an excellent humour, and was full of conversation,
+in which she showed herself both amusing and witty.
+
+Erika forced herself to laugh and to seem gay, when, just as she felt
+unable to endure the situation for another moment, Lüdecke appeared
+with a note for her. It had come, he informed her, the day before,
+shortly after the ladies had gone out to dinner, and he begged to be
+forgiven for having forgotten to deliver it.
+
+"Old donkey!" the Countess Lenzdorff murmured. Erika opened the
+note with trembling hands. It came from Fräulein Horst, the poor
+music-teacher. She wrote that she had been worse for a couple of days,
+and had made up her mind to go home. With pathetic gratitude and
+sincere admiration she desired to take leave of Erika thus in writing,
+since her weak condition would not allow her to call upon her.
+
+Really distressed, and a little ashamed of having of late somewhat
+neglected the poor creature, Erika had a gondola called, and went
+immediately to the Pension Weber. When she asked in the hall of the
+establishment for Fräulein Horst, the dismay painted on every face at
+once revealed to her the truth: the poor music-teacher had passed away.
+
+She asked to be taken to the room where the dead woman lay; and as
+Attilio, the hotel waiter, conducted her thither, he told how there had
+been for a long time no hope of the invalid's recovery; the day before
+yesterday the last symptom had appeared,--a restless longing for
+change,--for travel; her departure had been fixed for this evening;
+they had all hoped so that she would get off; but she had died here:
+they had found her dead in bed this very morning, her candle burnt down
+into the socket, and her open book on her bed. Oh, yes, it was very sad
+to die so, away from home, and it was very unpleasant for the
+establishment. Eccellenza had no idea of the injury it was to the
+Pension! The Signor Baron in the first story had declared that he would
+not spend another night there.
+
+As Attilio finished, he unlocked the room where the body lay, and
+ushered in Erika. She motioned to him to leave her alone.
+
+The room was darkened. Erika drew aside the curtains a little. There
+was a crucifix among the medicine-bottles on the table beside the bed,
+and a book, open apparently at the place where the dead woman had been
+last reading. It was a German translation of 'Romeo and Juliet:' it
+was open at the balcony scene, 'It is the nightingale, and not the
+lark----'
+
+Erika kneeled down at the bedside, buried her face in the coverlet, and
+wept bitterly. When Attilio came to remind her gently not to stay long,
+she arose and followed him with bowed head from the room.
+
+As she was going down the stairs, she heard a harsh grating voice
+with a slight Polish accent call, "Sophy, Sophy, are you ready?"
+and then from the end of the corridor two figures appeared, one a
+short, thick-set woman heavily laden with a bundle of shawls, a
+travelling-bag, and several umbrellas, and looking up at a man who
+walked beside her, his hands in the pockets of his plaid jacket, his
+eye-glass in his eye, allowing himself with much condescension to be
+adored. They were Strachinsky and his second wife.
+
+"II signore Barone," murmured Attilio.
+
+Strachinsky glanced towards Erika: he frowned and looked away. She was
+glad that he did so, for in her dejected condition she could hardly
+have brought herself to speak to the couple. Her whole soul was filled
+with a desire to creep away to some quiet spot where she might find
+relief in tears.
+
+She sent away her gondola, and hurried through the narrow streets to
+the Piazza San Zacharie. There she took refuge in the church of the
+same name.
+
+It was empty: not even a tourist was present to gaze upon the beauty of
+the famous Gianbellini.
+
+She crouched down in the darkest corner upon the hard stones, and
+there, leaning her head upon the rush seat of a church chair, she wept
+more uncontrollably than she had done beside the corpse of the poor
+music-teacher. All at once she felt that she was no longer alone. She
+looked up. Beside her stood Lozoncyi.
+
+She arose, doing what she could to summon her pride to her aid. "What
+strange chance brings you here?" she asked him.
+
+"No chance whatever," he replied. "I saw you enter the church, and I
+followed you."
+
+"Ah!" By a supreme effort she forced herself to assume an indifferent
+tone. "I have just been to the Pension Weber to take leave of my poor
+music-teacher. I found her dead. You may imagine----"
+
+He shook his head: "And you would have me believe that the tears you
+have just shed are for that poor creature? It is hardly worth the
+trouble. Countess Erika, I have followed you to speak with you
+undisturbed for the last time, to thank you, and to entreat your
+forgiveness. Be frank with me, as I shall be with you. Let us have the
+consolation of knowing that, when we parted, the heart of each was laid
+bare to the other: it will be but poor comfort, after all."
+
+He uttered the words with so decided a casting aside of all disguise
+that Erika's pride availed her nothing. In vain did she seek for words
+in which to reply. She looked in his face, and was startled to see it
+so wan and haggard.
+
+"You see," he said, perceiving her dismay, "that in this case your
+wounded pride may be entirely satisfied; you can easily dispense with
+it. Compared with the torture I have endured since the day before
+yesterday evening, your pain is mere child's play. Oh, I pray you,"--he
+spoke in somewhat of his old impatient tone, the tone of a man whose
+wishes are usually complied with gladly,--"sit down for a moment: this
+is our last opportunity for speaking with each other. I owe you an
+explanation. You have a right to ask me how I came to conceal from you
+that I was married. To that I can only reply that I never speak of my
+marriage. I am not proud of my wife; I never take her into society with
+me; few of the friends whom I have here are aware that I am married,
+although I do not intentionally make a secret of it. I frequently
+travel alone, and last autumn the relations between my wife and myself,
+from causes unnecessary to relate, became of so strained a nature that
+we agreed to separate for a time. I avoided, when I could, even the
+thought of her. In spite of all this, I ought not to have refrained
+from acquainting you with my circumstances; nor should I have done so
+if I had dreamed---- You shrink, but we have agreed that for once in
+our lives, entirely casting aside pretence, we will tell each other the
+truth. In this case there is nothing in it that can offend your pride.
+I had conceived an enthusiasm for you when you were a very little girl.
+Shall I say that I loved you from the first moment that I saw you? No!
+you excited my curiosity, my wonder; I could not help thinking of you.
+A veritable angel with wings would not have been more wonderful to me
+than such a being as yourself. I did not wish to believe in you. At
+times I called you too high-strung, at times I said to myself that
+yours was simply a cold nature. You know how I avoided you,--avoided
+you when I could not take my eyes off you; and then--then--you have no
+idea of how my heart beat when I went to you to beg to be allowed to
+paint your portrait. From that time all speculation with regard to you
+was at an end: I blissfully and gratefully accepted the miracle
+revealed to me; nay, I ceased to regard you as a miracle; you were for
+me the key to a pure, noble life, of which I had hitherto never
+dreamed. And I began to long for this life: the disgust I had hitherto
+felt for the whole world I now felt for myself; and then all was over
+with me. I had no longer any thought save of you; my whole soul was
+filled with eager anticipation of the short time I could pass with you;
+when you were gone I used to sit for hours in my studio, recalling in
+memory your every look and word. The budding freshness of your being,
+which needed only a little sunshine to blossom forth gloriously, your
+profound capacity for enthusiasm, the wealth of affection concealed
+beneath a coldness of manner, and withal the proud, unsullied purity of
+your heart, mind, and soul--oh, God! how lovely it all was! But you
+were so far removed from me; a universe separated us. Never, no, never
+for one moment did I dream of your bestowing one thought of love upon
+me. Then, when, conscious that the joy which had come to be my life was
+so soon to end, I went to you in most melancholy mood, the day before
+yesterday evening, your look, the tone of your voice, set my brain on
+fire. I left you and wandered about the streets like one possessed.
+When at last I went home, I shut myself up in the studio and began to
+dream. I pictured what my life might have been had I been free to clasp
+in my arms the bliss that might have been mine. I seemed to feel your
+presence, so pure, so holy, and yet so tender and loving. The life at
+which I had always sneered--a home-life--seemed to me the only one
+worth living, if lived with you. I dreamed it in every detail; I
+thought how my art could be ennobled and purified through you,--my art,
+which until now had been little more than the cry of a tortured soul.
+My former life lay far behind me, like some foul swamp from which you
+had rescued me. How I adored you! how tenderly and truly I reverenced
+you! Then on a sudden I awoke to the consciousness of how impossible it
+all was. I crept out into the garden, where in the early dawn all
+looked pale and fading like my dying dream. I forced myself to think:
+it pained me so to think!--but I forced myself to do so, to draw
+conclusions. Whichever way my thoughts turned, they led to despair,--to
+separation from you. I could not resist the conviction that it was my
+duty to end all intercourse with you as quickly as possible. What next
+occurred you know yourself. But you never can dream of what I endured
+from the time when you entered my studio yesterday morning until the
+moment when you followed me into the garden and there among the roses
+held out your hands to me, your eyes filled with light, everything
+about you so chaste, so grave, so tender; no, that agony you never can
+imagine! Not to be able to fall at your feet, to take you in my arms
+and say, 'My heaven, my queen, my every thought, my life, my art, shall
+all be one prayer of gratitude to you!' To live a joyless life when joy
+is all unknown is nothing,--a matter of course. But when an angel opens
+wide the gates of Paradise for one, and one must say, 'No, I dare not!'
+it is horrible! one cannot believe it possible to survive it!" He
+ceased.
+
+Erika had listened to him with bowed head. Every word that he had
+uttered had been balm to her wounded pride, and at the same time had
+excited that which was most easily stirred within her, the tenderest,
+warmest emotion of her heart,--her compassion. She had, it is true, a
+vague consciousness that it was not right that she should listen to
+such words from a married man, but she stifled it with the excuse that
+it was their last interview.
+
+His eyes sought hers: apparently he expected her to speak; but her lips
+refused to frame a sentence, although there was a question which she
+longed to ask.
+
+He leaned towards her. "There is something you would fain ask," he
+whispered. "Tell me what it is."
+
+"I--I"--at last she managed to say,--"I cannot comprehend what induced
+you to marry that woman."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders: "No, nor can I, now, myself. How can I make
+you understand that in the world in' which I lived there were no women
+who inspired me with respect? it was made up of my fellow-students, and
+of women in no wise superior to the one of whom we are speaking. I was
+convinced that all her sex were either like her, or were harsh old
+maids, like my aunt Illona. Ten years older than I, she controlled my
+thoughts and my actions; I could not do without her, and at last I
+married her for fear lest some one of my fellow-students should take
+her from me." He paused.
+
+Erika drew her breath painfully.
+
+"Shortly afterwards came fame," he began anew, "suddenly,--over-night,
+as it were,--and all doors were flung wide for me. I do not want to
+represent myself to you as a better man than I am: I do not deny that
+all went smoothly in the beginning. I did not suffer from the burden
+with which I had laden my life. Dozens of my fellows lived just
+as I did. She relieved me of every petty care, she removed every
+obstacle from my path, she undertook all my transactions with the
+picture-dealers, she was everything that I was not,--practical,
+cautious, energetic. I went into society without her,--she was content
+that it should be so,--and I enjoyed in intercourse with other women
+that charm which was lacking in my home. I felt no disgust then at my
+own want of all true perception. The fashionable circles which I
+frequented were in no wise in advance, so far as a lofty standard of
+morality was concerned, of those in which I had lived hitherto. Whence
+does a young artist nowadays derive his knowledge of so-called refined
+society? From a few exaggerated women who befriend him half the time
+because they are wearying for a new toy. We poor fellows have but
+little opportunity to sound the depths of a true, pure womanly nature,
+least of all in the beginning of our career. It never occurred to
+me to think what my life might have been under other influences,
+until---- Oh, Erika, Erika, why did you so transform me? Why did you
+drag me from the mire which was my element, to leave me to perish?"
+
+She put both hands to her temples. "What can I do?" she murmured,
+hoarsely. "What can I do?"
+
+There she stood, pale and still, trembling with sympathy and
+compassion, needing help and helpless, more beautiful than ever, with
+cheeks flushed and eyes bright with fever.
+
+On a sudden the cannon from San Giorgio announced the hour of noon, and
+instantly all the bells in Venice began to swing their brazen tongues.
+Erika awaked as from a dream. "I must go," she said. "My grandmother is
+expecting me."
+
+"This is farewell forever," he murmured.
+
+He bowed his head and turned away. She could not endure the sight of
+his agony. Approaching him, and laying her hand upon his arm, she
+began, "Do you really believe that you owe no duty to your wife?"
+
+"None!" He could not understand why she should ask the question.
+
+"Then--then----" she stammered, "why not obtain a divorce?"
+
+He gazed at her for an instant. "And you could then consent to be my
+wife? You, the beautiful, idolized Countess Erika Lenzdorff, the wife
+of a poor, divorced artist?"
+
+"Yes," she replied, firmly. Then, offering him her hand, and once more
+lifting to his her clear, pure eyes, she left the church. In an
+inspired frenzy of self-sacrifice, as it were, she crossed the Piazza,
+where the grass grew between the uneven stones of the pavement, and
+above which the gray clouds were floating.
+
+She was as if borne aloft by an inspiration that elevated her whole
+being. Suddenly she became aware of a discord in her sensations. On her
+ear there fell, sung to the tinkling accompaniment of a guitar,--the
+words,--
+
+
+ "Tu m'hai bagnato il seno mio di lagrime,
+ T'amo d'immenso amor."
+
+
+Looking up, she perceived the same repulsive musicians that had so
+shocked her awhile ago on the Piazza San Stefano.
+
+She hastened her steps; but the sound long pursued her, 'T'amo
+d'immenso amor!' until it died away with a last 'amor.'
+
+She frowned. She was indignant, that the wondrous, sacred word should
+be thus profaned.
+
+
+There was no brightness in the future to which Erika looked forward. Of
+this she was fully aware. They must go forth into the world, he and
+she, with none to wish them God-speed, none to bless them. And yet the
+melancholy which shrouded their love made it doubly dear to her. The
+craving for suffering which for some time past had thrilled her excited
+nerves now stirred within her. Had she not been seeking it lately
+everywhere,--in poetry, in music, in art?
+
+She passed the day in this state of enthusiastic exaltation. At
+night she slept better than she had for long, but shortly after she
+awaked she was assailed by a distracting, feverish agitation. No
+arrangement had been made as to how she should get the intelligence
+from Lozoncyi with regard to his wife's consent to a divorce. Would he
+bring the information himself? would he send her a note? Ten o'clock
+struck,--half-past ten,--eleven,--and no message came. Her hands, her
+lips, her brow, burned with fever; she drew her breath with difficulty.
+
+About eleven o'clock the old Countess went to take her forenoon walk.
+She had been gone but a short time when Lüdecke announced Herr von
+Lozoncyi.
+
+Erika had him shown up, and the first glance which she cast at his face
+told her that for him there was no possibility of a release.
+
+Without a word she held out her hand to him. His hand was icy cold and
+trembled in her clasp; he looked pale and wretched,--the picture of
+misery.
+
+Possessed absolutely by the pity that had filled her soul, she saw in
+his face only torturing despair at not being able to rid his life of
+what so degraded it. What could she do for him now? What sacrifice
+could she make?
+
+"Sit down," she said, awkwardly, after a pause.
+
+"It is not worth while," he rejoined, in the dull tone of a man crushed
+to the earth beneath a heavy burden. "I have been waiting for an hour
+to see you alone, that I might tell you that which must be told. I have
+spoken with--my wife. She will not consent to a divorce, and without
+her consent no divorce is possible. She has never given me any legal
+cause for a separation,--no, never, strange as it may seem in a woman
+of her class. Yesterday evening I spoke to her, and there was a
+terrible scene; and now,"--his voice grew fainter,--"now all is over."
+He laid his hand upon the back of a chair, as if to support himself,
+and paused for a moment, then resumed: "I ought to have written to
+you,--it would have been far better,--far,--but I could not deny myself
+one more sight of you. Farewell. Now all is over."
+
+She stood as if rooted to the spot, pale, mute, searching feverishly
+for some consolation for him. What more could she offer him? There was
+a gulf as of death between them. She sought some path that would lead
+across it,--in vain. She felt faint and giddy.
+
+"Farewell," he murmured. "Thanks--thanks for all--the joy--for all the
+sorrow---- Good God! how dear it has been!" His voice broke; he turned
+away, holding out to her, for the last time, a slender, trembling hand.
+
+Why at sight of that hand did memory recall so vividly the half-starved
+artist lad after whom as a tiny girl she had run to relieve his misery?
+And now she could do nothing for him,--nothing! Really nothing?
+Suddenly it flashed upon her.
+
+She had but to hold out her arms, to forget herself, and his anguish
+would be transformed to bliss. Compassion grew within her and took
+possession of her like insanity; her soul was shaken as by an
+earthquake; what had been above was now beneath, and from the chaos one
+thought emerged, at first formless as a dream, then waxing clearer,
+until it took shape as a command, gradually obtaining absolute
+mastership of her.
+
+She raised her head, proud, resolved. "Have you the courage to break
+with all your present life, and to begin a new one with me?" she asked.
+
+"A new life?" he murmured, and, vaguely, uncertainly, as if unable to
+trust his senses and fearing to lend words to what was monstrous and
+impossible, he added, "With you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He recoiled a step, and looked her full in the face, speechless,
+breathless.
+
+A burning blush rose to her cheeks. "You have not the courage," she
+said, sternly. "Well, then----" With an imperious gesture she turned
+away.
+
+But he detained her. "Not the courage?" he cried, seizing her hand and
+carrying it to his lips. "Offer a cup of pure water to a man perishing
+of thirst, and ask him if he has the courage to drink! The question is
+not of me, but of you. Have you the faintest idea of the meaning of
+what you have said?"
+
+She shook her head: "I have learned to look life in the face; I know
+what I am doing. I know what the consequences of my act will be; I know
+that I resign all intercourse with my fellow-beings, saving only with
+yourself; that my only refuge on earth will be at your side; I know
+that I shall be a lost creature in the eyes of the world; and yet, if I
+may cherish the conviction that thereby I can redeem your shattered
+existence, that I can purify and ennoble your life, I am ready."
+
+Her voice, always soft and full of that quality which goes straight to
+the heart, was veiled and vibrating; her hands were clasped upon her
+breast, her head was proudly erect, and her eyes seemed larger than
+usual from the ecstasy that shone in them. She was supernaturally
+lovely, and never had the chaste purity peculiar to her beauty
+been more distinctly stamped upon her face than at this moment when
+she--she, Erika Lenzdorff--was voluntarily proposing to follow a
+married man through the world as his mistress.
+
+"Erika!" There was boundless exultation in his voice; he took one step
+towards her to clasp her in his arms and to press the first kiss upon
+her lips. But she repulsed him, overcome, it seemed, by sudden distress
+and dread, and when he repeated, in a tone of dismay and reproach,
+"Erika!" she passed her hand across her brow, and murmured, "My entire
+life belongs to you. Do not grudge me a few hours of reflection and
+preparation."
+
+He smiled at her reserve, and contented himself with pressing his lips
+tenderly again and again upon her hand, as he said, caressingly,
+"Preparation? Oh, my darling, my darling! Meet me to-night at the
+railway-station at ten, and we will start for Florence. Leave all the
+rest to me."
+
+"To-night it would be impossible," she said: "it is our reception
+evening. I could not leave without giving rise to a search for me."
+
+"Then to-morrow?" he persisted, speaking very quickly in his beguiling,
+irresistible voice. Everything about him betrayed the feverish
+insistence of a man who suddenly gives free rein to a passion which he
+has hitherto with difficulty held in check.
+
+"To-morrow," she repeated, anxiously,--"to-morrow----"
+
+"Do not delay, Erika, if you are really resolved."
+
+"To-morrow be it, then!" The words came syllable by syllable from her
+lips in a kind of dull staccato.
+
+"Erika!" His eyes shone, his whole being seemed transfigured.
+
+"Yes," she went on, "Constance Mühlberg has arranged an excursion to
+Chioggia to-morrow in a steamer she has chartered. My grandmother is to
+chaperon the party. At the last moment I will refuse to accompany her,
+and I shall then be free. When shall I come?"
+
+They decided upon taking the train leaving between eight and nine in
+the evening for Vienna. Then other necessary details were arranged, a
+process unutterably distasteful to Erika, to whom it seemed like making
+the business arrangements for a funeral. She suffered intensely in thus
+descending to blank, prosaic reality from the visionary heights to
+which she had soared.
+
+At last everything had been discussed: there was nothing more to be
+said. A great dread then stole over her: she grew very silent.
+
+"I cannot believe in my bliss," he murmured. "You stand there in your
+white robes so chaste and grave, with that holy light in your eyes,
+more like a martyr awaiting death than a loving woman ready to break
+through all barriers to----"
+
+There was something in this description of the situation that offended
+her,--offended her so deeply that with what was almost harshness she
+interrupted him, saying, "And now, I pray you, go!"
+
+He looked at her in some dismay. She cast down her eyes, and with
+flaming cheeks stammered, "My grandmother will return in a few moments:
+I should not like to see you in her presence."
+
+"You are right," he said, changing colour. "Your grandmother has always
+been so kind to me, and now----"
+
+"Ah, go!"
+
+"May I not come to see you at some time during the day to-morrow?"
+
+"No."
+
+"In the evening, then,--at eight?"
+
+She looked him full in the face, stern resolve in her eyes. "I shall be
+punctual," she said.
+
+"To-morrow at eight," he whispered.
+
+"To-morrow at eight," she repeated.
+
+A minute afterwards he stood alone in the sunlit space behind the
+hotel.
+
+He rubbed his eyes, seeming to waken slowly from a lovely and most
+improbable dream.
+
+
+At first he felt only exhilaration, the joy of a near approach to a
+long-desired but unhoped-for goal.
+
+"To-morrow at eight," he whispered to himself several times. Then on a
+sudden the keen edge of his delight was blunted; his joy seemed to slip
+through his fingers; he could not retain it.
+
+He recalled the entire scene through which he had just passed. He saw
+the girl's expression of face, he heard the sound of her voice. It was
+all lovely, exquisitely lovely, but, after all, there was something
+inharmonious, unnatural in it. This very girl who had of her own free
+impulse proposed to fly with him had never, during their long
+consultation, been impelled to utter one word of affection for him, and
+he himself was conscious that he could not have demanded it of her. She
+had been gentle, enthusiastic, self-sacrificing,--yes, self-sacrificing
+even to fanaticism. Self-sacrificing! he repeated the word to himself
+in an undertone: it had seized hold of his imagination as portraying
+precisely her attitude and bearing. Self-sacrificing,--yes, but not the
+slightest evidence had she given him of warm, passionate affection. He
+frowned, as he walked on thoughtfully.
+
+"How does she picture to herself the future, I wonder?" Distinctly in
+his memory rang her words, "I know that I resign all intercourse with
+my fellow-beings, saving with yourself; that my only refuge on earth
+will be at your side; I know that I shall be a lost creature in the
+eyes of the world; and yet, if I can only cherish the conviction that I
+can thereby redeem your shattered existence, that I can purify and
+ennoble your life, I am ready."
+
+How ravishing she had been whilst uttering these words! and beautiful,
+pathetic words they were; but----
+
+He shivered, in spite of the Venetian May sunshine. Some chord of
+overwrought feeling suddenly snapped; a stifling sensation of
+ungrateful and almost angry rebellion against an undeserved happiness
+assailed him. How could this be? He was paralyzed by a cowardly dread.
+
+He was ashamed of this revulsion of feeling, and struggled against it
+with angry self-contempt, but he could not shake it off. He had a vague
+consciousness that he must always be thus shamed in Erika's presence.
+To avoid being so he should have to incite himself to a degree of
+high-souled enthusiasm which was unnatural and inconvenient. "Purify
+and ennoble his life!" What did that mean? "Purify? ennoble?"
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+When by a long and roundabout way he at last reached his home on foot,
+and walked through the stone-paved, whitewashed corridor, looking
+absently before him, he perceived sitting beneath a mulberry-tree, the
+lower boughs of which were covered with the blossoms of a climbing
+rose, an attractive female figure, whose golden hair gleamed in the
+sunlight. She was sitting in a basket chair, and was engaged upon a
+piece of delicate crochet-work. She wore a gown of some white woollen
+stuff, very simply made, and confined at the waist by a belt of russet
+leather; the sleeves, which were rather short, left exposed not only
+the wrists, but part of a plump arm, white and smooth as polished
+marble, and the finely-formed throat rose as white and polished from
+the turn-down sailor collar, beneath which a dark-blue cravat was
+loosely knotted. How deft and skilful, as she worked, was every
+movement of her rather large but faultlessly-shaped hands!
+
+She was somewhat stout, but there was a certain charm in that. The
+broad full shoulders gave an impression of vigour that nothing could
+subdue. Lozoncyi could not but admire them. He was amazed. Yesterday
+there had been shrieks and screams, torn clothes and broken furniture,
+while to-day, after a scene that would have made any other woman ill,
+there was not a trace of fatigue, no dark shade beneath the steel-blue
+eyes, not a wrinkle about the rather large mouth. What a fund of
+inexhaustible vitality the woman possessed! what triumphant, healthy
+vigour! Not a sign of nervousness, of useless agitation; no breath of
+exaggeration.
+
+Ah, she had her good side,--there was no denying it. He sighed, and,
+hearing himself sigh, was startled by the turn his thoughts were
+taking. Was it possible that after a forced companionship of scarcely
+two days--a companionship of which, when he could not avoid it, he had
+taken advantage to hurl in the woman's face his hatred and contempt for
+her--old habits were asserting their rights?
+
+She went on crocheting. The sunlight crept down from among the climbing
+roses and glittered upon her crochet-needle. At last it shone in her
+eyes: she moved her chair to avoid the dazzling glare, and, looking up,
+saw him. Instead of the dark looks she had given him yesterday, she
+smiled slowly, blinking her strange cat-like eyes in the sunshine, and
+by her smile disclosing a row of pearly teeth. He passed her sullenly,
+as if she had taken an unjustifiable liberty with him, and went into
+the studio, wishing to persuade himself that he had a horror of her,
+that she repelled him. He hoped to feel that disgust for her with which
+the thought of her had inspired him since love for Erika had filled his
+heart; but he did not feel the disgust.
+
+
+He lingered for less time than usual before Erika's portrait, which
+occupied a large easel in the most conspicuous place in the studio, and
+went to his writing-table. Several business letters awaited him there;
+he opened them with an impatient sigh. They were for the most part
+requests for answers to letters received by him weeks previously. Since
+he had been in Venice his business correspondence--in fact, his
+business affairs generally--had fallen into terrible disorder.
+
+He opened the latest letter: it contained columns of figures. It was
+the account from his picture-dealer. He snapped his fingers, and,
+sitting down, tried to comprehend it. In vain! The figures danced
+before his eyes. Involuntarily he looked up. Through the glass door of
+the studio a pair of greenish eyes were gazing at him with an
+expression of good-humoured raillery. His heart began to beat fast.
+Formerly she had conducted his entire correspondence for him,--with
+what perfect regularity and skill! Before she had taken up the trade of
+model in consequence of a love-affair with an artist, she had been a
+_dame de comptoir_; she was as skilled in accounts as a bank-clerk. He
+needed but to speak the word, and she would reduce all these provoking
+affairs to perfect order; but he would ask no favour of her. Then she
+opened the studio door, and, entering softly, laid a warm strong hand
+upon his shoulder. He tried to persuade himself that he disliked the
+touch of this hand. But he did not dislike it: it had a soothing effect
+upon his excited nerves. Nevertheless he forced himself to shake it
+off.
+
+The woman laughed, a low, gentle laugh,--the laugh of a cynic. She
+lighted a cigarette and handed it to him, saying, "_Pauvre bébé_, try
+to rest instead of settling those accounts: I will do it all for you in
+the twinkling of an eye, while it would take you until next week."
+
+This time she did not lay her hand upon his shoulder, but stroked his
+head gently. "_Voyons, Séraphine!_" he said, crossly, shaking her off.
+
+She laughed again, good-humouredly, carelessly, with unconscious
+cynicism. Before three minutes had passed, she was seated in his stead
+at the writing-table, and he, with the cigarette which she had offered
+him between his lips, was standing lost in thought before Erika's
+portrait.
+
+How long he had been standing thus he could not have told, when he
+heard a deep voice beside him say, "_C'est rudement fort, tu sais.
+Sapristi!_ Shall you exhibit it?"
+
+"I have not made up my mind," he replied, absently, and then he was
+vexed with himself for answering her.
+
+"She is pretty, there's no denying it," Seraphine confessed. "I am
+really sorry to have interfered with your amusement, but nothing could
+have come of it. If I am not mistaken, you had gone as far as was
+possible. She is one of those who give nothing for nothing, and who
+never invest their capital except in good securities. I am sorry I
+cannot resign these securities to her; _je suis bon garçon, moi_, but,
+_mon Dieu, lorsqu'il y a un homme dans la question--sapristi, chaque
+femme pour elle!_"
+
+Here Lucrezia opened the door, and announced that lunch was served in
+the garden. Lozoncyi had firmly resolved never again to sit down to a
+meal with this woman. But, before he could say so, she began, "It would
+be well if you could give them something to talk of again in Paris.
+When did you leave in the autumn? In October? You have no idea what a
+relief your departure was to the artists there. You ought to see the
+crazy carnival of colour held in this year's Salon! Bouchard exhibited
+a nymph with a faun, quite in your style, only yours is flesh and his
+is putty,--a poor thing; but the critics exalted it, and gave it a
+_médaille d'honneur_. You had begun to make the artists very
+uncomfortable: they are praising up mere daubers, to belittle you,
+doing what they can to knock away the floor from under you. But you
+need only show yourself to recover your ground. Becard told me lately
+that he had got hold of quite a new way of looking at things: his
+picture in the Salon----"
+
+Talking thus, she had gone slowly towards the door; now she was
+outside. Unconsciously he had followed her.
+
+"What has Becard in the Salon?"
+
+"A woman on a balcony, after dinner, between two different lights,--on
+one side candle-light, and on the other moonlight; half of her is
+sulphur-yellow, the other half sea-green; _c'est d'un dróle!_"
+
+"I saw the sketch for that monstrosity in his atelier," cried Lozoncyi,
+excited. "Did they accept it?"
+
+She had taken her seat at the tempting table, upon which smoked a
+golden omelette; she did not answer instantly.
+
+"Did they accept it?" Lozoncyi repeated.
+
+"Accept it----! Why, my dear, they laud him to the skies: they hail him
+as _le Messie_!"
+
+Lozoncyi had now seated himself opposite her. He brought his fist down
+upon the table. "Confound it!" he muttered between his teeth.
+
+"You are wrong to be vexed," she said: "he is a good fellow, and your
+friend. He told me awhile ago with reference to his success, 'It is
+envy of Lozoncyi that is now standing me in stead.' Let me give you
+some omelette: it is growing cold."
+
+He allowed her to fill his plate.
+
+
+Two hours later he was pacing his atelier to and fro in gloomy mood.
+
+He had enjoyed his breakfast, and had been entertained by his wife's
+chatter. With infinite skill she lured his fancy back to the old,
+careless, good-humoured Bohemian life in Paris. He questioned her with
+increasing curiosity as to the works of his fellows there, and she told
+him stories,--highly spiced but very amusing stories; she peeled his
+orange for him, and when the sun began to shine full upon the table at
+which they were sitting they drank their coffee in the studio. A
+sensation of intense comfort stole over him; but in the midst of it he
+was conscious of physical uneasiness. She looked at him, and
+disappeared with a laugh, returning with a pair of easy slippers. It
+was warm; his boots were tight; he took them off and slipped his feet
+into the easy shoes she had brought him. He felt as if relieved for the
+first time for a long while of a certain restraint. He yawned and
+stretched himself. Suddenly he shivered.
+
+The question suggested itself, Could he ever allow himself such license
+in Erika's presence?
+
+He started up. The momentarily-restored harmony between himself and his
+wife was interrupted. In the sudden change of mood to which in the
+course of years she had become accustomed, he repulsed her,--actually
+turned her out of the room, rudely, angrily.
+
+Again his every pulse throbbed. He felt as if he should go mad. His
+revulsion of feeling with regard to Erika clothed itself in a new
+dress. It was odious, unprincipled, criminal, to take advantage of the
+enthusiasm of this inexperienced young creature, to drag her down to
+probable--nay, to certain--misery. He went to his writing-table; he
+would write to her that for her sake he withdrew from their agreement.
+But scarcely had he written the first word when a wave of passion swept
+over his soul, benumbing his energies: he knew that he was as powerless
+to renounce her as he was to carry out any other resolve. What did he
+really want? He sprang up, crushed in his hand the sheet of paper which
+his pen had scarcely touched, and threw it away. Once again he stood
+before the portrait.
+
+At last, with bowed head, he went into the next room. Erika had left
+there by accident one or two articles belonging to her,--a lace
+handkerchief, a glove. He pressed them to his lips.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+"Erika! Erika!" old Countess Lenzdorff calls in a joyful voice across
+the garden of the Hôtel Britannia. "Erika!"
+
+The old lady is sitting by the breast-work bordering on the Canal
+Grande. Erika is coming out of a side-door of the hotel. Her
+grandmother had sent her upstairs for her parasol. How strange the girl
+looks, with cheeks so white and lips so feverishly red! But that is a
+secondary matter: what must strike every one who looks at her to-day is
+the transfigured light in her eyes,--a light shining as through tears.
+
+"Come quickly!" her grandmother calls. "I have a surprise for you." But
+Erika does not come quickly: she walks slowly through the blooming
+garden to her grandmother, who has an open letter in her hand.
+
+The little garden is basking in the sunshine; the heavens are
+cloudless; the lagoon looks as if it were sprinkled with diamonds, as
+the black gondolas glide past, the sinewy brown throats of the
+gondoliers shining like bronze. In the fragrant garden can be heard,
+now loud, now faint, the sound of gay voices on the water mingled with
+the constant lapping of the waves and the jangle of church-bells.
+
+"From whom does this letter come?" her grandmother asks Erika, with a
+smile.
+
+"I--I cannot imagine," the girl murmurs. Her pale cheeks grow paler,
+and a fixed look comes into her shining eyes.
+
+"Indeed? From whom should a letter come which I am so glad to receive?"
+
+Erika starts.
+
+"From Goswyn!" says her grandmother. "But what a face is that!"
+
+"Am I to be as glad as you are because Goswyn at last condescends to
+take some notice of the kind sympathy you have shown him?" says Erika.
+But the old hard intonation of her voice is gone: it sounds weary and
+dull.
+
+"Never mind!" her grandmother rejoins, triumphantly. "First read the
+letter, and then tell me if you still have the faintest disposition to
+be vexed with him. Whether you have any regard for him or not, the
+letter will please you. He asks, among other things, whether we shall
+be in Venice next week, and if he may come to us here."
+
+Erika holds the letter in her hands, but when she fixes her eyes upon
+it the bold distinct characters swim before them. She looks away into
+the dazzling sunlight above the lagoon.
+
+Among the black gondolas with white lanterns she now perceives Prince
+Helmy in his yellow cutter, which usually lies at anchor in front of
+the Hôtel Britannia. Espying the two ladies, the Prince clambers up to
+them over one or two gondolas, and asks, "Can you ladies not be induced
+to intrust yourselves to me? It would be far pleasanter to go to
+Chioggia in my cutter than in the steamer."
+
+"It certainly would," the old Countess replies, with more amiability
+than she is wont to display towards Prince Helmy. "But," she adds,
+"unfortunately I cannot have that pleasure. I have promised to act as
+chaperon to Constance Mühlberg's party, and I cannot disappoint her."
+
+"I'm sorry."
+
+At this moment a merry old voice cries, "Your obedient servant,
+ladies!" It is Count Treurenberg, dressed in a light summer suit, all
+ready for the excursion to Chioggia. "You are going to Chioggia too?"
+
+"We are."
+
+"'Tis a pity you cannot go with us."
+
+"I have just been telling them," observes Prince Helmy.
+
+"Do you know whether Lozoncyi is to be of the party?" asks Treurenberg.
+
+"I have no idea," Countess Lenzdorff replies, rather coldly.
+
+"What do you think of the wife who has made her appearance so suddenly?
+Something of a surprise, eh?"
+
+"A surprise which does not interest me much," the Countess replies,
+haughtily.
+
+"Of course not. But there are some of our Venetian beauties who could
+hardly say as much. 'Tis odd that the fellow should have been so
+close-mouthed concerning his 'indissoluble tie.' I saw him once in
+Paris with the individual in question, but I never dreamed that that
+yellow-haired dame had any legitimate claim upon him. Probably a
+youthful folly."
+
+"A millstone that he has hung about his neck," Prince Helmy says,
+feelingly,--"a burden that will weigh him down to the earth. I am very
+sorry for him."
+
+"H'm!" Count Treurenberg drawls, "my pity is not so easily excited.
+Such women make an artist's life very comfortable; and she certainly
+has interfered but little with him hitherto." He rubs his hands with a
+significant glance.
+
+"Are you ready, Count?" Prince Helmy asks, after the pause that follows
+Treurenberg's words.
+
+The Count is ready, and takes leave of the ladies. Shortly afterwards
+they see him in the cutter with the Prince, who is helping his two
+sailors to hoist the tiny sail. The gentlemen wave a respectful
+farewell to the Lenzdorffs; the cutter glides off, at first slowly from
+among the gondolas, then more and more swiftly, skimming the water like
+a bird in the direction of the line of foam which marks the boundary of
+the open sea.
+
+It is a trifle which has made the weight upon Erika's heart heavier in
+the last minute. She has said to herself that never again after
+to-morrow will a man accord her the respectful courtesy just shown her
+by the two gentlemen in the cutter.
+
+Her attack of cowardice is a short one, however. Immediately afterwards
+she feels the joy of a fanatic who delights in suffering one pang more
+for his convictions.
+
+"I cannot see why we have not been called to lunch," Countess Lenzdorff
+remarks, consulting her watch; then, observing Erika, she is startled
+by the girl's looks. "What is the matter with you?" she asks, and when
+the girl's only answer is a rapid change of colour, the thought occurs
+to her for the first time, "Is it possible that she cares for
+Lozoncyi?--my proud Erika?" She observes her grand-daughter narrowly,
+and an ugly suspicion invades her heart. "What reply shall I make to
+Goswyn?" she thinks. "Good heavens! I had no idea! Perhaps it is only
+fancy. But if---- It would be my fault. And people call me shrewd! Poor
+child!"
+
+Meanwhile, Fritz announces that lunch is served.
+
+
+"My child, you are eating nothing," the old Countess says anxiously to
+her grand-daughter, who is doing her best to swallow a morsel of food.
+
+"I am not very well," Erika replies, in a faint, weary voice. How often
+those tones will ring through the old Countess's soul! "I have a slight
+headache," and she puts her hand to her head; "I feel as if a storm
+were coming; but there is not a cloud in the sky."
+
+"So, there is not a cloud to be seen. The sunshine is so powerful in
+the dining-hall that the shades have to be drawn down, thus diffusing a
+gray twilight through the room.
+
+"Let us go to our rooms," says the old Countess, with a sigh of
+discouragement. They go, and Erika seems to be making ready for the
+proposed expedition. But when her grandmother, fully arrayed, enters
+the girl's room half an hour afterwards, she finds her in a long white
+dressing-gown with loosened hair, leaning back in an easy-chair.
+
+"My child, my child! what is the matter with you?" the old lady
+exclaims, in terror.
+
+"Nothing," the girl replies, without lifting her downcast eyes. "A
+headache. You can see I meant to go, but I cannot: you must go without
+me. Give all kinds of affectionate messages to Constance, and tell her
+how sorry I am."
+
+"My dear child, I cannot go with those people if you are not well," the
+old lady says, beginning to take off her gloves. "No human being could
+expect me to do that."
+
+Erika is trembling violently. "But, grandmother," she replies, "it is
+only a headache. You can do me no good by staying at home, and you know
+I cannot bear to make a disturbance."
+
+"Yes, yes," says the grandmother. "But lie down, at least, my darling."
+
+"You could not disappoint Constance Mühlberg: you know she depends upon
+you, she needs your support," Erika goes on, persuasively.
+
+"Yes, that is true," the Countess admits.
+
+She notices that Erika has hastily brushed away tears from her eyes,
+and the suspicion which had assailed her below in the garden is
+strengthened. Perhaps it would be better to leave the girl in peace for
+a while, she says to herself.
+
+Meanwhile, Marianne appears, to say that the Countess Mühlberg is
+awaiting the ladies below in her gondola.
+
+"Go, grandmother dear," Erika says, faintly; "go!"
+
+"Yes, I will go; but first let me see you lie down, my child." She
+conducts Erika to the bed. "How you tremble! You can hardly stand." She
+arranges her long dressing-gown, strokes the girl's cheek, and kisses
+her forehead. She has reached the door, when she hears a low voice
+behind her say, "Grandmother!"
+
+She turns. Erika is half sitting up in bed, looking after her. "What is
+it, my child?"
+
+"Nothing, only I was thinking just now that I have not treated you as I
+ought, sometimes lately. Forgive me, grandmother!"
+
+The old lady clasps the trembling girl in her arms. "Little goose!"
+she says. "As if that were of any consequence, my darling! Only go
+quietly to sleep, that I may find you well when I return. Where is my
+pocket-handkerchief? Oh, there is Goswyn's letter: when you are a
+little better you can read it. You need not be afraid that I shall try
+to persuade you; that time has gone by; but I think the letter ought to
+please you. At all events, it is something to have inspired so
+thoroughly excellent a man with so deep and true an affection; and you
+will see, too, that you have been unjust to him. Good-bye, my darling,
+good-bye."
+
+For the last time Erika presses the delicate old hand to her lips. The
+Countess has gone. Erika is alone. She has locked her door, and is
+sitting on her bed with Goswyn's letter open on her lap. Her tears are
+falling thick and fast upon it. It reads as follows:
+
+
+"My very dear old Friend,--
+
+"Shall you be in Venice next week, and may I come to you there? I do
+not want you to tell me if I have any chance: I shall come at all
+events, unless Countess Erika is actually betrothed. This is plain
+speaking, is it not?
+
+"Have you known, or have you not known, that through all these years
+since my rejection by the Countess Erika not a day has passed for me
+that has not been filled with thoughts of her? In any case my conduct
+must have seemed inexplicable to you: probably you have thought me
+ridiculously sensitive. It is true, ridiculous sensitiveness, as I now
+see, has been the true cause of my foolish, unjustifiable behaviour,
+but it has not been the sensitiveness of a rejected suitor. God forbid!
+
+"I should never have been provoked by the Countess Erika's rejection of
+me,--no, never,--even if it had not been conveyed in so bewitching a
+way that one ought to have kneeled down and adored her for it. There
+was another reason for my sensitiveness. A certain person, whose name
+there is no need to mention, hinted that I was in pursuit of Countess
+Erika's money. From that moment my peace of mind was at an end. I could
+not go near her again, because, to speak plainly, I was conscious that
+I was not a suitable match for her.
+
+"You think this petty. I think it is petty myself,--so petty that I
+despise myself, and simply ask, am I any more worthy of so glorious a
+creature, now that I have a few more marks a year to spend?
+
+"I dread being punished for my obstinate stupidity. Perhaps there was
+no possibility of my winning her heart, but it was worth a trial, and
+she has a right to reproach me for never in all these years making that
+trial. Inconceivable as my long delay must appear to you, I am sure you
+can understand why I have not thus appealed to you lately, so soon
+after the terrible misfortune that has befallen me.
+
+"It was too horrible!
+
+"In addition to my sincere sorrow for my brother's death, I am
+tormented by the sensation that I never sufficiently prized the
+nobility of character which his last moments revealed. To turn so
+terrible a catastrophe to my advantage would have been to me
+impossible. I could not have done it, even although I had not been so
+crushed by the manner of his death that all desire, all love of life,
+has for some weeks seemed dead within me.
+
+"Yesterday I met Frau von Norbin, who has lately returned from her
+Italian tour. She informed me that Prince Nimbsch is paying devoted
+attention to Countess Erika, although at present with small
+encouragement.
+
+"Jealousy has roused me from my lethargy. And now I ask you once more,
+may I come to Venice? Unless something unforeseen should occur, I could
+obtain a leave without much trouble. Again I repeat, I do not ask you
+what chance I have,--I know that I have none at present,--but I only
+ask you, may I come?
+
+"Impatiently awaiting your answer, I am faithfully yours,
+
+ "G. v. Sydow."
+
+
+She read the letter to the last word, her tears flowing faster and
+faster. Then she threw herself on the bed, and buried her face among
+the pillows. A yearning desire assailed her heart, and thrilled through
+her every nerve, calling aloud, "Turn back! turn back!" But it was too
+late; she would not turn back. She was entirely possessed by the
+illusion that she was about to do something grand and elevating.
+
+A low knock at the door recalled her to herself. It was Marianne, who,
+instructed by the old Countess, came to see if she would not have a cup
+of tea.
+
+"By and by, Marianne," she called, without opening the door. "I want
+nothing at present. I am better."
+
+Marianne left, and Erika looked at her watch. Four o'clock! It was time
+to begin her final preparations.
+
+She gathered together all her trinkets,--an unusually large and
+valuable collection for a girl. She had been fond of jewelry, and her
+grandmother had denied her nothing. Without one longing thought of
+them, she selected all that were of special value, running through her
+fingers five strings of beautiful pearls, and calculating as she did so
+their probable worth. These she added to the heap, and then wrapped all
+together in a package, upon which she wrote "For the Poor." Then she
+sat down at her writing-table and explained her last wishes, arranging
+everything as one would who contemplated suicide. Not one of her
+numerous _protégées_ did she forget, commending them all to her
+grandmother's care.
+
+After everything in this respect that was necessary, or at least that
+she considered necessary, was arranged, she reflected that she must
+write a farewell to her grandmother.
+
+It was a terribly hard task, but after she had begun her letter there
+seemed to be no end to it. She covered three sheets, and there were yet
+many loving things to say. Now first she comprehended all that her
+grandmother had been to her of late years. She forgot how often the old
+Countess's philosophy had grated upon her, how often she had rebelled
+against it. How hard it was to leave her! But retreat was not to be
+thought of.
+
+And she wrote on.
+
+At last she concluded with, "Every one else will point the finger of
+scorn at me; you will bewail my course, but you will not call it evil,
+only foolish. Poor, dear grandmother! And you will mourn over the
+misery which I have voluntarily brought upon myself. It is terrible
+that I cannot fulfil the mission in life which lies so clearly before
+me without giving you pain. But I cannot help it! One thing consoles
+me. I know how large-minded you are: you will have to choose between
+the world and me, and you will be strong enough to resign the world and
+to turn to me, and then nothing will be wanting to me in my new life,
+let people slander me as they will!"
+
+Three times did Erika fold up the letter, and three times did she open
+it again to add something to it.
+
+At last it was finished. She put with it into the envelope the draft of
+her wishes as to the disposal of the effects she left behind her, and
+then asked herself where she should put the letter so that her
+grandmother might find it instantly upon her return. At first she took
+it to the Countess's room, but then, reflecting that the old lady would
+come at once to her bedside to see how she was, she laid it, with eyes
+streaming with tears, upon the table beside her bed. "Poor
+grandmother!" She kissed the letter tenderly as she left it.
+
+Now everything was finished: she had only to dress herself. But she was
+not content. Once more she sat down at her writing-table and wrote.
+This time the words came slowly and with difficulty from her pen, as if
+each one were torn singly from her bleeding heart.
+
+
+"My dear, faithful Friend,"--she began,--"Do not come to Venice. When
+this letter reaches you I shall have vanished from the world in which
+you live. I could not endure to have you hear from strangers of the
+step I am about to take, and so I write to you myself. Yes, when you
+read this letter I shall have broken with all that has constituted my
+life hitherto, and shall have fled with--with a married man. How
+grieved you will be when you read this! My whole soul cries out with
+pain as I think of it.
+
+"You will not understand it. 'Erika Lenzdorff fled with a married man!'
+It sounds incredible, does it not?
+
+"You know that I am not light-minded, nor corrupt, and so you will
+believe me when I tell you that the reasons which have induced me to
+take so terrible a step are unanswerable in my mind.
+
+"I can redeem the life of a noble and gifted man. His moral nature is
+deteriorating, he suffers frightfully, and I cannot avoid the
+conviction that without me he must go to destruction.
+
+"He hoped to be able to procure a divorce from his wife. It was
+impossible. Without hesitation I resolved of my own accord to follow
+him. In the midst of the agony which it has cost me to break with all
+my former associations, I am sustained by a sense of right.
+
+"It is grand and beautiful to suffer for a noble and highly-gifted
+fellow-being,--beautiful to be able to say, 'Providence has chosen me
+to shed light into his darkened soul.' I do not waste a thought upon
+what I resign in thus fulfilling my mission, but the consciousness of
+the pain I shall cause my dear grandmother and you weighs me to the
+earth. She will forgive me, and you, my poor friend, you will forget
+me. I would gladly find consolation in this conviction; but no, it does
+not comfort me. Of all that I must give up with my old life, your
+friendship is what I shall lack most painfully.
+
+"Goswyn! for God's sake do not judge me falsely and harshly! What I do,
+I do in the absolute conviction that it is right. If this conviction
+should ever fail me, then---- But I cannot harbour that idea!--it would
+be too terrible. I cannot be mistaken!
+
+"I have a fearful attack of cowardice as I write to you, and a sudden
+dread takes possession of me. Am I equal to the task I have undertaken?
+Will he always be content to live apart from the world with me alone?
+
+"I am prepared for that also. If his feeling for me should wane, my
+task will be done, he will need me no longer. Then I will vanish from
+his life, and from life itself, like a poor taper that is extinguished
+when the sun rises. I shall have the courage to extinguish it; it will
+be a trifle in comparison with what I am now doing. Oh, God! how hard
+it is! Goswyn, adieu! One thing more, and this I tell you because this
+is my farewell to you. Whether it will console you, or add one more
+pang to your sorrow, I cannot tell, but I am constrained to lay bare my
+heart before you: these are as it were the words of a dying woman. If
+last autumn you had said one kind word to me, I should now have been
+your wife, and you should not have repented it! All that is over. Fate
+had another destiny in store for me.
+
+"Once more, farewell!
+
+"Forgive me for causing you pain, and sometimes think of your poor
+friend,
+
+ "Erika Lenzdorff."
+
+
+Now all was done. She put on her travelling-dress, a plain dark suit in
+which she was wont to pay visits to the poor.
+
+She looked at the clock--seven! One half-hour more, and she must go;
+and she could not go without something to lend her physical strength.
+She rang for a cup of tea, swallowed it hastily, and for the last time
+walked through the four rooms occupied by her grandmother and herself.
+Then she took her travelling-bag, which she had packed with a few
+necessaries, put on her straw hat, and went.
+
+It was half-past seven: the servants were at their evening meal. No one
+noticed her departure at so unusual an hour. How often she had been
+seen leaving the hotel in the same dress to visit her poor people!
+
+She walked for some distance, and dropped her letter to Goswyn into the
+nearest post-box, feeling as she did so that she was casting her whole
+life thus far into a dark gulf whence it could never be recovered. Then
+she hired a gondola, an open one,--she could find no other,--and it
+pushed off with her.
+
+She was very weary; with her eyes fixed on vacancy, she leaned back
+among the black cushions.
+
+The tragic wretchedness of the situation no longer impressed her. She
+only felt that she was about to undertake a journey. If it were but
+over! Sssh--sssh--the strokes of the oars sounded monotonously in her
+ears: the gondola glided rapidly over the water.
+
+The garish daylight had faded; the spring twilight, with its
+incomparably poetic charm, was casting its transparent veil over
+Venice. The gondola glided on.
+
+Erika's battle was fought. She leaned back, pale and still, with
+gleaming eyes. The sound of the church-bells droned in her ears. Dulled
+to all that lay behind her, she was conscious of nothing save of the
+enthusiasm of a young hero ready to brave death for a sacred cause.
+
+Around her was the breath of the waning spring, and beneath her was the
+sobbing of the waves.
+
+
+It was later by about an hour and a half. The old Countess, who had
+felt it her duty to be present at the fête, had not thought herself
+obliged to remain until its close. She was very uneasy about Erika, and
+had gratefully accepted Prince Nimbsch's offer to take her home in his
+cutter, leaving Constance Mühlberg and her guests, with the Hungarian
+band that had been telegraphed for from Vienna for their amusement, to
+return to Venice in the steamer.
+
+With the velocity of a skimming swallow the little vessel shot through
+the water. Prince Nimbsch, leaving the management of the sail entirely
+to his sailors, leaned back beside the old lady among his very new
+velvet cushions, and made good-humoured, although futile, efforts to
+entertain her. She was absent: her thoughts were occupied with Erika's
+altered appearance.
+
+"Poor child!" she thought, "I was foolish. It was my fault; but how
+could I suspect it? She seemed so strong, so unsusceptible. It is the
+same folly, the same disease that attacks us all once in a lifetime. I
+had it myself: I can hardly remember it now. It hurts,--it hurts very
+much. But she has a strong character and a clear head. I am very sorry;
+I might have prevented it, if I had only known. My poor, proud Erika!
+What shall I write to Goswyn? Of course that he must come. I think she
+will be glad to see him: this cannot go very deep; but I am very
+sorry."
+
+Venice lay before them, gray and shadowy, a reflection of the pale
+summer sky, whence the sun had long disappeared, and where the stars
+were not yet visible.
+
+They reached the hotel, and the old Countess looked up at Erika's
+windows. "She is not in her boudoir," she said to herself. "Perhaps she
+is asleep."
+
+"Tell Countess Erika how stupid the _fête_ was, thanks to her absence,"
+the young Austrian said as he took his leave, "and how we all
+anathematized that headache for depriving us of her society. I shall
+call to-morrow, and hope to find her quite well again."
+
+He kissed the old lady's hand, and she hurried upstairs to her rooms.
+She softly entered Erika's apartments. The boudoir was dark, as she had
+seen from below. She gently opened the door of the bedroom; that was
+dark also. Had the poor child gone to bed? She approached the bed very
+softly, not to disturb her, and stooped above it. There was no one
+there.
+
+A foreboding of something terrible instantly took possession of her.
+For a moment she lost her head: she grew dizzy, and would have screamed
+and alarmed the house, but her voice died in her throat. Suddenly
+something fluttered down from the table upon which she leaned to
+support herself. She stooped to pick it up: it was a letter. She turned
+on the electric light and read it through. After the first few lines,
+half blind with grief, she would have tossed it aside,--what could it
+contain that she did not now know?--but at last she read it through,
+read every word to the very end, feeding her pain with each tender,
+loving expression of the unhappy, mistaken girl.
+
+Not for one moment did she blame Erika for what had happened: she
+blamed herself alone. She accused herself of plunging Erika into
+wretchedness, as years before she had done with her daughter-in-law.
+She had required of both of them that they should accede to her
+materialistic views. She had never allowed them to entertain any
+idealistic conception of life. She had never understood that such
+idealism was a necessity of their existence, and that if deprived of it
+in one shape they would take refuge in some exaggeration which
+might shield them from a life of coldly-calculating egotism. Her
+daughter-in-law's unhappiness had not affected her much; her
+grand-daughter's misery would blot the sun from her sky.
+
+She was so clear-sighted: ah, why was she so, when she could see
+nothing but what agonized her?
+
+For a creature like Erika it was as impossible to disregard the
+dictates of morality as it would be to breathe in the moon with lungs
+constructed for the atmosphere of the earth.
+
+There were women capable of braving the opinions of the world and of
+quietly going on their way, women for whom the pillory was converted
+into a pedestal as soon as they stood in it. But Erika was not one of
+these. Before the stars in their courses had twice appeared in the
+heavens she would writhe in misery. She had none of that self-exalting
+quality which must veil the moral lack of which she would surely be
+made conscious. Yes, she would then find no other name for the
+sacrifice she had made to the wretch who had been willing to receive it
+at her hands than the one which the world has given to it for centuries
+when it has been made to men by worthless women, inspired by no lofty
+desire. In her own eyes she would be a fallen woman.
+
+The moisture stood upon the old Countess's forehead. "My Erika! my
+proud, glorious Erika!" she murmured. She knew that the peril of a
+woman's fall must be measured by the moral height from which she falls.
+And Erika had fallen from a very lofty height. Her life was ruined.
+
+Once more she opened Erika's letter and read the line, "You will have
+to choose between the world and me." Choose! As if there could be any
+question of choice. Of course she was ready to open her arms to her and
+do for her what she alone could; but what could she do?
+
+Suddenly a picture arose in her memory,--a terrible picture.
+
+In the waiting-room of a railway-station she had once seen among some
+emigrants a poor woman with a child, a boy about six or seven years
+old. His face was frightfully disfigured by scars. All the passers-by
+stared at him, and some nudged one another and whispered together. The
+child first grew scarlet, then very restless, and finally burst into a
+passion of tears; whereupon the mother sat down upon a bench and hid
+the poor face in her lap.
+
+A quarter of an hour later, when the Countess passed the same spot the
+woman was still there with the child's face in her lap. She sat stiffly
+erect, glaring at the unfeeling crowd whose cruel curiosity had so hurt
+the boy, and with her rough hand she gently stroked his short light
+hair. The sight had made a profound impression upon the Countess. "She
+cannot sit there always, concealing in her lap her child's deformity,"
+she said to herself: "sooner or later she must again expose the poor
+creature to the gaze of the crowd."
+
+What now recalled this poor, powerless mother to her mind?
+
+She could do no more for Erika than hide her head in her lap from the
+contemptuous curiosity of the world. So entirely did this thought take
+possession of her imagination that she seemed to feel the warm weight
+of the poor humiliated head upon her knee; she raised her hand to
+stroke it, when with a start she awoke to consciousness. "Ah, even that
+will be denied me," she thought. "As soon as Erika comes to herself,
+she will cast away her life. Yes, all is over,--all,--all!"
+
+Marianne came into the room. She waved her away without a word. She
+never thought of inventing a reason to the maid for Erika's absence.
+She sat there mute and motionless, looking into the future. A vast
+misfortune seemed to have engulfed the world, and she alone was left to
+suffer, she alone was to blame.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+Lozoncyi had gone to the station. He had delayed until the latest
+minute, intimidated by the difficulties of his undertaking, swayed by
+intense agitation. At last, passion for Erika had gained the mastery,
+although it had shrunk to very small dimensions. All the poetry had
+faded out of it. The lofty conception of life and its duties which had
+lately raised him above himself had vanished like a fit of intoxication
+of which nothing is left save a torturing thirst. Will she come? he had
+asked himself, with quivering nerves, as he sprang from the gondola,
+and, after purchasing the tickets, looked around him anxiously.
+
+He had in fact expected that she would be there before him: he was
+disappointed at not finding her. He went out upon the steps leading
+from the railway-station to the Canal, and looked abroad over the
+shining green water. As each gondola approached he said to himself,
+"Here she comes." But no; she did not come.
+
+The first bell rang. He went on the platform, his pulses throbbing
+feverishly. While he had been sure that she would come he had been
+comparatively calm; now his longing for her knew no bounds. He eagerly
+scanned every woman whom he saw in the distance.
+
+Fortunately, he saw no one whom he knew: the train was not very full.
+
+The second bell rang; the passengers hurried into their several
+compartments, porters ran to and fro with travelling-bags and trunks,
+farewells were waved from the windows of the train. The third bell
+rang, and the train steamed noisily out of the station. She had not
+come.
+
+His disappointment was largely mingled with anger, and was so intense
+that it amounted to physical nervous pain. "At the last moment her
+courage has failed her," he told himself. But then her pale beautiful
+face, lit up with enthusiasm, arose before his mind's eye, and in the
+midst of his frenzy of passion he was conscious of the yearning
+tenderness which had been a chief element in his feeling for her. "No,"
+he said to himself, "even if her courage has failed her, she is not one
+to break her word. She must have been prevented at the last moment."
+
+A burning desire for certainty in the matter mastered him. He went to
+the Hôtel Britannia, under the pretext of calling upon the Lenzdorffs.
+He was told that her Excellency had gone out early in the afternoon and
+had not yet returned. He hesitated for a moment, and then, in a tone
+the indifference of which surprised himself, he asked if he could see
+the Countess Erika, as he had a message for her. The porter, a
+presuming fellow who meddled in everybody's affairs, informed him that
+the young Countess had just gone out, but would probably return
+shortly.
+
+"Why do you think so?" asked Lozoncyi.
+
+"Because she was not in evening dress. She went out in a street suit,
+and carried a leather bag in her hand: that always means 'charity' with
+the young Countess. I know the bag: I have often carried it for her to
+the gondola. This time she walked, and carried it herself. She is a
+little----" he touched his forehead with his forefinger, "but a good
+lady: she is always giving."
+
+Lozoncyi stayed no longer. He got into his gondola again, uncertain
+what to do. What could have kept her? After some reflection, he went
+again to the railway-station. "She has been detained by some
+acquaintance; she will be here for the next train," he thought. He
+waited until the next train left,--in vain. Then a fierce anger against
+her arose within him and transcended all bounds. He forgot that he
+himself had delayed for a moment. He could not find words bitter enough
+to express his contempt for her. He never should have taken such a step
+of his own accord: he had simply acquiesced in the inevitable. She had
+carried him away by her enthusiasm, which had levelled all barriers
+between them, and now--now her cowardice had left him in the lurch. It
+was hardly worth while to devise so fine a drama, when it was never to
+be played out! How stupid he had been ever to believe that it could
+possibly be played out! he ought to have known that at the last moment
+the censor would prohibit it. In the midst of his anger he experienced
+a sensation of dull indifference. What did anything matter? everything
+of importance in his life was at an end: what became of the rest he did
+not care. He had been lured on by a Fata Morgana; he laughed at the
+thought that he had taken it for reality,--a dull, joyless laugh,--and
+then--he could not spend the night at the station--he resolved to go
+home.
+
+It was about ten o'clock when he passed through the green door of his
+house and along the narrow corridor into the garden. The moon was high
+in the sky, and the trees and bushes cast pitchy shadows upon the
+bluish light lying upon the grass and gravel paths. The air was warm;
+rose-leaves lay scattered everywhere; Spring was laying aside her
+garments, and there was a dull weariness in the atmosphere.
+
+Lozoncyi, with bowed head, walked towards the atelier, where was the
+portrait. On a sudden he heard a light foot-fall behind him. He turned,
+and stood as if rooted to the earth.
+
+"Erika!"
+
+She came towards him lovely as an angel. Her head was bare, and her
+golden hair gleamed in the moonlight.
+
+"Erika!" he exclaimed, hoarsely, without advancing a step towards her.
+He took her for an illusion conjured up by his fancy. But as she drew
+near he felt the reality of her young life beside him. "Then it is
+really you?" he murmured. "I thought it a phantom to deceive me. Why
+are you here?"
+
+"No wonder you ask," she said, and her voice expressed unutterable
+compassion. "I come to bid you farewell."
+
+"Farewell!" he gasped. "Then I was right to doubt you. And yet how
+bitterly I have reproached myself because----"
+
+"Because----?" she asked, sadly.
+
+"Because I ventured to suppose you had lost courage. What could I
+think? I waited for you at the station from one train to the next: you
+did not come. Then I told myself that you had simply treated me to a
+farce. But I cannot believe that now: as I look into your dear face I
+can find there no cowardice, nothing paltry. You have been detained
+against your will, and you are here yourself to tell me so. It is noble
+of you, Erika! my Erika!"
+
+He drew closer to her, and extended his arms towards her: she evaded
+them.
+
+"All is over between us," she said, wearily. "It cannot be."
+
+She saw him turn ashy pale in the moonlight.
+
+"Over? It cannot be? Erika! What does this mean? Have you robbed me of
+all self-control only to desert me thus at the last moment? I cannot
+believe it of you, Erika!" There was passionate entreaty in his voice.
+Again he stretched out his arms towards her: gently, but firmly, she
+repulsed him.
+
+"Do not touch me," she begged. "I can scarcely stand. Something
+horrible has happened; I must tell you of it as quickly as possible,
+but I cannot stand upright." She grasped the bough of the mulberry-tree
+around which the climbing roses were wreathed, and as she did so the
+bough shook, and a cloud of white rose-leaves fluttered to the ground.
+All about her was fading! How sultry the night was!
+
+She sat down on the bench beneath the mulberry, above her the moonlit
+sky with its hosts of stars, at her feet the fading garment of the
+spring.
+
+Then she began her story: "I was on my way to the station. I should
+have been punctual: perhaps I should have been there before you. I was
+convinced that I was doing right, and so long as that was so I could
+not delay. The way to the station leads past this house. My gondola had
+not yet reached the bridge that spans this canal when I heard a loud
+splash in the water. A woman had thrown herself from the bridge. You
+can imagine my horror. In an instant the suspicion darted into my mind
+that it might be your wife. I implored my gondolier to save her, and he
+plunged into the water just in time. It was indeed your wife, whom I
+could not but feel I had thus hunted to death. She lay in the bottom of
+the gondola, covered with sea-weed and slime--oh, horrible! I brought
+her home. We carried her up-stairs, with Lucrezia's help, and then
+recalled her to life. That was comparatively easy; but scarcely had she
+opened her eyes when she was seized with frightful spasms of the chest,
+and I feared she would die."
+
+Lozoncyi had listened breathlessly; now he nodded slowly. "I know she
+suffers from such attacks frequently," he said, bitterly, "but they are
+not dangerous: they are usually the result of a fit of fury."
+
+"That I did not know," Erika murmured, in the same weary, self-accusing
+voice,--the voice of a criminal arraigning herself. "Her condition made
+a terrible impression upon me. We put her to bed, and I stayed with her
+while Lucrezia went for a physician. She returned without him, but the
+unfortunate woman seemed better and calmer, and I was about to leave
+her, when I heard your step in the corridor. I came hither to take
+leave of you. Forgive me, and farewell!" She had risen from the bench,
+and held out her hand to him; her eyes were full of tears.
+
+He did not take her hand. "And for this you would desert me?" he
+exclaimed, angrily. "You have given me no reason,--not the slightest.
+That devil up-stairs has simply played you a trick,--nothing more. Can
+you not see it? She knew what we were about to do, and watched for you:
+she had not the least idea of taking her own life."
+
+"I do not know," replied Erika, passing her hand across her brow: "it
+may be that she meant only to prevent me from arriving in time at the
+station. But it was frightful: the canal is very deep there; she would
+surely have been drowned; and how could I have lived after witnessing
+her death? No! as I sat beside her bed a veil seemed to fall from my
+eyes,--a veil which had blinded me to what I was doing. I saw that,
+with the best will in the world, I could do only harm. I was ready to
+give my life for you,--I am always ready for that,--but I must not
+sacrifice the lives of others who stand in close relation to you and to
+me; I cannot!--I cannot! I ought not to have robbed you of your peace,
+to have taken from you the power of self-renunciation; I acknowledge
+it. If you could but know how bitterly I reproach myself, how fearful
+it is for me to see you suffer! My poor friend, I entreat your
+forgiveness from my very soul!" She took his hand and humbly touched it
+with her lips.
+
+The night grew more sultry and oppressive. A bewildering fragrance
+exhaled from the earth, from the plants, from the faded blossoms on the
+ground, and from the fresh buds opening to life. The moonlight fell
+full upon the statue of a dancing faun beneath an acacia-tree, and upon
+the scattered rose-leaves around it.
+
+Hitherto Lozoncyi had stood still, with bowed head. But at the touch of
+her lips upon his hand he looked up. His veins ran fire.
+
+"Farewell!" she murmured, gently.
+
+He repeated "Farewell!" and then suddenly added, "Will you not take one
+more look at the studio before you go?"
+
+She found nothing unusual in this request. He led the way; she followed
+him, her whole being filled with compassion: she would have been nailed
+to the cross to relieve his pain,--the pain for which she was to blame.
+
+The moonlight flooded the studio, lending an unreal appearance to the
+room, and in the magic light stood forth the figure of 'Blind Love,'
+athirst to reach its goal, staggering in the mire.
+
+From the garden breathed a benumbing odour, and from the far distance
+floated towards the pair, like a yearning sigh, the song of the
+Venetian night-minstrels.
+
+Erika looked about her sadly. "It was fair!" she murmured. "I thank you
+for it all. Adieu!"
+
+She held out both her hands to him; she had wellnigh offered him her
+lips, in the desperation of her compassion.
+
+He took her hands in his and bent over them. "It is, perhaps, better
+so," he said, and his voice had never been so tremulous and yet so
+tenderly beguiling. "The sacrifice you would have made for me was too
+great: I ought not to have accepted it at your hands. And you are
+right, we must spare those who are near to us; it must be. But for
+God's sake do not desert me quite! do not consign me to utter misery!"
+
+She looked at him with eyes of wonder. She could not comprehend. What
+was there left for her to do for him?--what?
+
+He kissed her hands alternately: she did not notice how he drew her
+towards him until she felt his hot breath upon her cheek. Then he said,
+softly, very softly, "You must return to your grandmother tonight, I
+know; you cannot devote your life to me; but--oh, Erika! our existence
+is made up of moments--grant me a moment's bliss now and then! you will
+not be the poorer, and I--I shall be richer than a king! The world
+shall never know; no shadow shall fall upon you, be sure----"
+
+At last she understood. She tore her hands from his grasp; a hoarse
+sobbing cry escaped her lips, and without a word she turned and fled
+past the faun gleaming in the moonlight, past the fading blossoms,
+across the garden, through the long cold corridor, without once taking
+breath until the green door with the lion's head had closed behind her.
+A despairing cry pursued her: "Erika! Erika!" It was the voice of the
+man who had been suddenly aroused to the consciousness of what he had
+done.
+
+But she never heeded it: she had a horror of him.
+
+For a moment she stood uncertain on the border of the canal. Her
+gondolier had departed, having judged it best to be rid as soon as
+possible of his wet clothes. It was late, and she was alone.
+
+Around her was the ghostly moonlight, before her the dark lapping
+water. She was not afraid: what was there to fear? But, with the world
+in ruins as it were about her, what should she do? What, except return
+to the Hôtel Britannia?
+
+She threaded her way through the zigzag narrow streets, across bridges
+and along the shores of the canals, her eyes bent on the ground. It
+never occurred to her that any one whom she knew could meet her
+wandering thus late at night with uncovered head; for she had left her
+hat in the sick woman's room. All through these last terrible hours she
+had had no thought for her reputation. She walked on and on. Suddenly
+there fell upon her ear,--
+
+
+ "Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie,
+ Toi, qui n'as pas d'amour?
+ Comment vis-tu----"
+
+
+As she crossed a narrow canal by a small bridge, the singers' gondola
+came directly towards her. She saw it close at hand. The soprano was a
+faded, hollow-cheeked woman, the men were quite ragged.
+
+Was that the phantom that had lured her on all through the spring?
+
+The guttering candles in the gondola were burned almost into the
+sockets. One of the paper lanterns took fire. The boat glided beneath
+the bridge. When it emerged on the other side the lights were
+extinguished, the singers silent. The gondola floated drearily on, a
+black formless spot in the moonlight.
+
+Shortly afterwards Erika found a gondola in which she reached the
+hotel.
+
+
+In consequence of the arrival of a large number of fresh guests, the
+hotel was brilliantly lighted, all the doors were open, and Erika went
+up the staircase to her room without attracting special notice.
+
+"Perhaps," she thought, "my grandmother has not yet returned: I may be
+able to recover my letter before she has read it." She went instantly
+to her bedroom. Light issued from the chink of the door: she was too
+late. She opened the door. There, beside her bed, sat her grandmother
+in an arm-chair, erect and stiff, her eyes looking unnaturally large in
+her ashy-pale face, where the last few hours had graven deeper furrows
+than had been made by all the other experiences of her seventy years.
+
+A strange cry escaped the old Countess's lips when she perceived the
+wan, sad apparition in the door-way. Half rising from her seat, her
+hands grasping the arms of the chair, she gazed at the girl as if she
+had been a corpse newly risen from the tomb. Trembling in every limb,
+"Erika!" she stammered. She tried to walk towards her grandchild, and
+could not. Erika's strength barely sufficed to carry her to the
+bedside, where she sank at her grandmother's feet and laid her head in
+her lap.
+
+Neither could speak for a while. The old lady only stroked the girl's
+hair with her delicate hand, which grew warmer every minute. The girl
+sobbed. After some minutes the grandmother bent over her and murmured,
+"Erika, tell me how you have been rescued at the eleventh hour. Where
+have you been?"
+
+Erika lifted her head, and in a faint voice told all that had occurred
+until the moment when she had gone down into the garden to take leave
+of Lozoncyi. There she hesitated.
+
+Her grandmother listened breathlessly, and in an instant the girl began
+afresh: "I had forgotten myself. I would have done more for him than
+was ever done for man before; I would have borne him aloft to the
+stars. And he--the way was too hard; he had no heart for it; he would
+have dragged me down into the mire from which I would fain have rescued
+him. And when at last I understood, I fled----" A fit of convulsive
+sobbing interrupted her: she could not go on.
+
+Her grandmother understood it all. She said not a word, only gently
+stroked the poor head in her lap. After a while she persuaded Erika to
+lie down, helped her to undress, and smoothed the pillow in which the
+poor child hid her tear-stained face.
+
+She sat at the bedside until the dull weariness sure to follow upon
+intense nervous agitation produced its effect and the girl slept. The
+grandmother still sat there, motionless, until far into the morning.
+
+About nine o'clock Marianne softly opened the door of the room. Erika
+awoke. She had forgotten everything,--when her glance fell upon a small
+black travelling-bag in the maid's hand.
+
+"Please, your Excellency, a gondolier has just brought this bag,"
+Marianne explained. "He says the Countess Erika left it in the gondola
+yesterday after the accident,--after the fright, I mean: he told me all
+about it. Poor Countess Erika! what a terrible thing for her! But it
+was fortunate, too, because she was able to save the poor woman. The
+gondolier has come for the hundred lire which the Countess promised him
+for getting the woman out of the water."
+
+The old Countess drew a deep breath. Everything was turning out more
+favourably for Erika than she had dared to hope. The adventure, which
+would of course be discussed freely by all the hotel servants, would
+explain Erika's long absence and strange return.
+
+"Is the Countess Erika ill?" asked the faithful Marianne, with an
+anxious glance at the young girl, whose cheeks were flushed with fever.
+
+"Only suffering from the effects of agitation," said Countess
+Lenzdorff, who had meanwhile brought the money and given it to the
+maid.
+
+"No wonder! Poor Countess Erika!" the servant murmured as she withdrew.
+
+Weary and wretched, Erika again closed her eyes. When she opened them
+she saw her grandmother at the writing-table, her head resting on her
+hand, and a blank sheet of paper before her.
+
+"To whom are you writing, grandmother?"
+
+"I want to write to Goswyn," the old Countess replied, in a low tone.
+"I must answer his letter; and--I am not sure----" She hesitated.
+
+Upon Erika's mind flashed the remembrance of the letter she had written
+the previous day to Goswyn. She had forgotten it.
+
+"Of course I must tell him not to come," said her grandmother.
+
+Erika sighed. Must she give her grandmother that pain too? At last she
+managed to say, in a voice that was scarce audible, "He will not come:
+he----"
+
+Startled by a terrible suspicion, her grandmother looked at her in
+dismay. Erika's face was turned away from her.
+
+"Well?" asked the old Countess.
+
+"I wrote to him yesterday," poor Erika stammered, "telling him what I
+was about to do. I thought he must hear of it sooner or later, and I
+wished that he should hear it in a way that would give him least pain."
+
+"Oh, Erika! Erika!"
+
+But Erika lay still, her head turned away from her grandmother. After a
+while she said, almost in a whisper, "Grandmother, please write to him
+that"--she buried her face in the pillow--"that---- Oh, grandmother,
+tell him--that--he need not despise me!"
+
+Her grandmother made no reply. For a while absolute silence reigned in
+the room. Then Erika suddenly heard a low sob. She looked round. The
+Countess had covered her face with her hands, and was weeping.
+
+It was the first time since Erika had known her that she had seen her
+shed tears.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+No trace of spring can be seen. The garden of the Hôtel Britannia
+is a sunburned desert, where the rose-bushes show withered leaves
+and not a single bud. The breath of the yellowish-gray lagoons is
+stifling. All is limp and faded,--both vegetation and human beings. The
+hotels are emptying: the season here is over, and the season for the
+watering-places not yet begun. Moreover, there is in Venice an epidemic
+of typhus fever.
+
+Scarcely half a dozen people assemble every evening at the
+_table-d'hôte_ of the Hôtel Britannia, and the small table appropriated
+to the Lenzdorffs in the far corner of the dining-hall is deserted.
+
+Nevertheless the Lenzdorffs have not left the hotel; but Erika is ill,
+stricken down by malarial fever, and the old Countess does not leave
+her bedside.
+
+The attack was sudden,--sudden so far as could be seen by those in
+daily intercourse with her, but pronounced very gradual by the
+physician, who maintained that the disease had long been latent in the
+girl's system.
+
+In the afternoon of the day after that upon which Erika had, as by a
+miracle, escaped the most terrible peril of her life, she had, by her
+grandmother's desire, donned a charming gown and had gone with the old
+Countess to pay a round of farewell visits. She had gone patiently in
+the gondola from one palazzo to another, and with a pale, calm face had
+answered question after question as to the terrible catastrophe which
+her timely presence had been the means of preventing.
+
+There were various versions concerning the reasons for Frau Lozoncyi's
+attempt at suicide: thanks to the jealousy of Lozoncyi's numerous
+feminine adorers, none of these versions approached even distantly the
+truth, for none of his adorers would have admitted that the artist had
+ever bestowed a serious thought upon Erika.
+
+In the evening she had dressed for dinner, and then, overcome by
+fatigue, she had lain down upon her bed to rest for a quarter of an
+hour. She did not rise from it for weeks.
+
+Now the disease has left her. The physician has not only allowed but
+advised her to leave her bed. Every forenoon at eleven o'clock Marianne
+and the old Countess dress her,--ah, how tenderly and carefully!--and
+then, leaning heavily upon her grandmother's arm, she walks slowly
+about the room.
+
+It is nearly six o'clock. The intense heat has somewhat abated, and
+Erika is sitting in the most comfortable arm-chair to be had in the
+hotel, her head resting upon a pillow, her hands in her lap. And what
+hands they are!--so slender, so white and helpless! To please her
+grandmother, she has swallowed a few spoonfuls of soup,--without the
+slightest desire to eat,--as if it had been medicine.
+
+"Are you comfortable, my darling? Shall I not get you another pillow?"
+her grandmother asks. The old Countess is hardly to be recognized, her
+treatment of her grand-daughter is so humbly tender, so pathetically
+anxious. Her force and rigour have vanished: she can only pet and spoil
+Erika; she cannot incite her to any interest in life.
+
+"Ah, grandmother dear, everything is most comfortable," Erika replies.
+As if a pillow more or less could procure her ease!
+
+"Shall I read aloud to you, my child?"
+
+"If you will be so kind."
+
+Her grandmother makes choice of a new novel of Norris's. As she reads,
+she looks across the book at Erika: the girl is not listening. The old
+Countess stops, and drops the book in her lap. Erika is not aware that
+she has ceased to read.
+
+After a while she looks up. "Grandmother," she asks, gently, "did no
+letters come while I was ill?"
+
+"Of course," her grandmother replies. "I had letters every day from
+various friends and acquaintances, asking how you were. Hedwig Norbin
+is with her married daughter in Via Reggia, and I had to send her
+bulletins reporting your condition three times a week."
+
+Erika's thin cheeks flush slightly. "And--did no letters come from
+Berlin?" she asks, with averted face.
+
+Her grandmother hesitates for a moment, and then says, "I do not
+correspond with any one in Berlin. I have written as few letters as
+possible during your illness."
+
+Erika's head droops. "How ashamed my grandmother must be for me, if she
+has not even told Goswyn that I am ill!" she thinks.
+
+For a while there is silence; then Erika whispers, "Grandmother, I am
+very tired. I should like to lie down."
+
+Her grandmother leads her to a lounge, where she lies down, with her
+face turned to the wall. She is very quiet. Is she sleeping?
+
+The old Countess softly leaves the room.
+
+In Erika's boudoir she walks to and fro a couple of times, then sits
+down and takes up a book, but it soon drops in her lap unread. For
+weeks she has felt no interest in the comfortless philosophy of the
+books which were formerly her favourites. The book slips to the floor;
+she does not stoop to pick it up; with hands clasped in her lap
+she ponders upon many things that had not been wont to occupy her
+thoughts. She never notices a bustle in the hotel most unusual at this,
+the dull season, until Lüdecke opens the door and announces, "Your
+Excellency, Herr von Sydow wishes to know if he may come up, or if your
+Excellency----"
+
+She starts. "Herr von Sydow!" she repeats. "Show him up,--very softly,
+of course: Countess Erika is asleep."
+
+A moment afterwards he enters the room.
+
+At first she hardly recognizes him. His features are sharper; the hair
+about his temples is gray.
+
+"My dear child, you here?" she says, cordially, rising and advancing a
+few steps to meet him.
+
+He kisses her hand. "I learned only three days ago that she is ill. How
+is she?"
+
+"Erika?"
+
+"Who else could it be?" he replies, impatiently.
+
+"The disease is cured; but she does not get well. She gains no
+strength. She has not improved in the last ten days; she has no
+appetite, takes no interest in anything. She is always weary."
+
+"What does her physician say?" Goswyn is sitting beside his old friend,
+leaning forward and listening eagerly to every word that falls from her
+lips. Both speak very softly.
+
+"The physician begins to be anxious; there is not much to say. Entire
+relaxation of the nervous system,--want of vitality,--no love of
+life----"
+
+"No love of life! Nonsense!" exclaims Goswyn. "Life must be made dear
+again for her."
+
+Suddenly they hear a low rustle. The door leading into Erika's bedroom
+opens; on the threshold stands a slender figure in a long white
+dressing-gown, her hair loosely knotted at the back of her head.
+
+What is there in the poor thin face, in the large melancholy eyes, that
+suddenly reminds Goswyn of the unformed, timid child whom he met on the
+staircase in Bellevue Street on the evening of Erika's arrival in
+Berlin?
+
+"Goswyn," she stammers, gazing at him, "you here? What are you doing
+here?"
+
+He goes to her and takes her hand. "I heard that you were ill, and I
+came to help your grandmother to carry you back to your home."
+
+Her pale lips quiver, and her weak slender form sways uncertainly, and
+then--before he is conscious of it himself--he does what he ought to
+have done years before: he takes her in his arms and kisses her
+forehead.
+
+A wondrous sensation of perfect content, of blissful freedom from all
+desire, overcomes her; she clasps her emaciated arms about his neck,
+and murmurs, "Goswyn, do you really want me now,--now, after all the
+pain I have given you?"
+
+He only clasps her closer to his heart. He, who for years has been
+dallying with opportunity because his courage failed him in view of
+little obstacles which would never have daunted another man, now leaps
+at a bound over the first real obstacle in his way. "What!" he cries,
+"do you suppose I blame you for that folly, Erika? No; for me your
+illness began weeks before it did for the physicians."
+
+Meanwhile, he has tenderly conducted her to a lounge, upon which,
+exhausted as she is, she sinks down.
+
+"I must make one confession to you, Erika," he whispers. "I was
+almost out of my senses in that terrible twenty-four hours after I
+received your letter and before I received your grandmother's; my gray
+temples bear witness to that; but then--then I took delight in your
+letter,--yes, in that terrible letter. For I learned from it what I had
+never ventured to hope,--that you cared for me a little, Erika."
+
+"Ah, Goswyn, you always were, of all men in this world, the most
+indispensable one to me!"
+
+How fair life can be! For a while the lovers, hand clasped in hand,
+talk blissfully; then Erika looks round for her grandmother. But the
+old Countess has vanished: they do not need her at this moment. She is
+sitting in her own room, delighting in her two young people, recalling
+her far-distant past, as she says to herself that under certain
+circumstances love may be a beautiful thing, and when it is
+beautiful----
+
+
+
+ THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Countess Erika's Apprenticeship, by Ossip Schubin
+
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's Countess Erika's Apprenticeship, by Ossip Schubin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Countess Erika's Apprenticeship
+
+Author: Ossip Schubin
+
+Translator: A. L. Wister
+
+Release Date: March 8, 2011 [EBook #35531]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COUNTESS ERIKA'S APPRENTICESHIP ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provide by Google Books
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="hang1">Transcriber's Note:<br>
+
+1. Page scan source:
+http://books.google.com/books?id=1hUtAAAAYAAJ</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<table cellpadding="20" style="width:80%; margin-left:10%; border: solid black 2px">
+<tr><td>
+<h1>MRS. A. L. WISTER'S</h1>
+
+
+<h2>Popular Translations from the German.</h2>
+
+<h4>12mo. Attractively Bound in Cloth.</h4>
+
+<hr class="W20">
+
+<p class="continue">&quot;O THOU, MY AUSTRIA!&quot; By Ossip Schubin. $1.25</p>
+
+<p class="continue">ERLACH COURT. By Ossip Schubin. 1.25</p>
+
+<p class="continue">THE ALPINE FAY. By E. Werner. 1.25</p>
+
+<p class="continue">THE OWL'S NEST. By E. Marlitt. 1.25</p>
+
+<p class="continue">PICKED UP IN THE STREETS. By H. Schobert. 1.25</p>
+
+<p class="continue">SAINT MICHAEL. By E. Werner. 1.25</p>
+
+<p class="continue">VIOLETTA. By Ursula Zöge von Manteuffel. 1.25</p>
+
+<p class="continue">THE LADY WITH THE RUBIES. By E. Marlitt. 1.25</p>
+
+<p class="continue">VAIN FOREBODINGS. By E. Oswald. 1.25</p>
+
+<p class="continue">A PENNILESS GIRL. By W. Heimburg. 1.25</p>
+
+<p class="continue">QUICKSANDS. By Adolph Streckfuss. 1.50</p>
+
+<p class="continue">BANNED AND BLESSED. By E. Werner. 1.50</p>
+
+<p class="continue">A NOBLE NAME. By Claire von Glümer 1.50</p>
+
+<p class="continue">FROM HAND TO HAND. By Golo Raimund 1.50</p>
+
+<p class="continue">SEVERA. By E. Hartner 1.50</p>
+
+<p class="continue">THE EICHHOFS. By Moritz von Reichenbach. 1.50</p>
+
+<p class="continue">A NEW RACE. By Golo Raimund. 1.25</p>
+
+<p class="continue">CASTLE HOHENWALD. By Adolph Streckfuss. 1.50</p>
+
+<p class="continue">MARGARETHE. By E. Juncker. 1.50</p>
+
+<p class="continue">TOO RICH. By Adolph Streckfuss. 1.50</p>
+
+<p class="continue">A FAMILY FEUD. By Ludwig Harder. 1.25</p>
+
+<p class="continue">THE GREEN GATE. By Ernst Wichert. 1.50</p>
+
+<p class="continue">ONLY A GIRL. By Wilhelmina von Hillern. 1.50</p>
+
+<p class="continue">WHY DID HE NOT DIE? By Ad. von Volckhausen. 1.50</p>
+
+<p class="continue">HULDA; or, The Deliverer. By F. Lewald. 1.50</p>
+
+<p class="continue">THE BAILIFF'S MAID. By E. Marlitt 1.25</p>
+
+<p class="continue">IN THE SCHILLINGSCOURT. By E. Marlitt. 1.50</p>
+
+<p class="continue">AT THE COUNCILLOR'S. By E. Marlitt. 1.50</p>
+
+<p class="continue">THE SECOND WIFE. By E. Marlitt. 1.50</p>
+
+<p class="continue">THE OLD MAM'SELLE'S SECRET. By E. Marlitt. 1.50</p>
+
+<p class="continue">GOLD ELSIE. By E. Marlitt. 1.50</p>
+
+<p class="continue">COUNTESS GISELA. By E. Marlitt. 1.50</p>
+
+<p class="continue">THE LITTLE MOORLAND PRINCESS. By E. Marlitt. 1.50</p>
+
+<hr class="W20">
+
+<h3><i>J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY</i>,<br>
+<i>Publishers</i>,<br >
+<i>715 and 717 Market St3eet, Philadelphia, Pa</i>.</h3>
+</td></tr>
+</table>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h1>COUNTESS ERIKA'S</h1>
+
+<h2>APPRENTICESHIP</h2>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h4>TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN<br>
+OF</h4>
+<h2>OSSIP SCHUBIN</h2>
+<h4>AUTHOR OF &quot;O THOU, MY AUSTRIA!&quot; ETC.</h4>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h4>BY</h4>
+<h3>MRS. A. L. WISTER</h3>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3><span class="sc2">PHILADELPHIA</span><br>
+J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY<br>
+1891</h3>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr class="W20">
+<h4>Copyright, 1891, by <span class="sc">J. B. Lippincott Company</span></h4>
+<hr class="W20">
+<h4><i>All rights reserved</i>.</h4>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h4><span class="sc">Printed By J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia</span>.</h4>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR.</h2>
+<h2></h2><br>
+
+<p class="normal">A friend returning from a stroll round the globe brought back an odd
+volume of my work picked up in San Francisco, translated without my
+leave, but proving by its very existence that the American reading
+world take a certain interest in my show and its puppets.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Though in a certain sense these unauthorized editions are a picking of
+the author's pocket, yet I must confess that I felt rather flattered.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Every one possessing any feeling for modernism must highly prize what
+American art and American literature have done and are doing for the
+directness, vividness, and intensity of presentation to our eyes or our
+imagination either of outward objects or the silent workings of
+character and inner sensations.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The rapidity and intensity of picturing frequently remind us of an
+electric shock.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">We Old World folk take life, to a certain degree, more at our leisure,
+but nevertheless every real artist follows the great direction that has
+seized all our contemporary being.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Directness of truth, vividness and intensity of presentation, exact
+rendering of impression, are the means by which we seek to produce
+life; life itself is the object, but I am afraid that to the end the
+life-giving spark will defy analysis.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Let me hope that the figures whose woes and weal my reader will follow
+through these pages may be half as alive to him as they have been to
+me; and let me hope, likewise, that when he closes the volume we may
+have become fast friends.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">I cannot let this opportunity pass without thanking Mrs. Wister most
+heartily for her faithful and picturesque rendering of my story.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">What a rare delight it is to an author to find himself so admirably
+rendered and so perfectly understood only those can feel that have
+undergone the acute misery of seeing their every thought mangled, their
+every sentence massacred, as common translations will mangle and
+massacre word and thought.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Therefore let every writer thank Providence, if he find an artist like
+Mrs. Wister willing to put herself to the trouble of following his
+intentions, and of clothing his ideas in so brilliant a garb.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It is only natural, therefore, that, having been lucky enough to find
+so rare a translator, I should authorize the translation to the
+absolute exclusion of any other.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">So, hoping it may find favour in the eyes of my transatlantic readers,
+I should like to shake hands with them at parting and say good-bye with
+the Old World saw, &quot;<i>Auf Wiedersehen</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span class="sc">Ossip Schubin</span>.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h1>COUNTESS ERIKA'S</h1>
+<h2>APPRENTICESHIP.</h2>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+<br>
+<p class="normal">Baron von Strachinsky reclined upon a lounge in his smoking-room,
+recovering from the last pecuniary calamity which he had brought upon
+himself. The fact was, he had built a sugar-factory in a tract of
+country where the nearest approach to a sugar-beet that could be found
+was a carrot on a manure-heap, and his enterprise had been followed by
+the natural result.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He bore his misfortune with exemplary fortitude, and beguiled the time
+with a sentimental novel upon the cover of which was portrayed a lady
+wringing her hands in presence of a military man drinking champagne. At
+times he wept over this fiction, at others he dozed over it and was at
+peace.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This he called submitting with dignity to the mysterious decrees of
+destiny, and he looked upon himself as a martyr.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His wife was not at home. Whilst he reposed thus in melancholy
+self-admiration, she was devoting herself to the humiliating occupation
+of visiting in turn one and another of her wealthy relatives, begging
+of them the loan of funds necessary for the furtherance of her
+husband's brilliant scheme.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It is very sad, but 'tis the fault of circumstances,&quot; sighed the Baron
+when his thoughts wandered from his book to his absent wife, and for a
+moment he would cover his eyes with his hand.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was near the end of August, and the asters were beginning to bloom.
+Cheerful industry reigned throughout the village. The Baron indeed
+complained of the failure of the harvest, but this he did of every
+harvest the proceeds of which were insufficient to cover the interest
+of his numerous debts: the peasantry, who by no means exacted so high a
+rate of profit from their meadows and pasture-lands, were happy and
+content, and the stubble-fields were already dotted with hayricks.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Outside in the garden a little girl in a worn and faded frock was
+playing funeral: she was interring her canary, which she had found
+dead in its cage. She was very sad: the bird had been her best friend.
+No one paid her any attention. Her mother was away, and the
+Englishwoman whose duty it was to superintend her education was just
+now occupied in company with the bailiff, an ambitious young man
+desirous of improving his knowledge of languages, in studying the
+working of a new mowing-machine. From time to time the child glanced
+through the open door of the principal entrance to the castle into a
+rather bare hall, its floor paved with red tiles and its high vaulted
+walls whitewashed and adorned with stags' horns of all sizes. The Baron
+von Strachinsky had bought these last in one lot at an auction, but he
+had long cherished the conviction that they all came from his forest.
+He had a decided taste for fine, high-sounding expressions, always
+designating his wood as his 'forest,' his estate as his 'domain,' and
+his garden as his 'park.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A charwoman with a flat, red, perspiring face, and a knot of thin
+bristling hair at the back of her head, from which her yellow cotton
+kerchief had slipped down upon her neck, was shuffling upon hands and
+knees, her high kilted skirts leaving her red legs quite bare, over the
+tiles of the hall, rubbing away at the dirt and footmarks with a wisp
+of straw, while the steam of hot soapy water rose from the wooden
+bucket beside her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The little girl outside had just planted a row of pink asters upon the
+grave, which she had dug with a pewter spoon, and had filled up duly,
+when the scratching of the wisp of straw suddenly ceased.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A young fellow was standing in the hall,--very young, scarcely sixteen,
+and with a portfolio under his arm. His garb was that of a journeyman
+mechanic, but his bearing had in it something of distinction, and his
+face was delicately modelled, very pale, with large dark eyes, almost
+black, gleaming below the brown curls of his hair. The same class of
+countenance is frequently seen among the Neapolitan boys who sell
+Seville oranges in Rome; but such eyes as this lad had are seen at most
+only two or three times in a lifetime.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The child in the garden looked with evident satisfaction at the young
+fellow. Apparently he had come into the castle through the back
+entrance,--the one used by servants and beggars.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The charwoman wiped her red hands upon her apron and knocked at one of
+the doors opening into the hall. She was a new-comer, and did not know
+that the Baron von Strachinsky was never disturbed upon any ordinary
+pretext.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She knocked several times. At last a sleepy, ill-humoured voice said,
+&quot;What is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Your Grace, a young gentleman: he wants to speak to your Grace.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">With eyes but half open, and the pattern of the embroidered cushion
+upon which he had been sleeping stamped upon his cheek, the Baron von
+Strachinsky came out into the hall.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He was of middle height; his face had once been handsome, but was now
+red and bloated with excessive good living; he was slightly bald, and
+wore thick brown side-whiskers. His dress was a combination of
+slovenliness and foppery. He wore scarlet Turkish slippers, trodden
+down at heel, gray trousers, and a soiled dark-blue smoking-jacket with
+red facings and buttons.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What do you want?&quot; he roared, in a rage at being disturbed for so
+slight a cause.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The young fellow shrank from him, murmuring in a hoarse, tremulous
+voice, the voice of a very young man growing fast and but scantily
+nourished, &quot;I am on my way home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What's that to me?&quot; Strachinsky thundered, not without some excuse for
+his indignation.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The youth flushed scarlet. Shyly and awkwardly he held out his
+portfolio to the sleepy Baron. Evidently it contained drawings, which
+he would like to sell but had not the courage to show.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Give him an alms!&quot; Herr von Strachinsky shouted to the cook, who,
+hearing the noise, had hurried into the hall; then, turning to the
+scrubbing-woman, who was standing beside her steaming bucket, her
+toothless jaws wide open in dismay, he went on: &quot;If you ever again dare
+for the sake of a wretched vagabond of a house-painter's apprentice to
+deprive me of the few moments of repose which I contrive to snatch from
+my wretched and tormented existence, I'll dismiss you on the spot!&quot;
+With which he retired to his room, banging to the door behind him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The cook offered the lad two kreutzers. His hand--a long, slender,
+boyish hand, almost transparent--shook, as he angrily threw the money
+upon the floor and departed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The little girl in the garden had been watching the scene attentively.
+Her delicate frame trembled with indignation, as she rose, and, with
+arms hanging at her sides and small fists clinched in a somewhat
+dramatic attitude, fixed her eyes upon the door behind which the Baron
+had disappeared. She had very bright eyes for a child of nine years,
+and a very penetrating glance, a glance by no means friendly to the
+Baron. Thus she stood for a minute gazing at the door, then put her
+arms akimbo, frowned, and reflected. Before long she shrugged her
+shoulders with an air of precocious intelligence, deserted the
+newly-made grave, and hurried into the house, and to the pantry.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The door was open. She looked about her. By strict orders of the Baron,
+in his wife's absence all remains of provisions were hoarded in the
+pantry, although they were seldom of any use. As a consequence of this
+sordid housekeeping the child found a great store of dishes and bowls
+filled with scraps of meat and fish, stale cakes, and fermenting stewed
+apricots. It took her some time to discover what satisfied her,--a cold
+roast pheasant, and some pieces of tempting almond-cake left over from
+the last meal. These she packed in a basket with a flask of wine that
+had been opened, a tumbler, knife and fork, and a clean napkin. She
+decorated the basket with pink asters, and hurried out of the back
+door, intent upon playing the part of beneficent fairy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Deep down in her heart there was a vein of romance which contrasted
+oddly with the keen good sense already gleaming in her bright childish
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She ran until she was quite out of breath, searching vainly for her
+handsome vagabond. Should she inquire of some one if a young man with a
+portfolio under his arm had passed along the road? Her heart beat; she
+felt a little shy. From a distance the warm summer breeze wafted
+towards her the notes of a foreign air clearly whistled, and she
+directed her steps towards the spot whence it seemed to proceed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">There! yes, there----</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Beside the road rippled a little brook on its way to the rushing stream
+beyond the village, a brook so narrow that a twelve-year-old school-boy
+could easily have jumped across it. Nevertheless the Baron von
+Strachinsky had thought best to span it with a magnificent three-arched
+stone bridge. In the shade thrown by this monumental structure, for the
+erection of which the Baron had vainly hoped to be decorated by his
+sovereign, the lad was crouching. He was even paler than before, and
+there were traces of tears on his cheeks, but all the same he whistled
+on with forced gaiety, as one does whistle when one has nothing to eat
+and hopes to forget his hunger.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The little girl felt like crying. He looked up and directly at her.
+Overcome by sudden shyness, she stood for a moment as if rooted to the
+spot; then, awkwardly offering her basket, she stammered, &quot;Will you
+have it?&quot; When he did not answer she simply set the basket down before
+him, and in her confusion would have avoided all explanations by
+running away.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But a warm young hand detained her firmly and kindly. &quot;Did you come
+from there?&quot; the lad asked, pointing to the castle. &quot;Who sent you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His voice was agreeable, and his address that of a well-born youth.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No one knows that I came,&quot; she answered, in confusion, and seeing that
+he frowned discontentedly at this, she added hastily, by way of excuse,
+&quot;But if mamma had been at home she certainly would have sent me; she
+never lets a beggar leave the house without giving him something to
+eat.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At the word 'beggar' he turned away, whereupon she began to cry loudly,
+so loudly that he had to laugh. &quot;But what are you crying for?&quot; he
+asked; and she replied, in desperation, &quot;I am crying because you will
+not eat anything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Indeed! is that all you are crying for?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes. Oh, do eat something,--do!&quot; she sobbed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Well, since it is to gratify you so hugely,&quot; he replied, in a
+bantering tone; &quot;but sit down beside me and help me.&quot; He looked full
+into her eyes with his careless, merry smile, then took her tiny hand
+in his and pressed his full, warm lips upon it twice.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was greatly pleased by this courteous homage, and perhaps by the
+caress, for it was seldom that anything of the kind fell to her share.
+She had fully decided that the young fellow was no mechanic, but a
+prince in disguise, and in this exhilarating conviction she sat down
+upon the grass beside him and unpacked her basket. How he seemed to
+enjoy its contents, and how white his teeth were! There were also
+various indications of refinement and good breeding about his manner of
+eating, which would have given a more experienced observer than the
+little enthusiast beside him matter for reflection with regard to his
+rank in life. His portfolio lay beside him. She thrust a slender
+forefinger between its pasteboard covers tied together with green
+cotton strings, and whispered, gravely, &quot;May I look into it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;If you would like to,&quot; he replied.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">With great precision, as if the matter in hand were the unveiling of a
+sacred relic, she untied the strings and opened the portfolio. Her eyes
+opened wide, and an &quot;Oh!&quot; of enthusiastic admiration escaped her lips.
+A wiser critic than the little girl of nine would scarcely have
+accorded the sketches so much approval. They were undoubtedly stiff and
+unfinished. Nevertheless, no genuine lover of art would have passed
+them by without notice, for they indicated a high degree of talent. The
+hand was unskilled, but the lad had eyes to see.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The little girl gazed in rapt admiration. After a while she looked
+gravely up at her new friend, her compassion converted into awe. &quot;Now I
+know what you are,--an artist!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Do you think so?&quot; the lad rejoined, flattered by the reverential tone
+in which the word was uttered: meanwhile, he had finished the pheasant,
+and was considerably less pale than before.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Can you paint everything you see?&quot; she asked, after a short pause.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I cannot paint anything,&quot; he answered, with a sort of merry discontent
+which, now that his hunger was satisfied, characterized his every look
+and movement. &quot;I cannot paint anything,&quot; he repeated, with a little
+nod, &quot;but I try to paint everything that I like.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They looked in each other's eyes, he suppressing a laugh, she in some
+distress. At last she blurted out, &quot;Do you not like me at all, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Shall I paint you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She nodded.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What will you give me for it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She put her hand in her pocket, and took out a very shabby
+porte-monnaie, a superannuated possession of Herr von Strachinsky's
+which he had given her in a moment of unwonted generosity, and in which
+were five bright silver guilders. &quot;Is that enough?&quot; she asked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I will not take money,&quot; he replied.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She had been guilty of another stupidity. She was bitterly conscious of
+it, and so, to justify herself, she put on an air of great wisdom. &quot;You
+are a very queer artist,&quot; she admonished him, &quot;not to take money for
+your pictures. No wonder you nearly starve.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He took the hand which held the five despised silver coins, and kissed
+it three times.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I do take money for my pictures,&quot; he declared, &quot;but not from you: I
+will draw your picture with all my heart.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;For nothing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No: you must give me a kiss for it. Will you?&quot; He watched her without
+seeming to look at her. Again the insinuating, roguish smile hovered
+upon his lips,--a charming smile, which he must have inherited from
+some kind, light-hearted woman.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was not quite sure of the rectitude of her conduct, her heart
+throbbed almost as if she were on the verge of some compact with Satan,
+but finally, &quot;If you will not do it without,&quot; she said, with a sigh,
+plucking at her hands,--very pretty hands, neglected though they were.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He nodded gaily. &quot;All right.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Then he made her sit down on the grass opposite him, unpacked his tin
+colour-case, fastened a piece of rough gray paper upon the cover of his
+portfolio, and began.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She sat very still, very grave, her feet stretched out straight in
+front of her, supporting herself upon both hands. Around them breathed
+the soft August air, the glowing summer sunshine sparkled on the
+translucent waters of the little brook above which the stone bridge
+displayed its pompous proportions, while upon the banks grew hundreds
+of blue forget-me-nots, and yellow water-lilies bloomed among the
+trunks of the old willows, which here and there showed gaping wounds in
+their bark, from which meadow daisies were sprouting and, with the
+silvery willow leaves, showing softly gray against the green background
+of the gentle ascent of the pasture-land. The brook murmured dreamily,
+and from the distance came the rhythmic beat of the threshers' flails.
+Steam threshing-machines were not then in general use.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Both were mute,--he in the warmth of his youthful artistic enthusiasm,
+she with expectation.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Suddenly the shrill tinkle of a bell broke the quiet. &quot;That is the
+dinner-bell!&quot; the little girl exclaimed, springing up with an impatient
+shrug. She knew that there could be no more pleasure and liberty for
+her; she would be missed, looked for, and found.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I must go home,&quot; she cried. &quot;Have you finished it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Very nearly, yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She ran and looked over his shoulder, breathless with astonishment at
+what she saw upon the gray paper,--a little girl in a very short, faded
+gown, and long red stockings, also much faded, a very slender figure, a
+little round face, a delicate little nose, two grave bright eyes that
+looked out into the world with a startled expression, a short upper
+lip, a round chin, a very fair skin, and shining reddish-brown hair
+which waved long and silky about the narrow childish shoulders and was
+tied at the back of the head with a blue ribbon.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He had unfastened the sketch from the portfolio, and she held it in her
+hands, examining it narrowly. &quot;Is it like?&quot; she asked, and then,
+looking down at herself, she added, &quot;The gown is like, and the
+stockings are like, but the face,--is that like?&quot; She looked up at him
+eagerly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I cannot do it any better,&quot; he replied, rather ambiguously.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, you must not be vexed,&quot; she made haste to say. &quot;I only wanted to
+know if--how can I tell--if--well, it looks too pretty to me, this
+picture of yours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He gave her a comical side-glance. &quot;Every artist must flatter a little
+if he wishes to please a lady,&quot; was his reply.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And you give me the picture?&quot; she asked, shyly, after a little pause.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why, you ordered it,&quot; he replied.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I--I--thank you,&quot; she stammered, then turned away and would have run
+off.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But he was by no means inclined to let her off so easily. &quot;And my pay?&quot;
+he cried, catching her in his arms and clasping her so tightly that her
+little feet were lifted off the daisy-sprinkled turf. &quot;Traitress!&quot; he
+exclaimed, reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She blushed scarlet, although she was but just nine years old; she put
+her arm around his neck and kissed him directly upon the mouth; his
+lips were still the lips of a girl. Then she walked away, but she could
+not hasten from the spot; something seemed to stay her steps. She
+paused and looked back.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The lad was busied with packing up his small belongings: all the gaiety
+had vanished from his face, he looked pale and sad again. With her
+heart swelling with pity, she ran back to him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You come for your basket,&quot; he said, good-naturedly, holding it out to
+her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No, it isn't that,&quot; she replied, shaking her head, as she put down the
+basket on a willow stump and came close up to him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In some surprise he smiled down at her. &quot;Something else to ask, my
+little princess?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No,--that is----&quot; She plucked him by the sleeve. &quot;See here,&quot; she
+began, confused and yet coaxingly, &quot;do not be vexed,--only--I thought
+just now how bad it would be if before you get home you should be
+treated by somebody else as that man treated you,&quot;--she pointed to the
+castle,--&quot;and then--and then--oh, I know so well how dreadful it is to
+have no money. I--please take the guilders: when you are a great artist
+you can give them back to me.&quot; And before he knew what she was doing
+she had slipped the porte-monnaie into his coat-pocket.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The tears stood in his eyes; he put his arm around her, and looked at
+her as if to learn her face by heart.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It might be,&quot; he muttered; &quot;perhaps you will bring me luck; I may
+still come to be something; and if you then should be as dear and
+pretty as you are now----&quot; He kissed her upon both eyes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Rika!&quot; a shrill voice called from a distance.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Is that your name?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And what is your last name?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My step-father's is Strachinsky. I do not know mine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Rika!&quot; the shrill tones sounded nearer.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And what is your name?&quot; she asked him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Before he could reply, the fluttering skirts of the English governess
+came in sight: suddenly aroused to a consciousness of her neglected
+duties, she was looking along the road for her charge.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The little girl clasped her picture close and fled.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">When she reached the house she ran up-stairs to put her precious
+portrait safely away, and then she allowed a clean apron to be put on
+over her faded frock by the agitated Englishwoman,--whose name was in
+fact Sophy Lange, and who had been born in Hamburg of honest German
+parents,--after which she presented herself in the dining-room with an
+assured air as if unconscious of the slightest wrong-doing.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her step-father received her with a stern reproof, and instantly
+inquired where she had been. She replied, curtly, &quot;To the village;&quot;
+upon which he read her a tremendous lecture upon the enormity of idly
+wandering about the country, addressing at the same time a few
+annihilating remarks to the Englishwoman from Hamburg. He had exchanged
+his bright-blue morning coat for a light summer suit, in which he
+presented a much better appearance. But he was no more pleasing to his
+step-daughter in his light-brown costume than in the blue coat with red
+facings. She paid very little attention to his discourse, but quietly
+went on eating. Miss Sophy, however, shed tears. The Baron von
+Strachinsky impressed her greatly; nay, more, she honoured him as a
+being from a higher sphere. He was popular with women of all ranks,
+from the lowest to the highest,--why, it would be difficult to tell. He
+possessed a certain amount of personal magnetism, but it had no effect
+upon his step-daughter.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They were extraordinarily antipathetic, Strachinsky and his clear-eyed
+little step-daughter. What she took exception to in him was of so
+complex and delicate a nature as to defy explanation in words. What
+annoyed him in her was principally the fact that, in spite of her
+tender age, she saw through him, was quite free of all illusions with
+regard to him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It always increases our regard for our neighbour if he will but view us
+with flattering eyes. Some few illusions in our behalf we require from
+those around us; they are absolutely necessary to the pleasure of daily
+intercourse. But the demands of Herr von Strachinsky in this respect
+were beyond all reason, while his step-daughter's capacity to comply
+with them was unusually limited.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Dinner progressed as usual: the gentleman continued to admonish, Miss
+Sophy to weep, and little Rika to maintain strict silence, until
+dessert, when Herr von Strachinsky, for whom eating was one of the
+most important occupations in life, inquired after an almond-cake of
+which, as he assured the servant, five pieces had been left from
+breakfast,--yes, five pieces and a little broken one: he had counted
+them.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The servant repaired to the kitchen for information: the cook could
+give none, save that she herself had put the cake away in the pantry,
+whence it had vanished, without a trace, since the morning. Herr von
+Strachinsky was indignant; he accused every servant in the
+establishment of the theft, from the foremost of those employed in the
+house to the lowest stable-boy, and talked of having bars put up at the
+windows. Little Rika let him give full sweep to his anger; she fairly
+gloated over his irritation; at last she remarked, indifferently, &quot;What
+would be the use of bars on the windows, when any one can walk in at
+the door? It is never locked.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Silence! what do you know about it?&quot; thundered her step-father.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, I know all about it,&quot; the child quietly replied, &quot;and I know what
+became of the cake.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I took it. I carried it out to the painter whom you turned out of the
+house.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Herr von Strachinsky's eyebrows were lifted to a startling extent at
+this confession. &quot;You--ran--after--that house-painter fellow down the
+road?&quot; he asked, with a gasp at each word.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes,&quot; the child replied, composedly; &quot;and he was not a house-painter
+fellow, but a young artist, although I should have run after him all
+the same if he had been a house-painter fellow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Indeed! And why?&quot; he asked, with a sneer.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She looked him full in the face. &quot;Why? Because you treated him so
+badly, and I was sorry for him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">For a moment he was speechless; then he arose, seized the child by the
+arm, and thrust her out of the door. Without making the least
+resistance, carelessly humming to herself, she ran up the staircase,--a
+staircase that turned an abrupt corner and the worn steps of which
+exhaled an odour of damp decay,--whilst Strachinsky turned to the
+Englishwoman from Hamburg and groaned, &quot;My step-daughter is a positive
+torment. I am firmly persuaded that she will end at the galleys.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The galleys were tolerably far removed from the sphere of the Austrian
+penal code, but Herr von Strachinsky had a predilection for what was
+foreign, and had recently read a novel in which the galleys played a
+prominent part.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Meanwhile, little Erika had betaken herself to the drawing-room, a
+spacious but by no means gorgeous apartment, the furniture of which
+consisted principally of bookcases and a piano. She seated herself at
+this piano, and instantly became absorbed in the study of one of
+Mozart's sonatas, with which she intended to celebrate her mother's
+return. She had a decided talent for music; her slender little fingers
+moved with incredible ease over the keys, and her cheeks, usually
+rather pale, flushed with enthusiasm. It was going very well; she
+stretched out her foot to touch the pedal,--an act which in her opinion
+lent the crowning glory to her musical performance,--when suddenly she
+became aware of a kind of uproar that seemed to fill the house. Dogs
+barked, servants hurried to and fro, a carriage drove up and stopped
+before the castle door. Frau von Strachinsky had returned unexpectedly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The child hurried down-stairs, just in time to see Strachinsky take his
+wife from the carriage. They kissed each other like lovers,--which
+seemed to produce a disagreeable impression upon the little girl;
+moreover, it occurred to her that she did not know whether she might
+venture forward under existing circumstances. Then she heard her mother
+say, &quot;And where is Rika?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Without awaiting her step-father's reply, she rushed into her mother's
+arms.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You look finely, darling,&quot; the mother exclaimed, patting her little
+daughter's cheeks. &quot;Have you been a good girl?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Rika made no reply. Frau von Strachinsky's face took on a sad, troubled
+expression. Strachinsky frowned, and shrugged his shoulders. His wife
+looked from him to the child, who had taken her hand and was about to
+kiss it. &quot;What has she been doing now?&quot; she asked, turning to her
+husband.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Not to speak of her behaviour towards myself,--behaviour that
+is perfectly unwarrantable,--I repeat, unwarrantable,&quot; said
+Strachinsky,--&quot;not to speak of that, the girl has again so far
+forgotten herself as----well, I will tell you about it by and by.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Tell now!&quot; the child exclaimed. &quot;I'd rather you would tell now!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Hush, Miss Impertinence!&quot; Strachinsky ordered her; then, turning to
+his wife, he asked, &quot;Do you bring good news? Is your uncle willing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Fran von Strachinsky shook her head sadly. &quot;Unfortunately, no,--not
+quite,&quot; she murmured; &quot;but he was very kind; he was enchanted with
+Bobby.&quot; Bobby was Rika's step-brother, whom the poor mother had carried
+with her upon her distressing journey, perhaps as some consolation for
+herself, perhaps to soften the hearts of her relatives. He did, indeed,
+seem admirably adapted to this latter purpose, for he was a charming
+little fellow, with a lovely pink-and-white face crowned by brown
+curls, and plump bare arms. His hands at present were filled with toys,
+which he carried to his sister to console her, since he instantly
+perceived that she was in disgrace.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I cannot understand that,&quot; Strachinsky murmured. &quot;I should have
+credited Uncle Nick with a more generous spirit.&quot; And he looked sternly
+at his wife, as if she were responsible for the ill success of her
+mission.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She laid her hand gently on his arm and said, &quot;You are an incorrigible
+idealist, my poor Nello: you judge all men by yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And Strachinsky passed his hand over his eyes, and sighed forth
+sentimentally, &quot;Yes, I am an idealist, an incorrigible idealist, a
+perfect Don Quixote.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">The rest of the afternoon was passed by the pair in the large
+drawing-room, trying to obtain some clear understanding of the state of
+Strachinsky's financial affairs,--a very difficult task.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She, pencil in hand, did the reckoning. He paced the room to and fro
+with a tragic air, and smoked cigarettes. From time to time he uttered
+some effective sentence, such as, &quot;I am unfit for this world!&quot; or, &quot;Of
+course a Marquis Posa like myself!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She sat quietly contemplating the figures with which the sheet before
+her was filled. Her face grow sad, while her husband's, on the
+contrary, brightened. Since he was succeeding in casting all his cares
+upon her shoulders, he felt quite cheerful.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I never had the least idea of this ten thousand guilders which you
+tell me you owe,&quot; the tortured woman exclaimed, in a sudden access of
+anger.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No?&quot; her husband rejoined, with easy assurance. &quot;I surely wrote you
+about it; or could the trifle have slipped my memory? Yes, now I
+remember you were with the children at Johannisbad. Löwy came and
+pestered me with its being such a splendid chance,--told me I had no
+right to hold back; and so I bought a hundred shares of Schönfeld.'
+Good heavens! what do I understand of business?--how is such knowledge
+possible for a gentleman? In the army one never learns anything of the
+kind, and what can one do save follow advice? I trust others far too
+readily,--you have always told me so; it is the natural result of the
+magnanimity of my nature. I blame myself for it. I am an Egmont,--a
+perfect Egmont. Poor Egmont! There is nothing left for me but to sigh
+with him, 'Ah, Orange! Orange!'&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Strachinsky imagined that this confession, uttered with an
+indescribably tragic emphasis, would quite reconcile his wife to his
+unfortunate speculation. But, to his great surprise, the anticipated
+result did not ensue. Frau von Strachinsky pushed her thick dark hair
+back from her temples, and exclaimed, &quot;I cannot understand you; you
+promised me so faithfully not to speculate in stocks again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But, my dear Emma, the opportunity seemed to me so brilliant a one,
+that I should have thought myself a very scoundrel not to try at
+least----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And you see the result.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;When a man acts conscientiously and with the best intentions, he
+should not be reproached, even although his efforts result in failure,&quot;
+he said, pompously. &quot;No, my dear Emma, not a word; do not speak now:
+you will only be sorry for it by and by.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But Emma Strachinsky was not on this occasion to be thus silenced: she
+was indignant, and almost in despair. &quot;You have always acted with the
+'best intentions'!&quot; she exclaimed, hoarse with agitation, &quot;and the
+result of your good intentions will be to beggar my children. Can you
+take it ill if I withhold from you my few farthings, that there may be
+some provision for the children in the future?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Jagello von Strachinsky looked her over from head to foot. &quot;<i>Your</i> few
+farthings!&quot; he said, with annihilating severity. &quot;What indelicacy!
+Well, I shall steer my course accordingly. Do as you choose in future.
+I have nothing more to say.&quot; And, with head haughtily erect, cavalier
+and martyr every inch of him, he stalked from the room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She looked after him: she had gone too far; again her impulsiveness had
+led her astray. Her heart throbbed; she felt sore with agitation,
+shame, and remorse.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When Erika, towards evening, was playing hide-and-seek with her little
+brother in the garden, she saw her mother and her step-father strolling
+affectionately along the gravel path between the hawthorn bushes. He
+was already rather bald; his limbs were loosely knit; he wore full
+whiskers, and there was a languishing glance in his eyes, but he was
+still handsome, in spite of a dissipated air; she was tall, slender,
+and erect, with large dark eyes, and a pale, noble countenance, that
+could never, however, have been beautiful. They walked close together,
+and to a casual observer presented an ideal picture of happy wedded
+life. And yet when one observed more narrowly--his arm was thrown
+around her shoulder, and he leaned upon her instead of supporting her;
+the swing of his heavy frame, the languishing, sentimental expression
+of his face, everything about him, bespoke a self-satisfied, luxurious
+temperament; while she----in her eyes there was restless anxiety, and
+her figure looked as though it were slowly being bowed to the ground by
+a burden which she was either unable or afraid to shake off.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She walked with a patiently regular step beneath her heavy load.
+Suddenly she seemed uneasy: she shivered.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What is it, darling?&quot; Strachinsky asked her, clinging still closer to
+her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Nothing,&quot; she murmured, &quot;nothing,&quot; and walked on.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They were passing the spot where the little brother and sister were
+playing, and in the gathering twilight Emma Strachinsky became aware of
+a pair of clear dark-brown childish eyes that seemed to ask, &quot;How can
+she love that man?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Those childish eyes were positively uncanny!</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">The child's dislike dated from far in the past; it was in fact the
+first clearly formulated emotion of her little heart. During the first
+years of her second marriage the mother, prompted by an exaggerated
+tenderness, had concealed from her little daughter as long as possible
+the fact that Strachinsky was not her own father: the child had learned
+the truth by accident. When she rushed to her mother to have what she
+had heard confirmed, she was received with the tenderest caresses, as
+though she were to be consoled for a great grief, while she was
+entreated not to be sad, and was told that &quot;'papa' was far too good and
+kind to make any difference between herself and his own children, that
+he loved her dearly,&quot; etc.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The mother's caresses were highly prized by the child, all the more
+that they were rather rare, but on this occasion she could not even
+seem to enjoy them, since she could not endure to be pitied and soothed
+for what brought her in reality intense relief.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her mother perceived this, and it angered her, although at the same
+time the child's evident though silent dislike made a deep impression
+upon her. Perhaps the consciousness of its existence in so frank and
+childish a mind first gave occasion to distrust of the terrible
+infatuation to which the gifted woman's entire existence had fallen a
+sacrifice.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Frau von Strachinsky was wont to go herself every evening to see that
+all was as it should be in the large airy apartment where both the
+children slept. She hovered noiselessly from one bed to the other,
+signing the cross upon the brow of each,--an old-fashioned custom to
+which she still clung although she had long since adopted very
+philosophical views with regard to religion,--and giving each sleeping
+child a tender good-night kiss.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The evening after her return she went to the nursery at the usual hour,
+but lingered only by the crib of the sleeping boy, passing her
+daughter's bed with averted face. Rika sat up and looked after her; her
+mother had reached the door without once looking back. This the child
+could not endure. She sprang out of bed, ran to her mother, and seized
+her by her skirt. &quot;Mother! mother!&quot; she cried, in a frenzy, &quot;you will
+not go without bidding me good-night?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Let go of my gown,&quot; Frau von Strachinsky replied, in a cold voice,
+which nevertheless trembled with emotion.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But what have I done, mother?&quot; the child cried, clinging to her
+passionately.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Can you ask?&quot; her mother rejoined, sternly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why should I not ask? How should I know what he has told you? I was
+not by when he accused me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Erika! is that the way to speak of your father?&quot; her mother said,
+angrily.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The little girl frowned. &quot;He is not my father,&quot; she declared,
+defiantly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Frau von Strachinsky sighed. &quot;Your ingratitude is shocking,&quot; she
+exclaimed, and then, controlling herself with an effort, she added,
+&quot;But that I cannot alter: you are an unnatural, hard-hearted, stubborn
+child. I cannot soften your heart, but I can insist that you conduct
+yourself with propriety, and I forbid you once for all to run after
+vagabonds in the street. And now go to bed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I will not go to bed until you bid me good-night!&quot; cried the child.
+She stood there with naked little feet, in her white night-gown, over
+which her long reddish-brown hair hung down. &quot;And I was not so naughty
+as you think. You ought not to condemn me without giving me time to
+defend myself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The child was so desperately reasonable, her mother could not think her
+wrong, in spite of her momentary anger. She paused. An idea evidently
+occurred to the little girl. &quot;Only wait one minute!&quot; she exclaimed, as
+she flew across the room to a drawer where she kept her toys, and,
+returning with her <i>protégé's</i> water-colour sketch, held it up
+triumphantly before her mother's eyes. &quot;Look at that!&quot; she cried.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Involuntarily Emma looked. &quot;Where did that come from?&quot; she exclaimed,
+forgetting her vexation in freshly-aroused interest.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Do you know who it is?&quot; asked Erika, stretching her slender neck out
+of the embroidered ruffle of her night-gown.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Of course; it is your picture. It is charming. Who did it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The vagabond whom I ran after, the house-painter fellow,&quot; Erika
+replied. &quot;At least you can see he was not <i>that</i>, but a young artist.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her mother was silent.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah, if you had only been at home!&quot; the child's bare feet were growing
+colder, and her cheeks hotter with excitement, &quot;you would have done
+just as I did. If you had only seen him! He was very handsome, and so
+pale and thin and weary with hunger,--why, <i>I</i> could have knocked him
+down,--and he never begged,--he was too proud,--only held out the
+portfolio to papa, and his hand trembled----&quot; Suddenly the excitable
+temperament which the girl had inherited from her mother asserted
+itself, and she began to sob, her whole childish frame quivering with
+emotion. &quot;And papa turned him out of doors, and told the cook--to
+give--to give him two kreutzers. He threw them away--and then--then I
+ran after him!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Frau von Strachinsky had grown very pale; the child's agitated story
+had evidently made an impression upon her, but she did her best to
+preserve a severe demeanour. &quot;But it is very improper to run after
+strangers in the street; you are too old.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika hung her head, ashamed. &quot;But I should not have done it if papa
+had not abused him,&quot; she declared, by way of excuse. &quot;I did it out of
+pity for him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Pity is a very poor counsellor.&quot; Her mother said these words with an
+emphasis which Erika never forgot, and which was to echo in her soul
+years afterwards. Then she extricated herself from the child's embrace
+and left the room, closing the door behind her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A few minutes afterwards she reopened the door. Little Erika was still
+standing where she had left her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Go to bed,&quot; said her mother, in a far more gentle tone, stooping down
+to kiss her, &quot;and be a better girl another time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The child clasped her slender little arms tightly about her mother's
+neck in a strangling embrace, crying, &quot;Oh, mother, mother, you do love
+me still?&quot; The pale woman did not answer the question, save by a kiss;
+she waited until the little girl had crept back to bed, and then tucked
+in the coverlet about her shoulders, and once more left the room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika, precocious child that she was, was a prey to emotions of
+a very mingled character. She had won a great victory over her
+step-father,--of this she was well aware,--but then she had grieved her
+mother sorely. All at once she was seized with profound remorse in
+recalling to-day's stroke of genius. Beneath her mother's severity she
+had been sure of having right on her side; now a great uncertainty
+possessed her. &quot;It is very improper to run after strangers in the
+street; you are too old,&quot; she repeated, meekly, and she grew hot. &quot;What
+would my mother think if she knew that I had kissed him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the midst of her distress she was overpowered by intense fatigue:
+her eyelids drooped above her eyes, and with her nightly prayer still
+on her lips she fell asleep.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Emma von Strachinsky did not sleep; she sat in the bare room adjoining
+the nursery, the room where she taught Erika her lessons. She wrote two
+very difficult letters to her husband's creditors, and then proceeded
+to sew upon a gown for her daughter. She was proud of the child's
+beauty as only the mother can be who has all her life long been
+conscious of being obliged to forego the gift of beauty for herself.
+She loved her daughter idolatrously,--the daughter whom she often
+treated with a severity verging upon injustice, and whom she sometimes
+avoided for days because the glance of those clear eyes troubled her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The windows of the room were open, and looked out upon the road. The
+fragrance of ripened grain was wafted in from the earth outside,
+resting from its summer fruitfulness and saturated with the August
+sunshine. A song floated up through the silent night: the reapers were
+working by moonlight. The low murmur of the brook accompanied the song,
+and now and then could be heard the soft swish of the grain falling
+beneath the scythe. A cricket chirped.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Emma dropped her hands in her lap and gazed into vacancy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Suddenly she started; a step approached the door of the room, and
+Strachinsky, smiling sentimentally, entered. &quot;Emma,&quot; he said, tenderly,
+&quot;have you written to Franks and Ziegler?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes,&quot; she replied, and her voice sounded hoarse. &quot;There lie the
+letters. Read them, and see if they are what you wish.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Not at all,&quot; her husband exclaimed, gaily. &quot;I have implicit confidence
+in your tact. H'm! the perusal of such letters is a sorry amusement.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Do you suppose that it was a pleasure to write them?&quot; Emma asked, with
+some bitterness.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Strachinsky immediately assumed an injured air. &quot;You are irritable
+again. One cannot venture upon the slightest jest with you. Do you
+suppose that I enjoy being forced to ask you to write the letters? Good
+heavens! it is hard enough, but--circumstances will have it so.&quot; He
+passed his hand over his eyes, and stroked his whiskers with an air of
+great dignity.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was silent. He watched her for a while, and then said, &quot;That
+eternal sewing is very bad for you. Come to bed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I cannot. I am not sleepy,&quot; she replied, plying her needle; &quot;and,
+moreover, I must finish this frock; let me go on with it.&quot; She bent
+over her work with the air of one determined to complete a task.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Strachinsky stood beside her for a while longer, hesitating and
+uncertain: he picked up each small article upon the table, looked at it
+and laid it down again after the fashion of a man who does not know
+what to do with himself, then he sighed profoundly, yawned, sighed
+again, and without another word left the room with heavy, lagging
+footsteps.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When he was gone she laid aside her sewing, and went to the open window
+to breathe the fresh air. The bluish moonlight shone full upon the
+whitewashed walls of the peasants' cots crowned with their dark clumsy
+thatch; in the distance twinkled the little stream winding its plashing
+way directly across the village towards the river, its banks bordered
+with curiously-distorted willows that looked like crouching lurking
+gnomes, and spanned by the huge useless bridge. Bridge, willows, and
+cots all threw pitch-black shadows out into the glaring splendour of
+the moonlit night, which was absolutely free from mist and damp. Beyond
+the village stretched fields of grain and stubble in endless
+perspective, a surface of tarnished dull gold.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The song was still informing the silence.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At last it ceased, and shortly afterwards heavy, regular steps were
+heard passing along the road. The reapers were going home. They passed
+by Emma's windows, a little dark gray crowd of men; the scythes over
+their shoulders glimmered in the moonlight; then came a couple of
+women, bowed and weary, almost dropping asleep as they walked; and last
+of all the overseer, a young fellow whose hand clasped that of a girl
+at his side. How he bent over her! A low tender whispering sound
+reached Emma's ears through the dry August air which the night had
+scarcely cooled. She turned away, frowning. &quot;How happy they look! and
+why?&quot; she murmured to herself. Suddenly she smiled bitterly. Had she
+any right to sneer thus at others?--she? Surely if ever a woman lived
+who had believed in love and had married for love, she was that woman.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And whom had she loved? A poor weakling, who had never been worthy to
+unloose the latchet of her shoe!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Not only little precocious Erika, every sensible human being who had
+ever come in contact with the married pair had asked how such a union
+had been possible. And yet it was so simple a story,--so simple and
+commonplace,--the story of a woman lacking beauty, but gifted,
+enthusiastic, prone to romantic exaggeration, whose longing for
+affection had wrought her ruin.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Her parents belonged to the most ancient if not the most illustrious of
+the native Bohemian nobility; he was of doubtful descent. She had
+always been wealthy; he possessed nothing save a scheming brain and a
+soaring self-conceit that bore him triumphantly aloft through all the
+annoyances of life.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He was not entirely without talent, had had a good education, and was,
+previous to his marriage with Emma Lenzdorff, neither idle nor
+inactive, but possessed of a certain desire for culture, the secret
+springs of which, however, were to be found in an eager social
+ambition. At eighteen he entered the army: too poor to join the
+cavalry, and too arrogant to content himself among the infantry, he
+joined a Jäger corps. He had risen to the rank of captain when he was
+wounded in the Schleswig-Holstein campaign. He made his wife's
+acquaintance in a private hospital in Berlin, which she had arranged in
+her own house for the martyrs of the aforesaid campaign.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was very young, very enthusiastic, and a widow,--widow of a cold,
+unloved northern German whom in accordance with family arrangements she
+had married while she was yet only a visionary child. The memory of her
+formal marriage inspired her with horror.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Before meeting Strachinsky she had given scope to her romantic
+tendencies by all sorts of exaggerated charitable schemes, and by a
+fanatical devotion to art and poetry. She had long been convinced that
+her thirst for affection could never be satisfied. No one had ever
+shown her any passionate devotion, and, conscious of her lack of
+beauty, she had sadly resigned herself to swell the ranks of those
+women whom reason might prompt a suitor to woo, but who could never
+hope to be wooed in defiance of reason.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Pole had an easy task. That he was handsome even his enemies could
+not deny. And he knew how to make the most of his personal advantages:
+a century earlier he might have been taken for a Poniatowski, with a
+direct claim to the throne of Poland. His uniform was very becoming,
+and a wounded soldier is always interesting. As soon as he divined the
+young widow's weakness he wooed her with verses,--with passionate
+declarations of love.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Poor Emma! Her thirsty heart thrilled with the sudden bursting into
+bloom of its spring so long delayed! Her parents, who might have warned
+her of what she was bringing upon herself, were dead; she paid no heed
+to her mother-in-law, who strenuously opposed her second marriage. When
+Emma, with burning cheeks, and trembling to her finger-tips with
+emotion, repeated to her the Pole's exaggerated expressions of
+devotion, the elder woman rejoined, coldly, &quot;And you believe the
+coxcomb?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The words were to Emma like the sting from a whip-lash. &quot;And why should
+I not believe him?&quot; she asked, sharply. &quot;Because, perhaps, you think me
+incapable of inspiring a man with affection?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Nonsense!&quot; replied the sensible mother-in-law. &quot;You could inspire
+affection in any honest man with a heart in his bosom, but not in that
+shallow Pole, that second-rate dandy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Perhaps you think him an adventurer, who wooes me for the sake of my
+money?&quot; Emma exclaimed, indignantly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No, I think him a superficial man who, flattered by having made an
+impression upon a woman of rank, is trying to better his condition.
+Adventurer! Nonsense! He has not wit enough. An opportunity offers
+itself, and he embraces it: <i>voilà tout</i>. He is not to blame, but his
+suit is unworthy of you, and a marriage with him would be a misfortune
+for you, apart from the fact that you would disgrace your family by
+it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When a patient is to be persuaded to take a dose of medicine it ought
+not to be offered him in an unattractive shape.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old lady's representations were correct, but they were humiliating.
+Emma turned away, stubborn and indignant, and a month afterwards
+married Strachinsky and parted from her mother-in-law forever.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Eight years had passed since then. First came a few months during
+which Emma revelled in the sensation of loving and being loved, and
+then--well, the bliss was still there, but a slight shadow had fallen
+upon it, dimming it, chilling it, a gnawing uneasiness, in the midst of
+which memory would suddenly suggest the sensible mother-in-law's
+unsparing predictions.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His marriage put an end to all exertion on Strachinsky's part: it had
+at a single stroke, as it were, lifted him so far above all for which
+his ambition had thirsted that he had nothing left to desire, save to
+enjoy life in distinguished society as far as was possible. With his
+wife's money he purchased an estate in Bohemia where the soil was the
+poorest, so great in extent that it made a show in the map of the
+country, and developed a brilliant talent for hospitality: all the
+land-owners in the vicinity, all the cavalry-officers from the nearest
+garrison, were habitués of Luzano, as the estate was called. With his
+wife's unceasing attentions Strachinsky's self-importance increased,
+and his regard for her declined. She existed simply to insure his
+comfort,--for nothing else. The household was turned topsy-turvy when
+the master's guests appeared, whether invited or unannounced.
+Strachinsky entertained them with exquisite suppers, at which champagne
+flowed freely, but at which his wife did not appear. After supper cards
+were produced, and it was frequently four in the morning before the
+gentlemen were heard driving away from the castle; sometimes they
+remained until the next night.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But the day came when Luzano ceased to be a branch of the military
+casino at K----. The life there suddenly became very quiet, and various
+disagreeable facts came to light which had been disregarded in the
+whirl of gaiety. Then first little Erika saw her mother, pencil in
+hand, patiently adding up her husband's debts, while Strachinsky, his
+hands clasped behind him, and a cigarette between his teeth, paced the
+room, dictating amounts to her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In addition to losses at play and in unfortunate speculations, he had
+magnanimously put his name to various notes of his distinguished
+friends.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Emma did not even frown, but exerted herself in every way,--sold her
+trinkets and almost every valuable piece of furniture, that her husband
+might meet his liabilities, treating him all the while with the
+forbearance traditional in model wives, in order to save him from any
+depressing consciousness of his position.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Was he conscious of it? If he were, he was entirely successful in
+concealing any consequent depression. The morning after the first
+painful revelation of his indebtedness, he skipped with the gayest air
+imaginable into the dining-room, where the family were already
+assembled at the breakfast-table, and exhorted all present to
+economize, and especially not to put too much butter on their bread,
+afterwards discoursing wittily upon 'poverty and magnanimity.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">To lighten his burden,--perhaps to disguise his insensibility from her
+own heart,--Emma persuaded him that his course had been the result
+solely of warm-hearted imprudence and an exaggerated nobility of
+character.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This view of the case was eagerly adopted by his vanity. He paraded his
+martyr's nimbus, and with a self-satisfied sigh styled himself a Don
+Quixote.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Nothing could really be farther from Don Quixote's idealistic and
+unselfish craze than his utter egotism, in its thin veil of
+sentimentality. And as for his martyrdom, it was easily seen through.
+None of the misfortunes brought upon himself by himself did he ever
+allow to affect his existence. He possessed a kind of cunning
+intelligence that never forsook him, and that enabled him in the midst
+of ruin to insure his own personal ease.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But how could Emma have borne at that comparatively early period to see
+him as he really was? She seized upon every excuse for him; she patched
+up her damaged illusions; she would support, restrain him, develop all
+that was really noble in him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In her jealous ambition to make his home so delightful that he would
+never look for entertainment elsewhere, she exerted herself to the
+utmost, pandered to his love of eating, even cooked herself when they
+were no longer able to bear the expense of such a cook as he had been
+accustomed to, tried to conform her intellectual interests to his lack
+of any such,--in short, did everything to strengthen the tie between
+herself and him. She succeeded completely: she made the tie so strong
+that no loosening of it was possible.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She tried to withdraw him from all outside influences, to win him
+wholly to herself, and she succeeded; her presence, her tenderness,
+became an absolute necessity of existence to him; he had never so
+adored her even during their honeymoon.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Good heavens! now she would have given everything in the world for any
+breach between them that could be widened beyond all possibility of
+healing. It was too late; she must drag on the burden with which she
+had laden herself; it was her duty; she could not sink beneath it; she
+had no right to.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But in spite of all her efforts her nerves at length gave way. She
+became irritable. At times she grieved over the change which she saw in
+him; at other times the thought would suggest itself that this change
+was merely superficial, that he had never really been any other than at
+present. Then her blood would seem to run cold; she could have
+screamed. No, no, she would not see!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">There is nothing sadder in this world than the dutiful, tortured life
+of a woman with a husband whom she has ceased to love.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Full four years had passed by since Erika had kissed the young artist.
+She recalled the little adventure, which had taken upon itself quite
+magnificent dimensions in her lively imagination, with secret delight
+and a vague sense of shame.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Emma was bearing her cross as best she might, but at every step she
+well-nigh fell exhausted. Her wretchedness not unfrequently found vent
+in angry words, for which she was sure to repent and apologize.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her relation with her daughter, now a tall, slender, and unusually
+clever girl of fourteen, suffered from her general wretchedness. She
+still loved the child tenderly, but the girl's clear, observant gaze
+pained her. It had grown much clearer and more penetrating with years.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A certain weight, an oppression, seemed to brood over Luzano like the
+sense of an impending catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The only ray of sunshine in the unhappy wife's gloomy lot was her
+little son. Out of several children by her second marriage he alone had
+survived. He was strong and healthy, the darling of all, his sister's
+idol. Then--he had hardly passed his seventh birthday when he too died.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The little fellow had sickened in the midst of his play, had run to his
+sister and had fallen asleep with his head in her lap. The girl sat
+still, not to disturb him, and enjoined silence upon Miss Sophy, who
+was in the room. The twilight stole gray and vague in upon the bare
+apartment. The maid-servant--there were no longer any men-servants at
+Luzano--brought in a lamp, and a plate of rosy-cheeked apples for the
+children's supper. The boy opened his eyes, but closed them again with
+a low moan and turned his head away from the light.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His mother appeared, saw at a glance how matters stood, and put the
+little fellow to bed. She did not come down to supper, and when Erika
+went, as was her wont, to say good-night to her brother, she was not
+allowed to enter his room. The next morning the doctor was sent for.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Whilst he was in the sick-room Erika was taking her daily lesson in
+English with Miss Sophy, with no thought of any trouble. She was
+learning by heart her scene from Shakespeare, when her mother suddenly
+put her head in at the door and said, &quot;Diphtheria!&quot; The tone of her
+voice and the expression of her face were such as to terrify the girl.
+But when Erika, trembling with dread, ran towards her, she waved her
+off and vanished.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Miss Sophy was established in the sick-room, which Erika was not
+allowed to enter. No one paid her any attention, and she spent hours
+forlornly watching at the end of a long gloomy corridor the door behind
+which so much that was terrible was going on. If she was seen she was
+sent away; but before long the entire household was too anxious to pay
+her the slightest heed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was about eleven in the forenoon of the fifth day since the first
+symptoms of the disease had appeared. Erika stood listening eagerly
+near the door, trembling with a sense of something vaguely terrible
+going on behind it. Suddenly it opened, and her mother staggered out,
+her dress disordered, her face distorted with agony, and supported by
+the little boy's nurse. Behind her came Strachinsky, his handkerchief
+at his eyes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In absolute terror Erika looked after her mother, who passed her by,
+even brushing her with her skirt, without seeing her. Then she entered
+the room which the wretched woman had just left. The bed was covered
+with a white sheet, which revealed the outline of the little form
+beneath it. The girl's heart throbbed almost to bursting. She lifted a
+corner of the sheet: there lay her little brother, dead, so white, and
+with his sweet face unchanged by disease. The little hands lay half
+open upon the coverlet, as though life had just slipped from them. A
+grace born of death hovered above the entire form. His sister gazed in
+tearless distress. She could not cry; she felt no definable pain, only
+a terrible heaviness in her limbs, and a weight upon her heart that
+almost choked her. She bent over the corpse to kiss it, when Miss Sophy
+rushed into the room, seized her by the arm, and thrust her out of the
+door.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Of course the first thing Erika did was to look for her mother. She
+found her in the morning-room, seated in a large arm-chair, quivering
+in every limb. Minna, the nurse, was moistening her forehead with
+cologne, but she seemed entirely unconscious. Her hands were folded in
+her lap, and her gaze was fixed on vacancy. Erika could not summon the
+courage to approach her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Meanwhile, Strachinsky was pacing the room in long strides: his tears
+were already dried; every now and then he would pause and heave a
+profound sigh. At first Emma seemed not to notice him, but on a sudden
+she roused from her apathy, and, passing her hand over her brow, with a
+feeble, wailing cry, she said, &quot;For God's sake, stop, Nello!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He paused, cleared his throat several times, took an English penknife
+from his pocket, began to pare his nails, and then went to his wife and
+stroked her cheek. She shrank from him involuntarily.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He groaned feelingly, left her, and went to the window: with one hand
+he stroked his whiskers, with the other he jingled the keys in his
+pocket.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">After a while he began in an undertone, probably with the foolish
+expectation of distracting the wretched mother's thoughts, to detail
+what was going on outside, all in a melancholy, sentimental monotone,
+that would have set healthy nerves on edge. &quot;Ah, see that little
+sparrow with a straw in its beak! it must be fitting up its winter
+nest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Poor Emma sat bolt upright, except that her head inclined somewhat
+forward, and gazed at the man at the window.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Suddenly she uttered a short, shrill scream, and, pressing both hands
+to her temples, rushed out of the room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When she had gone Strachinsky shrugged his shoulders, sighed as if
+gross injustice had been done him, and retired to his room to make a
+list of the names of all those whom he wished notified of the death.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">The funeral took place the third day afterwards.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">On that day they assembled at the dinner-table as on other days. The
+poor mother ate nothing, and Erika could scarce swallow a morsel. The
+tears which had refused to come at first were falling fast upon her new
+black gown.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Strachinsky ate, but after a while he too pushed his plate away. For
+the first time in her life his stepdaughter was conscious of an emotion
+of compassion for him. She thought that his grief had made eating
+impossible, when he cleared his throat, and, &quot;This is intolerable,&quot; he
+whined; &quot;at best I have no appetite, and here is tomato sauce! You know
+I never eat tomato sauce.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His wife made no reply: she only looked at him with her strange new
+gaze, with eyes from which the last veil had fallen, and which were
+pained by the light. The look in those eyes would have made one
+shudder.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The clock in the castle tower struck one quarter of an hour after
+another, bringing ever nearer the time for the interment. The little
+body was already laid in the coffin. The coffin-lid leaned up against
+the wall. A fierce restlessness, the strained expectation of a certain
+moment which was to be the culmination of an intolerable misery,
+possessed Erika: she hurried from place to place, and at last ran after
+her mother, who had gone into the garden.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was cold and stormy. The autumn had come late and suddenly. Some
+bushes had kept all their leaves, but they were blackened and
+shrivelled; others had retained only a few red and yellow leaflets that
+fluttered in the wind. The trees, on the other hand, were almost
+entirely bare. The naked boughs showed dark gray or purplish brown
+against the cloudy sky: the birches alone could still boast some
+golden-coloured foliage. On the moist gravel paths and the sodden
+autumn grass lay wet brown leaves mingled with those but lately fallen.
+The asters and chrysanthemums, nipped by the first frost, hung their
+heads, and among all the autumnal decay the poor mother wandered about,
+seeking a few fresh flowers to lay in her dead child's coffin. With
+faltering steps, tripping now and then over the skirt of her gown, she
+tottered from one ruined flower-bed to another. The sharp autumn wind
+fluttered her dress and outlined her emaciated limbs. From her lips
+came a low moaning mingled with caressing words. She kissed the few
+poor flowers, frost-touched, which she held in her hand. Erika walked
+close behind her. Once or twice she stretched out her hand to grasp her
+mother's skirt, but withdrew it hastily, as if fearing to hurt her by
+even the gentlest touch.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Ten minutes afterwards the sharp strokes of a hammer resounded through
+the castle, and the unhappy woman was crouching in the farthest corner
+of her room, her hands held tightly to her ears.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the night following the funeral Erika was waked from sleep by a low
+moan. She started up. By the vague light of early dawn, in which the
+windows were defined amid the darkness, she saw something dark lying
+upon the floor beside her bed. She cried out in terror, and then it
+stirred. It was her mother lying there upon the hard floor, where
+she must have been for some time, for when Erika touched her she was
+icy-cold. The girl took her in her arms and drew her into the soft warm
+bed beside her. Neither spoke one word, but their hearts beat in
+unison: all discord between them had vanished.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">She had thrown off her burden; she breathed anew; she would stand erect
+once more. Then she discovered that a heavier burden yet, a fresh tie,
+bound her to the husband whom now, stripped of all illusion, she
+detested. The consciousness of this misfortune crept over her slowly;
+at first she would not believe it, and when she could no longer doubt,
+it seemed to her that her reason must give way.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika soon perceived that her mother's misery was not due alone to the
+loss of her child. No, that pain brought with it a tender and gentle
+mood. Another burden oppressed her, something against which her entire
+nature angrily rebelled, and under the weight of which she displayed a
+gloomy severity from which her daughter alone never suffered. Towards
+her since the boy's death Emma had shown inexpressible tenderness, and
+the girl, thirsting for affection, was never weary of nestling close in
+her mother's arms, receiving her caresses with profound gratitude,
+almost with devout adoration. Sometimes the mother would smile in the
+midst of her grief as she stroked the gold-gleaming hair back from her
+child's pale face with its large dark eyes. &quot;They do not see it,&quot; she
+would murmur, &quot;but I see how pretty you are growing. Poor little Erika!
+you have had a sad youth; but life will atone to you for it when I am
+no longer here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Do not say that!&quot; cried the girl, clasping her mother in her arms. &quot;As
+if I could endure life without you! Mother! mother!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You do not dream of what can be endured,&quot; her mother said, bitterly.
+&quot;One submits. Learn to submit; learn it as soon as may be. Do not ask
+too much from life; ask for no complete happiness: it is an illusion.
+You, indeed, are justified in claiming more than your poor, ugly mother
+had any right to, my beautiful, gifted child!&quot; She uttered the words
+almost with solemnity. Something of the romantic strain which had
+characterized her through every stage of her prosaic, humiliating
+existence came to light now in her worship of her daughter.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She strongly impressed Erika with the idea that she was an exceptional
+creature, and, although she was always admonishing her to expect
+nothing of life, she nevertheless gave her to understand that life was
+sure to offer something extraordinary for her acceptance. On the whole,
+in spite of the girl's grief at the loss of her little brother, she
+would have been happier than ever before had it not been for a growing
+anxiety with regard to her mother, whose health had entirely given way.
+Whereas she had been wont from early morning until late at night to
+make her presence felt throughout the household and on the estate,
+grasping with a firm and skilled hand the reins which her husband had
+idly dropped, now she took an interest in nothing.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika was tortured by anxiety, an anxiety all the more distressing from
+the fact that she could not define her fears.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Towards her husband Emma displayed a daily increasing irritability. But
+his easy content was not at all disturbed by it. Thanks to a fancy
+which was ever ready to devise means for sparing and nourishing his
+self-conceit, he discovered a hundred reasons other than the true one
+for his wife's attitude towards him. Her irritability was all due, so
+he informed Miss Sophy, to her situation. And in receiving Miss Sophy's
+admiring and compassionate homage he found, and had found for some
+time, his favourite occupation.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Emma now lived apart in a large room, which, besides her bed and
+wash-stand, was furnished only with a couple of book-shelves, two
+straight-backed chairs covered with horsehair, and a round tiled stove
+decorated with a rude bas-relief of a train of mad Bacchantes and
+bearing on its level top a large funeral urn. The boards of the floor
+were bare, and in a deep window-recess there was an arm-chair. In this
+chair the miserable woman would sit for hours, her elbows resting upon
+its arms, her hands clasped, staring into vacancy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the garden upon which this window looked the snow lay several feet
+deep; upon the meadow beyond, which sloped gently to the broad frozen
+river, and upon its icy surface, it was so deep that meadow and river
+were undistinguishable from each other; upon the dark pine forest
+that bounded the horizon--upon everything--it lay cold and heavy. All
+cold!--all white! Huge drifts of snow; no road definable; never a bird
+that chirped, never a leaf that stirred; all cold and white, without
+pulsation, without breath, dead,--the whole earth a lovely stark
+corpse.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And the wretched woman's gaze could fall upon naught outside save this
+white monotony.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Spring came. The dignified repose of death dissolved in feverish
+activity, in the restless change of seasons, vibrating between fair and
+foul, between purity and its opposite.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The earth absorbed the snow, except where in dark hollows it lingered
+in patches, to disappear slowly in muddy pools.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Emma still sat for hours daily in her room with hands clasped in her
+lap, but her eyes were no longer fixed on vacancy; they had found an
+object upon which to rest. Among the tender green of the meadows so
+lately stripped of their snowy covering, glided the river, dark and
+swollen. How loudly it exulted in its liberation from its icy fetters!
+&quot;Freedom!&quot; shouted its surging waves,--&quot;Freedom!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Upon this river her gaze was now riveted.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Days passed,--weeks; the air was warm and sweet; the window by which
+she sat was open, and the voice of the river was clear and loud.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">One afternoon at the end of April the ploughs were creaking over the
+road, there was an odour of freshly-turned earth in the air, and the
+fruit-trees were already enveloped in a white mist.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The sun had set, and in the west the crescent moon hung pale and
+shadowy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika was standing at the low garden wall, looking down across the
+meadow. Her youthful spirit was oppressed by anxiety so vague that she
+could neither define it nor struggle against it: she seemed to be
+blindly dragged along to meet the inevitable.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her mother had to-day been especially tender to her, but sadder than
+ever before. She had talked as if her death were nigh at hand, and had
+spent a long time in writing letters.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">On a sudden the girl perceived a dark object moving rapidly along in
+the warm damp evening air,--a tall figure in a black gown which
+fluttered in the south wind. It was her mother.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">How quickly she strode through the high rank grass! how strange was her
+gait! Erika had never before seen any one hasten thus, with long
+strides, and yet falteringly as though borne down by weariness, on--on
+towards the dark-flowing river.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Suddenly the girl divined what her mother intended to do. She would
+have screamed, but for an instant her voice failed her, and in the next
+she was silent from presence of mind, the clear-sight of terror.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She clambered over the low wall and flew after her mother, her feet
+scarcely touching the ground, her breath coming in painful gasps.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The dark figure had reached its goal, the river-bank; it leaned
+forward,--when two nervous, girlish hands clutched the black folds of
+her gown. &quot;Mother!&quot; shrieked Erika, in despair.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She turned round. &quot;What do you want?&quot; she said, harshly, almost
+cruelly, to her daughter. Then she shuddered violently, and burst into
+a convulsive sobbing which it seemed impossible to her to control.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her daughter put her arm around her, nestled close to her, and kissed
+the tears from her cheeks. &quot;Mother,&quot; she cried, tenderly, &quot;darling
+mother!&quot; and without another word she gently led the wretched woman
+away from the water. The mother made no resistance; she was mortally
+weary, and leaned heavily upon the slender girl of fourteen.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They slowly returned to the house. A white translucent mist was rising
+from the fields, and flying through it with drooping wings, so low that
+they almost stirred the grass, a flock of hoarsely-croaking ravens
+passed them by.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">In the night Erika suddenly aroused from sleep, without knowing what
+had wakened her. She rubbed her eyes, and turned to sleep again, when
+just outside of her door she heard a voice exclaim, &quot;Ah, God of
+heaven!&quot; In an instant, barefooted and in her nightgown, she was in the
+corridor, where she saw the cook hurrying in the direction of her
+mother's room. &quot;What is the matter?&quot; the girl cried, in terror. The
+cook looked round, shrugged her shoulders, and hurried on.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika would have followed her, but Strachinsky appeared at the turning
+of the corridor where the cook had vanished. He looked as if just
+roused from sleep; he had on a flowered dressing-gown, and carried a
+lighted candle. Beside him Minna walked, pale as ashes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Strachinsky set the candlestick down upon a long low table in the
+passage. &quot;Have the horses harnessed immediately,&quot; he ordered, &quot;and send
+the bailiff to K---- for the doctor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Will not the Herr Baron go himself? People are not always to be relied
+upon,&quot; said Minna, with a significant glance at the master of the
+house.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, no; the bailiff will attend to it perfectly, and then--you can
+understand that I do not wish to be away at this time from my wife, who
+will of course ask for me----&quot; Minna's eyes still being fixed upon him
+with a very strange expression in them, he added, snapping out his
+words in childish irritation, &quot;And then--then--it is no business of
+yours, you stupid fool!&quot; And, turning on his heel, he left her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Minna shrugged her shoulders, and turned towards the staircase to give
+the necessary orders.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Neither she nor Strachinsky had noticed Erika. The girl ran to the
+nurse and plucked her by the sleeve. &quot;Minna,&quot; she asked, in dread,
+&quot;what is the matter? Is my mother ill?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What is the matter with her? Tell me, Minna! oh, tell me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But the nurse shook off her clasping hands. &quot;Let me alone, child. I am
+in a hurry,&quot; she murmured.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika advanced a step, hesitated, and then returned to her room,
+where she found Miss Sophy in great distress, her head crowned with
+curl-papers, which she cut out of the <i>Modern Free Press</i> every evening
+and which made her look half like Medusa and half like a porcupine.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Where are you going?&quot; she asked, seeing that Erika began to dress
+hurriedly. &quot;To my mother; she is ill.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Miss Sophy gently detained her. &quot;Do not go,&quot; she said, softly: &quot;they
+would not let you in; you would only be in the way, now. Wait a little.
+Your mother does not want you there.&quot; And she wagged her porcupine head
+with melancholy solemnity as she added, &quot;I believe--I think you will
+perhaps have a little brother, or sister.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika stared at her. This it was, then!</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Among the many sad experiences that were to fall to Erika's lot there
+were none to equal the dull restlessness, the mortal dread mingled with
+a mysterious, inexpressible emotion, of these hours.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She went on dressing, striving only to be ready quickly, as one dresses
+when the next house is on fire. Then she seated herself opposite Miss
+Sophy, at a tottering round table upon which stood a guttering candle.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">For a while all was silent; then there was a noise outside the door.
+The girl sprang up and hurried out, to see a stout, elderly woman in a
+tall black cap, with the phlegmatic flabby face of a monk, going
+towards her mother's room. Erika recognized her as the needy widow of a
+stone-mason; she was wont to doctor both men and cattle in the village.
+Her name was Frau Jelinek. The scullery-maid who had brought her was
+just behind her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They passed Erika without heeding her, and the girl looked after them
+in a fresh access of dread.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Two hours passed. Miss Sophy was asleep; Erika still waked and watched.
+A light rain had begun to fall; the drops pattered against the
+window-panes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Once more Erika arose and crept out into the corridor. Trembling in
+every limb, she stood at the door of the room through which her
+mother's sleeping-apartment was reached. It was ajar, and light
+streamed through the crack. She looked in. Strachinsky was seated at a
+table, playing whist with three dummies. It had for some time past been
+his favourite occupation. A maid stood in a corner, arranging a pile of
+linen. Erika was about to address her, when Frau Jelinek, her black
+leathern bag on her arm, came out of her mother's bedroom.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;May I not go to mamma,--just for a moment?&quot; the girl asked, in an
+agitated whisper.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The bedroom door opened again, and Minna appeared. &quot;Is it you, child?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, yes,&quot; Erika made answer.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Do not disturb your mother. Stay in your room till you are called,&quot;
+Minna said, authoritatively.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And from the room came the poor mother's weary, gentle voice: &quot;Go lie
+down, my child; don't sit up any longer; go to bed, dear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">For a while Erika stood motionless; then she kissed the hard cold door
+that would not open to her, and went back to her room. She lay down on
+the bed, dressed as she was, and this time she fell asleep. On a sudden
+she sat upright. The candle on the table was still burning, and by its
+light she saw that Miss Sophy, who had been sleeping on the sofa, was
+sitting up, awake, and listening, with a startled air.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika hurried out; Minna met her in the corridor, and at the same
+moment a vehicle rattled into the courtyard.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The doctor!&quot; exclaimed Minna. &quot;Thank God!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The bailiff appeared on the staircase.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Where is the doctor?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;He was not at home,&quot; the man made answer.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Did you not ask where he was and go after him?&quot; Minna asked,
+impatiently.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No,&quot; replied the bailiff, twirling his straw hat in his hands. &quot;But I
+left word for him to come as soon as he got home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Fool!&quot; Strachinsky, who had now come into the corridor, exclaimed,
+shaking his fist at the man. &quot;You are dismissed,&quot; he added,
+grandiloquently. Then, turning to Minna, he said, &quot;Good heavens, if I
+had a horse I could ride to K----.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Without heeding him, Minna hurried down the staircase, and a few
+moments later a carriage again left the court-yard.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Minna had herself gone for the doctor, before her departure beseeching
+Erika to keep quiet: she should be summoned as soon as it would be
+right for her to see her mother.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The girl obeyed, and sat in her room, rigid and motionless, at the
+table where the candle was burning down into the socket. At first, to
+shorten the time, she tried to knit, but the needles dropped from her
+fingers.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Miss Sophy sat opposite her, with elbows upon the table, and her head
+in her hands, listening.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the distance there was a sound of wheels; it came nearer and nearer.
+Thank God! It was Minna, and she brought the doctor. There was a
+hurried running to and fro, and then all was still, still as death.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The dawn crept in at the window. The flame of the candle burned red and
+dim. The rain had ceased, and through the misty window-panes could be
+seen a glimmer of white blossoms, and behind them a pale-blue sky in
+which the last stars were slowly fading.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Then the door opened, and Minna entered. &quot;Come, Erika,&quot; she said, in a
+low voice.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika arose hastily. &quot;Have I really a little brother?&quot; she asked,
+anxiously.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Minna shook her head. &quot;It is dead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And my mother?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah, come quickly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She drew the girl along with her through the long whitewashed corridor.
+In the room leading to the dying woman's chamber Strachinsky was
+standing with the physician. The latter stood with bowed head;
+Strachinsky was weeping.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika went directly to her mother's bedside. The dying woman's hair was
+brushed back from her temples; her lips were blue. Erika kneeled down
+and buried her face in the bedclothes. Her mother laid her hand upon
+her head and stroked it--ah, how feebly! But how soothing was the
+touch!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In one corner old Minna kneeled, praying.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Outside, the world was brightening; there was a golden splendour over
+all the earth. The birds twittered, at first faintly, then loudly and
+shrilly. The dying woman stirred among the pillows: Erika was to hear
+the dear voice once more.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My child, my poor, dear child, I have been a poor mother to you----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, mother, darling----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My death will make it all right. Write to----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At this moment Strachinsky knocked at the door. &quot;Emma!&quot; he whispered.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The dying woman's face expressed positive horror. &quot;Do not let him come
+in!&quot; she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika flew to the door and turned the key; when she returned to the
+bedside her mother was struggling for breath.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Evidently most anxious to impart some information to her daughter, she
+had not the strength to do so. Once more she passed her hand over
+Erika's head,--it was for the last time; then the hand grew heavier; it
+no longer lavished a caress; it was a mere weight.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika moved, and looked at her mother. The tears stood in her eyes
+unshed, so wondrous was her mother's face. The battle was won.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">All the pain of life--the sweet pain of supreme rapture hinting to us
+of that heaven which we cannot attain, and that other bitter pain
+pointing to the grave at which we shudder--was for her extinct.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika threw herself upon the body and covered it with kisses. With
+difficulty could she be induced to leave it; but when they led her from
+the room, as soon as the door closed behind her she was docile and
+gentle. She seemed bewildered, and walked slowly with bowed head beside
+Minna. Once only she looked back when a thin, melancholy wail resounded
+through the quiet morning air. It was the bell in the little tower of
+the castle, tolling restlessly.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Years afterwards she could not bring herself to recall in memory the
+terrible days that followed,--the dreary burden that she dragged about
+with her from morning until night, the sleep born of utter exhaustion,
+the slow pursuance of daily custom as in a dream, the awakening with
+nerves refreshed by forgetfulness, and then the sudden consciousness of
+misery, the sensation of soreness in every limb, a sensation
+intensified by every motion, by a word spoken in her presence, the
+restlessness which drove her hither and thither until in some dim
+corner she would crouch down and cry,--cry until the very fount of
+tears seemed dry and her burning eyes would close again in the leaden
+sleep which still had to yield to the terrible awakening.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She felt the most earnest desire to do something, to perform some
+office of love for her mother; but scarcely for one moment was she left
+alone with the body.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Strangers prepared the loved one for the tomb, the coachman and the
+gardener lifted her into the coffin. Shortly before it was closed,
+Strachinsky remembered that his wife had once expressed a wish to be
+buried in the dress and veil she had worn at her marriage with him. But
+neither could be found. The cabinet where she was wont to hoard her
+treasures was empty, except for a lock of hair of her dead boy, and
+this they laid beneath her head.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her husband bestowed but little thought upon the circumstance. He
+honestly regretted the dead, and lost his appetite for two days; but as
+the time for the funeral drew near, he worked himself into an exalted
+frame of mind, which found vent in solemn pomposity.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He had ordered a hearse from the city. Erika was standing at a window
+of the corridor when, with nodding plumes, it rattled into the castle
+court-yard, and her misery reached the point of despair.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Until then she had not quite comprehended it all. She heard the men
+stagger down the stairs beneath the weight of the coffin, heard it
+knock against the wall at a sharp turn.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She followed it to the grave. All walked behind the hearse, the shabby
+splendour of which suited so ill with the rural landscape.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Most of the gentry of the surrounding country, who had long since
+ceased to visit at Luzano, assembled to pay the last honours to the
+poor woman, but they were only a speck in the endless funeral train.
+Behind the few black coats and high hats following close upon the
+hearse came a swarming crowd. All the peasants, day-labourers, and
+beggars from Luzano and the surrounding estates paid the last token of
+respect to the martyr gone to her eternal rest: she had been good and
+kind to all.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was the first of May. The fields were clothed in a light green, and
+the apple-trees showed pink with half-open blossoms. A reddish smoke
+curled upward to the skies from the flames of the torches. And there
+was a flutter of sighs among the blossoming boughs of the trees and
+above the meadows,--the breath of the freshly-born spring.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Through the new life strode death.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Noiselessly the funeral train moved on. Erika walked almost
+mechanically, looking neither to the right nor to the left, only moving
+forward. On a sudden something attracted her gaze. On a little
+elevation by the roadside, between two apple-trees, stood a young
+peasant woman with a child in her arms,--a child who stared at the long
+procession with large eyes of wonder.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">The day after the funeral Strachinsky, in melancholy mood, paced to and
+fro in the room where his wife had died. From time to time he walked to
+the window and looked out,--then he would turn again towards the
+interior of the chamber. Suddenly his eyes fell upon a sheet of
+blotting-paper left upon the writing-table.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His wife's handwriting had been remarkably large, and the words which
+were of course imprinted backwards upon the sheet attracted his notice.
+With very little trouble he deciphered them: &quot;My last will.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He frowned. &quot;So she has made a fresh will,&quot; he said to himself. In
+spite of his enormous self-conceit, he did not doubt that it could
+hardly be in his favour. The blood rushed to his head. Where was the
+will? Probably in her writing-table. But where were the keys? The
+shrewdness which, in spite of his intellectual deterioration, stood him
+in stead whenever he feared personal inconvenience came to his aid. He
+remembered that his wife had been wont to keep her keys in the drawer
+of a small table at her bedside, and he reflected that, in the sad
+confusion ensuing upon her death, it was hardly likely that they had as
+yet been removed. In fact he found them there, and with them he opened
+the middle drawer of her writing-table. It contained a large sealed
+envelope inscribed &quot;My last will.&quot; Strachinsky slipped the document
+into his pocket, and returned the keys to their place.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At that moment the door opened, and Erika entered. She looked
+wretchedly pale and wan, with dark rings around her weary eyes. She
+wore a black gown which her mother had made hastily for her when her
+little brother died, and which she had outgrown during the winter.
+Although the day was warm and sunshiny, she looked cold, and in all her
+movements there was something of the timorous hesitation that a dog
+will display after losing his master, when he seems uncertain where to
+creep away and hide himself. The resolute attitude she had been wont to
+maintain when with her step-father was all gone; heart, mind, and soul
+seemed alike crushed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What do you want here?&quot; Strachinsky asked, suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She looked at him in what was almost surprise, and a tremor of pain
+passed through her. &quot;What should I want?&quot; she murmured, in a hoarse
+whisper. &quot;I want to go to my mother!&quot; She said it to herself, not to
+him; she seemed to have forgotten his presence. Her chin trembled, her
+lips twitched, the tears rushed to her eyes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">No, that pitiable creature never could have come to look for a will.
+Strachinsky, always ready to be sentimental, gave a sigh of relief, put
+his hand over his eyes, and left the room. Scarcely had he gone when
+Erika's sad eye fell upon the bed: it had been stripped of all its
+coverings and looked like some couch in a lumber-room that had been
+unused for years. With a shudder the girl turned away. Yes, what could
+she want here? She asked herself the question now. But on a sudden she
+perceived hanging on the wall a black skirt, the hem soiled with mud.
+It was the gown her mother had worn when she hurried across the fields,
+the day before her death. Erika clutched it as if it had been a living
+thing, and with a low wail buried her face in its folds, about which
+some aroma of her dead mother seemed to cling.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Meanwhile, Strachinsky had locked himself into his room, where he
+walked to and fro, lost in reflection, the portentous will in his
+pocket, with the seal as yet unbroken. The only legal document of the
+kind, in his opinion, was the will made by his wife eleven years
+previously, shortly after their marriage, by which she constituted him
+her sole heir and the guardian of her daughter. Any later testamentary
+disposition he could not possibly regard otherwise than as the result
+of an aberration of mind, of which she had for some time shown
+symptoms, and which had, shortly before her death, come to be
+distinctly developed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Poor Emma! There was no doubt that her intellect, once so clear and
+strong, had been clouded of late years.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">So soon as he had entirely convinced himself of this fact, he broke the
+seal of the will.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Even in his rascality he was a thorough sentimentalist. He never could
+have committed a crime without first skilfully contriving to exalt in
+his own eyes both himself and his motives.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Whilst reading the document he changed colour several times. When he
+had finished he sighed thrice consecutively: &quot;Poor Emma!&quot; Then, after
+pacing the room thoughtfully, he said to himself, &quot;She would be indeed
+distressed if this paper--worthless legally in view of her mental
+condition, and throwing so false a light upon our marriage--should ever
+be made public; she--to whom the tie between us was so sacred!&quot; A flood
+of proofs of his wife's devotion to him, interrupted but temporarily,
+overwhelmed Strachinsky's soul. He lit a candle and burned Emma's last
+will.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And then, without the slightest pricking of conscience, he betook
+himself to his beloved lounge. He had the sensation of having performed
+an act of exalted devotion.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No need, dearest Emma,&quot; he said, apostrophizing his wife's portrait
+which hung above his couch, &quot;to say that I never shall let your child
+want. No legal document is necessary to insure that. Poor Emma!&quot; And,
+remembering the extract-books which he had devised at a former period
+of his existence, he moaned, drearily, &quot;Oh, what a noble mind was there
+o'erthrown!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When, a few hours afterwards, he encountered his step-daughter, he felt
+it incumbent upon him to be especially kind to her. He patted her
+shoulder, with the insinuating tenderness people are apt to show
+towards those whom they have wronged, and said, solemnly, &quot;Poor little
+Rika! Your loss is great. Your mother is gone; but never forget that
+you still have a father.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Weeks passed,--months; everything in the house went on as best it
+could. Strachinsky lay on the sofa from morning until night, reading
+novels most of the time. In the pauses of this edifying occupation he
+roused himself to an unedifying activity; that is to say, he scolded
+all the servants, without assigning any grounds for his displeasure. No
+one minded it much: every one knew that after such an episode he would
+betake himself to his sofa again and to his sentimental romances.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">With regard to his step-daughter's education, he showed the same
+tendency to vehement attacks of zeal. He would suddenly go to the
+school-room, inspect her written exercises, question her as to some
+historical date which he had quite forgotten himself, and conclude by
+asking her to play something upon the piano.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">During her performance he would pace the room with a face expressive of
+the gravest anxiety.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At first she took pains to play for him, but when she discovered that
+he had determined beforehand to find fault, she rattled away upon the
+keys of her old instrument like a perfect imp of waywardness, whenever
+required to show what progress she had made.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Almost before her fingers had left the key-board the scolding began. &quot;I
+see no improvement; no, not the slightest improvement do I perceive!
+And to think of all that has been done for your education! I fairly
+work my fingers to the bone to give you every advantage that a princess
+could claim, while you--you do nothing!&quot; And then would follow a long
+dramatic summary of the sacrifices that had been made for her. He
+always talked to her like the father addressing a worthless daughter in
+some popular melodrama, ending upon every occasion with, &quot;What is to
+become of you? Tell me, what--what will become of you?&quot; Then he would
+bring down both fists upon the top of the piano, to emphasize the
+horror inspired by the thought of her future, shake his head for the
+last time, and leave the room with a heavy stride. Afterwards he was
+sure to complain of the injury the agitation had caused him, and to
+betake himself to his sofa.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The girl was left more and more to herself. About six months after her
+mother's death Miss Sophy was dismissed. She was a thoroughly capable
+woman, personally much attached to her pupil, trustworthy and practical
+as a housekeeper, but prone to fall in love with every man, and to find
+a rival and foe in every woman who refused to be the confidante of her
+morbid and distorted sentimentality.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">During Emma's lifetime she had been able to conceal most of her
+eccentricities in this respect, but afterwards she became positively
+intolerable,--perhaps because there was no one to restrain or
+intimidate her. Without a single personal attraction, she was
+inordinately vain, forever striving by her dress and conduct to invite
+attention from the other sex. In the forenoons she gave Erika lessons,
+in the afternoons she mended and made her clothes,--she was a skilled
+needlewoman,--and the evenings she devoted to music.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She sang. Her répertoire was limited, consisting principally of the
+soprano part of Mendelssohn's duet &quot;I would that my love could silently
+flow in a single word,&quot; which she shrieked out as a solo, and in
+Schumann's &quot;I'll not complain,&quot;--which last always caused her to shed
+copious tears.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At last her love of self-adornment as well as her musical enthusiasm
+passed all bounds. She cut off her hair, dressed it in short curls, and
+purchased two new silk gowns. She also bought an old zither, and every
+evening, with her hair freshly curled, and in a rustling silk robe, she
+betook herself to the drawing-room, where Strachinsky, in pursuance of
+his boasted activity, was wont to finish the day by endless games of
+patience.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her manner, the languishing looks cast at him over her instrument, left
+no doubt as to her sentiments towards him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At first the master of the house took but little heed of these
+demonstrations. Her performance upon the zither he found rather
+agreeable: the whining drawl of the tones she evoked from it soothed
+his melancholy. But one evening when he had requested her to play for
+him &quot;The Tyrolean and his Child,&quot; and also to repeat &quot;May Breezes,&quot; she
+was so carried away by triumphant vanity that she attempted to sing
+with her instrument, accompanying her shrill notes with such
+languishing glances that their object could no longer ignore their
+meaning.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The next morning Strachinsky sent for his stepdaughter. Clad in his
+dressing-gown, as he reclined upon his lounge, with all the romantic
+drawling indifference in his air and voice which he had learned from
+his favourite hero &quot;Pelham,&quot; he asked her as she stood before him,--</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The Englishwoman's behaviour must have struck you as extraordinary?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She nodded.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He passed his hand thoughtfully across his brow. She did not speak, and
+he went on playing the English nobleman to his own entire satisfaction.
+His left hand, in which he held a French novel, hanging negligently
+over the arm of the lounge, he waved his right in the air, and said,
+&quot;Of course I pity the poor creature, but she bores me. Rid me of the
+fool, I pray,--rid me of her!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He then inclined his head towards the door, and buried himself in the
+perusal of his novel.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">From that time Erika ceased to spend the evenings with Miss Sophy in
+the drawing-room; she withdrew after supper to the solitude of the old
+school-room, which in fact she greatly preferred.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Of course Miss Sophy suspected some plot of Erika's in Strachinsky's
+altered demeanour, and lost every remnant of sense still left in her
+silly head. She employed all her leisure moments in writing to her hero
+letters which she bribed the maid to lay upon the table in his
+dressing-room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This would all have been ridiculous, if the affair had not taken a
+tragic turn.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">One morning Miss Sophy did not appear at the breakfast-table, and when
+Minna went to call her she found the wretched woman in bed, writhing in
+agony. In despair at Strachinsky's insensibility she had poisoned
+herself with the tips of some old lucifer matches. The physician,
+summoned in haste, was barely able to save her life; and of course she
+left Luzano as soon as she was able to travel.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Strachinsky was much flattered that the poor woman's love for him had
+ended in madness, and he invested her memory with an ideal excellence,
+recalling her as brilliantly gifted by nature and endowed with many
+personal attractions.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika was now left without instruction. Her step-father decided that a
+young girl of her age needed no further supervision, and that the
+daughter of a poor farmer could lay no claim to any personal luxury.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When he spoke of himself only, it was always as an 'impoverished
+cavalier;' when he alluded to himself as her father, he was always
+degraded to simply 'a poor farmer.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">All through the summer she was alone, and during a long dreary winter,
+followed by another summer and another winter, she was still alone.
+Another girl in her place might have fallen into gossip with the
+servants to pass the time; another, again, might have married the
+bailiff out of sheer ennui: assuredly any one else would have grown
+stupid and uncouth. She did nothing of the kind.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She had occupation enough. She learned long pages of Goethe and
+Shakespeare by heart, and declaimed them, clad in improvised costumes,
+before a tall dim mirror; she played on the piano for hours daily, and
+made decided progress, despite certain bad habits unavoidable in the
+lack of instruction. The rest of her time was spent in building
+numberless castles in the air, and in taking long walks about the
+neighboring country.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But when three years had gone by since her mother's death, without the
+least alteration in her circumstances, the poor child began to be
+impatient and to look eagerly about for some relief from so sordid an
+existence. Why could she not be an artist?--an actress, a singer, or a
+pianist?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">On a cold spring morning towards the end of April she seated herself at
+the big table in her former school-room and indited a letter to the
+director of the Castle Theatre at Vienna,--a letter in which she
+partially explained to him her position and requested him to make a
+trial of her dramatic talent, with a view to an engagement at his
+theatre. She declared herself ready to go to Vienna if he would promise
+her an audience. She had finished the clearly-written document, but
+when about to sign her name she hesitated. Erika Lenzdorff she signed
+at last. &quot;Lenzdorff,&quot; she repeated, thoughtfully,--&quot;Lenzdorff.&quot; What
+possessed her to write to the director of a theatre--an utter
+stranger--explaining her circumstances? Would it not be much better to
+turn to her father's relatives? To be sure, she knew nothing about
+them,--not even their address; but that, she thought, might be
+procured. Her mother had never spoken of them; she had always abruptly
+changed the subject when Erika asked about her father and his
+relatives. Why?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Strachinsky and his wife had often spoken of the parents of the latter,
+but never of those of her first husband.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Lenzdorff.&quot; She wrote the name again and again on a sheet of paper. It
+looked distinguished. Perhaps they were wealthy people, who could do
+something for her; but----</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Emma had told her daughter that her name was Lenzdorff the day after
+the adventure with the young painter, when the child, mortified at not
+having been able to tell it, had asked what it was. But when she had
+precociously repeated, in a questioning tone, &quot;<i>Von</i> Lenzdorff?&quot; her
+mother had replied, sternly, &quot;What is that to you? It is of no
+consequence whatever.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika began to ponder. Her mother's parents had died long since; must
+not her father's parents be dead also? If they were still living, it
+was difficult to see why Strachinsky had not cast upon them the burden
+of her maintenance. Still, there were reasons why he should not have
+done so.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">If her father's relatives were people of integrity and refinement, any
+business discussion or explanation with them would have been most
+distressing; no wonder that he avoided it, especially since Erika's
+maintenance cost him little or nothing.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Thus far she had arrived in her reflections, when Minna entered and
+asked her to go immediately to the drawing-room, where a visitor
+awaited her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A visitor at Luzano? Such an event was unheard of.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In some distress Erika looked down at her shabby gown, made out of an
+old dressing-gown of her mother's, black, with a Turkish border. There
+was a hole in the elbow of the left sleeve.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What sort of a gentleman is it, Minna?&quot; she asked, irritably,
+suspecting him to be some business acquaintance of Strachinsky's.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;A foreign gentleman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Old or young?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;An elderly gentleman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Well, if he is elderly, and has no lady with him,&quot; she murmured, &quot;I
+can go just as I am.&quot; She knew from books, whence she derived all her
+worldly wisdom, that ladies were much more critical than gentlemen.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What in the world can he want of me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She went up to the mirror, smoothed her hair, drew together with a
+black thread the hole in her sleeve, and hurried down to the
+drawing-room. The apartment to which this name was still given was on
+the ground-floor, as large as a riding-school, and almost as empty.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Besides the piano it still contained two huge bookcases, a shabby sofa
+behind a rickety table, and a round piano-stool. The rest of the
+furniture had disappeared. Some chairs had been banished as unsafe; the
+other things had been sold piece by piece, under stress of various
+pecuniary embarrassments, to the Jew broker of the village.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Strachinsky had several times attempted to dispose thus of the books
+also, but Solomon Bondy had no market for them. Once the Pole had tried
+to sell the piano. But Solomon had curtly refused to find a purchaser
+for it, knowing that with the piano the last remnant of enjoyment would
+be snatched from the poor lonely girl vegetating in the castle. The Jew
+had shown more mercy than the Christian. And then her dead mother had
+been dear to him, as she was to all around her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She had been dear to Strachinsky also, but he never allowed his
+affection to stand in the way of his ease.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In consequence of the total lack of furniture, Strachinsky, when Erika
+entered the room, was sitting beside the stranger on the sofa,--which
+looked comical.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The stranger, a man of middle age, tall, broad-shouldered, and erect in
+bearing, rose to receive her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;May I beg you to present me to the Countess?&quot; he said, turning to
+Strachinsky.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Countess!&quot; It thrilled her. Had she heard aright?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Herr Doctor Herbegg--my daughter,&quot; with a wave of the hand.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Your step-daughter,&quot; the stranger corrected him, with cool emphasis.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I have never made any difference between her and my own children, dead
+in their early youth,&quot; said the other; and he was right, for he had
+taken very little interest in his own children. &quot;You know that, my
+child,&quot; he added, in a caressing tone that in his stepdaughter's ears
+was like an echo of his old love-making to his wife, and which offended
+her. He would have taken her hand, but she withdrew it hastily from his
+flabby warm touch.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Since there was no other scat to be had, she turned to the piano to get
+the piano-stool. Doctor Herbegg arose and took it from her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Then Strachinsky started up with incredible activity, and a positive
+struggle for the stool ensued, a mutual &quot;Pray, pray, Herr Baron--Herr
+Doctor!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika calmly looked on at their strange behaviour. Had she suddenly
+become of such importance that each was striving to show her courtesy?
+Through her youthful soul the word 'Countess' echoed again with
+thrilling fascination.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Strachinsky finally gained the day: he placed the piano-stool for his
+step-daughter, panting as he did so, so unused was he to the slightest
+physical exertion.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika seated herself upon the stool, although each gentleman offered
+her a place on the sofa, assumed a dignified air, or what she supposed
+to be such, and calmly surveyed the situation and the stranger.
+Something told her that his visit was an important event for her and
+hinted at a turning-point in her life. She was not mistaken. Doctor
+Herbegg was her grandmother's legal adviser.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He began to converse upon indifferent topics, watching her narrowly the
+while.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her step-father, who had become utterly unaccustomed to the reception
+of guests, wriggled about on the sofa as if stung by a tarantula. He
+had always been restless in his demeanour when he was not awkwardly
+stiff, but formerly his good looks had compensated for his defective
+training. They no longer existed: the self-indulgent indolence to which
+he had given himself over, so soon as all social contact with the world
+was at an end for him, had done its part in effecting their decay.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;A bottle of wine! Bring a bottle of wine!&quot; he ordered the young girl,
+forgetting the suavity of speech he had just before adopted, and
+falling into his usual tone.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Pray do not trouble the Countess on my account,&quot; Doctor Herbegg
+interposed. &quot;I can take nothing. My time is limited, since I must catch
+the next train for Berlin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Surely, Herr Doctor, you will take a glass of Tokay,&quot; Strachinsky
+persisted, and, perceiving that his manner of addressing his
+step-daughter had offended the lawyer, he was amiable enough to add,
+&quot;Do not trouble yourself, my dear Rika; I will attend to it.&quot; He arose,
+and as he was leaving the room he went on, &quot;The Herr Doctor will inform
+you, meanwhile, as to the change in your prospects.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The lawyer made no attempt to detain him. He cared very little about
+the glass of Tokay, but very much about an interview with the young
+girl. When Strachinsky had left the room he approached Erika, and in a
+short time had explained matters to her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The title of Countess, which her mother had concealed from her,
+apparently because in the circumstances in which she was forced to
+educate her child it would have been more of a hinderance than a help,
+was hers of right. Her mother's first marriage had been with the only
+son by a second marriage of Count Lenzdorff: he had held office under
+the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and two years after his marriage had
+been killed in a railroad accident. By her second marriage Frau von
+Strachinsky had alienated her mother-in-law. Meanwhile, the two sons of
+Count Lenzdorff's first marriage had died, childless, and finally the
+Count himself had died, at a very advanced age,--so old that he had
+persuaded himself that he had outlived death, and had therefore never
+taken the trouble to make a will; consequently his entire estate
+devolved upon his grand-daughter.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The lawyer had just imparted this intelligence to the grand-daughter in
+question, when Strachinsky re-entered the room, very much out of breath
+and excited, and followed by Minna, tall, gaunt, with the bearing of a
+grenadier and the gloomy air of an energetic old maid whom it behooves
+to be upon the defensive with the entire male sex. She carried a
+waiter, which she placed upon the table before the sofa.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;One little glass, Herr Doctor,--one little glass!&quot; cried Strachinsky.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Doctor bowed his thanks, and touched the glass distrustfully with
+his lips.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The Tokay is excellent,&quot; he remarked, in evident surprise at finding
+anything of Strachinsky's genuine.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, yes,&quot; his host declared; &quot;you can't get such a glass of wine as
+that everywhere, Herr Doctor. I purchased it in Hungary by favour of an
+intimate friend, Prince Liskat,--<i>les restes des grandeurs passées</i>, my
+dear Doctor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">After a first glass Strachinsky became tenderly condescending: he
+patted the lawyer on the shoulder. &quot;Pray don't hurry, my dear Herbegg;
+you'll not easily find another glass of such Tokay.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika observed that Doctor Herbegg bit his lip and did not touch his
+second glass. He looked at his watch and said, &quot;Unfortunately,
+Countess, I have but little time left, but I should like to inform
+myself upon several points, in accordance with your grandmother's wish.
+Where and with whom have you been educated?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;At home, and with my mother.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Exclusively with your mother?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes; she even gave me lessons in French and upon the piano.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was burning to rehabilitate her mother in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My wife was an admirable performer, an artist, a pupil of Liszt's,&quot;
+Strachinsky interposed.--&quot;Play something to the Doctor; be quick!&quot; he
+ordered, grandiloquently, dropping again his <i>rôle</i> of tender parent.
+His imperious tone provoked Erika unutterably: she would have liked to
+rush from the room and fling to the door behind her, but she conquered
+herself for her mother's sake and--out of vanity.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She opened the piano, and played the last portion of Beethoven's
+Moonlight Sonata,--the last thing that she had studied with her mother.
+Her execution was still rude and unequal, like that of an ardent
+youthful creature whose musical aspirations have never been toned down
+by culture, but an unusual amount of talent was evident in her
+performance.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Magnificent, Countess!&quot; exclaimed the lawyer, rising and going towards
+her as she left the piano.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Very well; but you missed that last chord once,&quot; Strachinsky said,
+pompously.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Doctor Herbegg paid him not the least attention. &quot;Now I am forced to
+go,&quot; he said to the young girl; &quot;and you must not smile, Countess, if I
+tell you that I leave you with a much lighter heart than the one I
+brought with me. Your grandmother sent me here to reconnoitre, as it
+were: I find a gifted young lady, where I had feared to encounter an
+untrained village girl.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Then suddenly Erika's overstrained nerves gave way. &quot;My grandmother had
+no right to allow of such a fear on your part; no one who had ever
+known my mother could have supposed anything of the kind.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He looked her full in the face more steadily, more searchingly than
+before, and his cold, clear eyes suddenly shone with a genial light.
+&quot;Forgive me,&quot; he said, kissing the hand she held out to him; then,
+turning, he would have left the room with a brief bow to Strachinsky.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His host, however, made haste to disburden himself of a fine speech.
+&quot;You will have something to tell in Berlin, will you not? You have at
+least seen how a Bohemian gentleman lives. No lounging-chairs in the
+drawing-room, but Tokay in the cellar. Original, at all events, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Extremely original,&quot; the lawyer assented.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">On the threshold he paused. &quot;One question more, Herr Baron,&quot; he began,
+bending upon his condescending host a look of keenest scrutiny. &quot;Did
+the late Frau von Strachinsky leave no written document by which she
+provided for her daughter's future?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Strachinsky listened to this question with a scarcely perceptible
+degree of embarrassment. &quot;Not that I know of,&quot; he said, shifting
+uneasily from one foot to the other.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika suddenly remembered that her mother had been busily engaged in
+writing a few days before her death.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Meanwhile, her step-father, having gained entire control of his
+features, continued, &quot;Moreover, in this case any testamentary document
+would have been entirely superfluous. My wife knew well that should she
+die I should care for her daughter as for my own.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;H'm!&quot; the Doctor ejaculated. &quot;And did Frau von Strachinsky never speak
+to you of her Berlin relatives, Countess?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No,&quot; Erika replied, thoughtfully. &quot;She was very restless for some
+weeks before her death, and often told me that as soon as we were quite
+sure of being uninterrupted she had an important communication to make
+to me. But she never did so: death closed her lips.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Doctor reflected for a moment, and then said, &quot;I am rather
+surprised, Herr von Strachinsky, that you did not advise old Countess
+Lenzdorff of your wife's death.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Strachinsky assumed an injured air. &quot;Permit me to ask you, Herr
+Doctor,&quot; he said, with lofty emphasis, &quot;why I should have informed
+Countess Lenzdorff of my adored wife's death? Countess Lenzdorff was my
+bitterest enemy. She opposed my wife's union with me not only openly,
+but with all sorts of underhand schemes, and when she could not succeed
+in severing the tie that united our hearts, she dismissed my wife and
+her daughter without one friendly word of farewell. Since she entirely
+ignored my wife while she lived, how was I to suppose that she would
+take any interest in the death of my idolized Emma?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But the announcement of her death would have seriously influenced your
+step-daughter's destiny,&quot; Doctor Herbegg observed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My wife considered me the guardian of her child,&quot; Strachinsky
+declared, with pathos. &quot;Another man might have refused to accept a
+burden entailing upon him sacrifice of every kind. But I am not like
+other men. My wife evidently supposed that her child would be best
+cared for under my protection; and I was not the man to betray her
+confidence. You look surprised, Doctor. Yes, no doubt you think it
+strange for a man nowadays to vindicate his chivalry and
+disinterestedness, to his own ruin. But such a man am I,--a Marquis
+Posa, a Don Quixote, an Egmont----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Pardon me, Herr Baron, I shall be late for the train,&quot; said the
+Doctor, and, with a bow to Erika, he left the room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Strachinsky ran after him with astonishing celerity, expatiating upon
+his chivalrous disinterestedness. Shortly afterwards a carriage was
+heard driving out of the courtyard; and Strachinsky returned to the
+bare drawing-room, which his step-daughter had not yet left.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His face beamed with satisfaction; rubbing his hands, he cried out,
+&quot;Now we shall lack for nothing!&quot; Then, turning to Erika, he continued,
+&quot;I shall see to it that your German relatives do not squander your
+property. This lawyer-fellow seems to me a schemer, a sly dog. But I
+shall do my best to watch over your interests. In fact, it is my duty
+as your guardian to administer your affairs. Moreover, in three years
+you will be of age, and then we can avail ourselves of your money to
+free Luzano from its weight of debt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This delightful scheme made him extremely cheerful. After pacing the
+apartment for a while, lost in contemplation of its feasibility, he
+went to the table, and, taking up the Doctor's untouched second glass
+of Tokay, he poured its contents back into the bottle. This he called
+economy. Then with the bottle in his hand, apparently with a view of
+re-sealing it, he went towards the door, saying, &quot;The affair has
+greatly agitated me. I am so very sensitive. But when one has had to
+wait upon fortune so long---!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He had settled it with himself that he was the person principally
+interested; his step-daughter was quite a secondary consideration, at
+most the means to an end. But circumstances shaped themselves after
+what was to him a most unexpected and undesirable fashion. Erika
+received a brief and rather formal letter from Countess Lenzdorff, in
+which the old lady requested her to repair as soon as possible to
+Berlin, but upon no account to allow Strachinsky to accompany her; in
+short, the old Countess refused to have any personal intercourse with
+him whatever.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">By the same post came a letter from Doctor Herbegg to Strachinsky,
+formally advising him to resign his guardianship voluntarily. Should he
+comply, the Countess would refrain from closer examination of his
+administration of the property of her daughter-in-law and of her
+grandchild. But if, on the other hand, he made the slightest attempt to
+interfere in the management of his step-daughter's German estate, she
+would, as the guardian appointed by the late Count, resort to legal
+means for relieving herself of such interference.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Had Strachinsky's conscience been perfectly clear he would probably
+have set himself in opposition, but as it was he contented himself with
+gnashing his teeth and raging for two days, indulging freely in
+vituperation of old Countess Lenzdorff. Then he made a final tender
+attempt to work upon Erika's feelings and to induce her to espouse his
+cause with her grandmother. When this failed, he wrapped himself in his
+martyr's cloak and submitted with much grumbling. Dulled as his nature
+was, he bore his disappointment with comparative ease. At first he
+assumed an air of magnanimous renunciation towards his step-daughter,
+but after a while he overwhelmed her with good advice, and groaned for
+her whenever she lifted any weight or stooped in her packing. Erika
+herself, meanwhile, was in a state of tremendous excitement.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">On the morning of her departure, when her trunks were all packed she
+took a walk. She first visited her mother's grave for the last time,
+and then went into the garden, pausing in all her favourite haunts, and
+avoiding with a shudder even a glance towards the spot by the low
+garden wall whence she had seen her mother hurrying across the fields
+towards the river.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Still, in whatever direction she turned she felt the presence of the
+stream: she heard its voice loud and wailing as it rushed along swollen
+by the winter's snows. A soft breeze swept above the earth, mingling
+its sighs with the graver note of the water. Everything trembled and
+quivered; every tree, every sprouting plant, throbbed; all nature
+thrilled with delicious pain,--the fever of the spring. And on a sudden
+she felt herself carried away by a like thrill of excitement; a
+nameless yearning, ignorant of aim, possessed her, transporting her to
+the skies, and yet binding her to the earth in the fetters of a languor
+such as she had never before experienced.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Once more there arose in her memory the figure of the young artist who
+had drawn her picture there beside the brook as it rippled dreamily on
+its way to the river. She saw him distinctly before her: her heart
+began to throb wildly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She hurried on to the spot where he had sketched her. The swollen brook
+murmured far more loudly over the pebbles than it had done on that hot
+day in midsummer; the reddish boughs of the willows began to show
+silver-gray buds, and on the bank there gleamed something blue,--the
+first forget-me-nots. She stooped to pluck them.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At that moment she heard Minna's voice calling, &quot;Rika! where are you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She started, and, tripping upon the wet slippery soil, all but fell
+into the brook. With difficulty she regained her footing, and without
+her flowers; they grew too far below her. She looked at them longingly
+and went her way.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When she reached the house she found the carriage already in the
+court-yard,--a huge, green, glass coach, that clattered and jingled
+at the slightest movement. It was lined with dark-brown striped
+awning-stuff,--the shabbiest vehicle that ever ran upon four wheels.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Beside the carriage stood a clumsy cart, in which the luggage was to be
+piled. Herr von Strachinsky was ordering about the servants carrying
+the trunks. Everything in the house was topsy-turvy. Breakfast had been
+hurriedly prepared, and was waiting--a most uninviting repast--upon the
+dining-room table. Erika could not eat. She ran to her room and put on
+her bonnet.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Hurry, hurry!&quot; Minna called up from below.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She ran down and crossed the threshold. The air was warm and damp, and
+a fine rain was falling. Strachinsky helped her into the carriage with
+pompous formality. &quot;I shall not accompany you to the station,&quot; he said.
+&quot;I do not like driving in a close carriage. Adieu!&quot; He had nothing more
+affectionate to say to her, as he shook her hand. The carriage door
+clattered to; the horses started. Thus Erika rattled out of the
+court-yard, with Minna beside her. The servant looked tired out; her
+face was very red, and she had a hand-bag in her lap, and a bandbox and
+two bundles of shawls on the seat opposite her. The carriage was very
+stuffy, and smelled of old leather. Erika opened one of the windows.
+They were driving along the same road by which she had followed her
+mother's coffin; there beyond the meadow she could see the wall of the
+church-yard. She leaned far out of the window. The driver whipped up
+his horses; the church-yard vanished. The young girl suddenly felt as
+if the very heart were being torn from her breast, and she burst into
+tears, sobbing convulsively, uncontrollably.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">On the evening of the same day an old lady was walking to and fro in a
+large, tastefully-furnished apartment looking out upon a little front
+garden in Bellevue Street, Berlin. Both furniture and hangings in the
+room, in contrast with the prevailing fashion, were light and cheerful.
+The old lady's forehead wore a slight frown, and her air was somewhat
+impatient, as of one awaiting a verdict.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At the first glance it was plain that she was very old, very tall,
+broad-shouldered, and straight as a fir. In her bearing there was the
+personal dignity of one whose pride has never had to bow, who has never
+paid society the tribute of the slightest hypocrisy, who has never had
+to lower a glance before mankind or before a memory; but it was at the
+same time characterized by the unconscious selfishness, disguised as
+love of independence, of one who has never allowed aught to interfere
+with personal ease. Upon the broad shoulders, so well fitted to support
+with dignity and power the convictions of a lifetime, was set a head of
+remarkable beauty,--the head, noble in every line, of an old woman who
+has never made the slightest attempt to appear one day younger than her
+age. Oddly enough, there looked forth from the face--the face of an
+antique statue--a pair of large, modern eyes, philosophic eyes, whose
+glance could penetrate to the secret core of a human soul,--eyes which
+nothing escaped, in the sight of which there were few things sacred,
+and nothing inexcusable, because they perceived human nature as it is,
+without requiring from it the impossible.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Such was Erika's grandmother, Countess Anna Lenzdorff.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">After she had paced the room to and fro for a long time, she seated
+herself, with a short impatient sigh, in an arm-chair that stood
+invitingly beside a table covered with books and provided with a
+student-lamp. She took up a volume of Maupassant, but a degree of
+mental restlessness to which she was entirely unaccustomed tormented
+her, and she laid the book aside. Her bright eyes wandered from one
+object to another in the room, and were finally arrested by a large
+picture hanging on the opposite wall.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It represented an opening in a leafy forest, dewy fresh, and saturated
+with depth of sunshine. In the midst of the golden glow was a strange
+group,--two nymphs sporting with a shaggy brown faun. The picture was
+by Böcklin, and the forest, the faun, and the white limbs of the nymphs
+were painted with incomparable skill: nevertheless the picture could
+not be pronounced free from the reproach of a certain meretriciousness.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It had never occurred to Countess Lenzdorff to ponder upon the picture;
+she had bought it because she thought it beautiful, and certainly an
+old woman has a right to hang anything that she chooses upon her walls,
+so long as it is a work of art. To-night she suddenly began to attach
+all sorts of considerations to the picture.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Meanwhile, an old footman, with a duly-shaven upper lip, and very bushy
+whiskers, entered and announced, &quot;Herr von Sydow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I am very glad,&quot; the old lady rejoined, evidently quite rejoiced,
+whereupon there entered a very tall, almost gigantic officer of
+dragoons, with short fair hair and a grave handsome face.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You come just at the right time, Goswyn,&quot; she said, cordially,
+extending her delicate old hand. He touched it with his lips, and then,
+in obedience to her gesture, took a seat near her, within the circle of
+light of the lamp.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;How can I serve you, Countess?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You are acquainted with my small gallery,&quot; she began, looking around
+the large airy room with some pride.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I have frequently enjoyed your works of art,&quot; the young officer
+replied. The phrase was rather formal; in fact, he himself was rather
+formal, but there was something so genial behind his stiff North-German
+formality that one easily forgave him his purely superficial
+priggishness,--nay, upon further acquaintance came to like it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Rather antiquated in expression, your reply,&quot; the old lady rejoined.
+&quot;My small collection thanks you for your kindly appreciation; but that
+is not the question at present. You know my Böcklin?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, Countess.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What do you think of it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He fixed his eyes upon it. &quot;What could I think of it? It is a
+masterpiece.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;H'm! that all the world admits,&quot; the old lady murmured, impatiently,
+as if vexed at the want of originality in his remark; &quot;but is it a
+picture that one would leave hanging on the wall of one's boudoir when
+one was about to receive into one's house as an inmate a grand-daughter
+of sixteen? Give me your opinion as to that, Goswyn.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Again Goswyn von Sydow fixed his eyes upon the picture. &quot;That would
+depend very much upon the kind of grand-daughter,&quot; he said, frowning
+slightly. &quot;If she were a young girl brought up in the world and
+accustomed from childhood to works of art, I should say yes. If she
+were a young girl educated in a convent or bred in the country, I
+should say no.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old lady sighed. &quot;I knew it!&quot; she said. &quot;My Böcklin is doomed. Ah!&quot;
+she exclaimed, wringing her hands in mock despair. &quot;Pray, Goswyn,&quot;--she
+treated the young officer with the affectionate familiarity an old lady
+would use towards a young fellow whom she has known intimately from
+early childhood,--&quot;press that button beside you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The dragoon, evidently perfectly at home in the house, stretched out a
+very long arm and pressed the button.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The footman immediately appeared. &quot;Lüdecke, call Friedrich to help you
+take down that picture.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Friedrich has gone to the station, your Excellency,&quot; Lüdecke permitted
+himself to remark.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, of course everything is topsy-turvy; nothing is as it has been
+used to be. 'Coming events cast their shadows before.' It will always
+be so now,&quot; sighed the Countess.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I will help you take down the picture, Lüdecke,&quot; Herr von Sydow said,
+quietly, and before the Countess could look around there was nothing
+save a broad expanse of light cretonne and two hooks upon the wall
+where the Böcklin had hung.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Lüdecke's strength sufficed to carry the picture from the room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Bring in tea,&quot; the Countess called after him. &quot;You will take a cup of
+tea with me, Goswyn?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Are you not going to wait for the young Countess?&quot; Sydow asked, rather
+timidly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, she will not be here before midnight. I don't know why Friedrich
+has gone at this hour to the station; probably he is in love with the
+young person at the railway restaurant; else I cannot understand his
+hurry. However, I thank you for your admonition.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But, my dear Countess----&quot; exclaimed the young man.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No need to excuse yourself,&quot; she cut short what he was about to say.
+&quot;I am not displeased: you have never displeased me, except by not
+having arranged matters so as to come into the world as my son.
+Moreover, I should seriously regret the loss of your good opinion. Pray
+forgive me for not driving myself to the railway station to meet my
+grand-daughter and to edify the officials with a touching and effective
+scene. Consider, this is my last comfortable evening.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Your last comfortable evening,&quot; Goswyn von Sydow repeated,
+thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Now you disapprove of me again,&quot; the old Countess complained,
+ironically.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Disapprove!&quot; he repeated, with an ineffective attempt to laugh at the
+word. &quot;Really, Countess, if I did not know how kind-hearted you are, I
+should be sorry for your grand-daughter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Ho cleared his throat several times as he spoke; he always became a
+little hoarse when speaking directly from his heart.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Kind-hearted,--kind-hearted,&quot; the old lady murmured, provoked; &quot;pray
+don't put me off with compliments. What sort of word is 'kind-hearted'?
+One has weak nerves just as one has an aching tooth, and one does all
+that one can to spare them; all the little woes one perceives one
+relieves, if possible,--of course it is very disagreeable not to
+relieve them,--but the intense misery with which the world is filled
+one simply forgets, and is none the worse for so doing. You know it is
+not my fashion to deceive myself as to the beauty of my own character.
+You are sorry for my grand-daughter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He would have assured her that he spoke conditionally, but she would
+not allow him to do so. &quot;Yes, you are sorry for my grand-daughter,&quot; she
+said, decidedly, &quot;but are you not at all sorry for me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Upon that point you must allow me to express myself when I have made
+acquaintance with the young Countess.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;That has very little to do with it,&quot; rejoined the old lady. &quot;Let us
+take it for granted that she is charming. Doctor Herbegg says she is a
+jewel of the purest water, lacking nothing but a little polish;
+between ourselves, I do not altogether believe him. He exaggerated my
+grand-daughter's attractions a little to make it easy for me to receive
+her. He is a good man, but, like two-thirds of the men who are worth
+anything,&quot;--with a significant side-glance at Sydow,--&quot;a little of a
+prig. But let us take for granted that my grand-daughter is the
+ph&#339;nix he describes, it is none the less true that on her account I
+must, in my old age, alter my comfortable mode of life, and subject
+myself to the thousand petty annoyances which the presence of a young
+girl in my house is sure to bring with it. Do you know how I felt when
+my indispensable old donkey&quot;--the Countess Lenzdorff was wont
+frequently to designate thus her old footman Lüdecke--&quot;carried out my
+Böcklin?&quot; She fixed her eyes sadly upon the bare place on the wall. &quot;I
+felt as if he were dragging out with it all the comforts of my daily
+life! Ah, here is the tea.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It has been here for some time,&quot; Sydow said, smiling. &quot;I was just
+about to call your attention to the kettle, which is boiling over.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She made the tea with extreme precision. It was delightful to see the
+beautiful old lady presiding over the old-fashioned silver tray with
+its contents. She wore on this evening a white tulle cap tied beneath
+the chin, and over it an exquisite little black lace scarf. A refined
+Epicurean nature revealed itself in her every movement,--in the
+delicate grace with which she handled the transparent teacups and
+measured the tea from its dainty caddy,--in the gusto with which she
+inhaled the aroma of this very choice brand of tea.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There!&quot; she said, handing the young officer a cup, &quot;you may not agree
+with my views of life, but you must praise my tea, which is in fact
+much too good for you, who follow the vile German custom of spoiling it
+with sugar.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She herself had put in the sugar for him, taking care to give him just
+as much as he liked; she handed him a plate, and offered him the
+delicate wafers which she knew he preferred. She was excessively kind
+to him, and he valued her; he was cordially attached to her; she had
+been his mother's oldest friend; she had spoiled him from boyhood, and
+had, as she said, &quot;thought the world of him.&quot; This could not but please
+any man. He appreciated so highly her kindness and thoughtfulness that
+until to-night the selfishness of which she boasted, and by which she
+had laid down the rules of her life, had seemed to him little more than
+amusing eccentricity. But to-night her attitude towards her grandchild
+grieved him. Not that he regarded this grandchild from a romantic point
+of view. He was no unpractical dreamer, nor even what is usually called
+an idealist, which means in German nothing except a muddled brain that
+deems it quite improper to hold clear views upon any subject or to look
+any reality boldly in the face. On the contrary, he had a very calm and
+sensible way of regarding matters. Consequently he thought it probable
+that the poor, neglected young girl, left for three years to the care
+of a boorish step-father, awkward and tactless as she must be under the
+circumstances, would be anything but a suitable addition to the
+household of the Countess Lenzdorff; but, good heavens! the girl was
+the old lady's flesh and blood, a poor thing who had lost her mother
+three years previously and had had no one to speak a kind word to her
+since. If the poor creature were ill-bred and neglected, whose fault
+was it, in fact? It passed his power of comprehension that the old lady
+should feel nothing save the inconvenience and annoyance of the
+situation, that she should be stirred by no emotion of pity.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Perhaps she guessed his thoughts,--she was skilled in divining the
+thoughts of others,--but she cared nothing about shocking people; on
+the contrary, she rather liked to do so.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When he picked up one of the books on her table she said, &quot;None of your
+namby-pamby literature, Goswyn, but a bright, witty book. Tell me, do
+you think that in my grand-daughter's honour I ought to lock up all my
+entertaining books and subscribe to the 'Children's Friend'?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Let us take for granted that your grand-daughter has not contracted
+the habit of dipping into every book she sees lying about,&quot; Goswyn
+observed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Let us hope so,&quot; she said, with a laugh; &quot;but who knows? For three
+years she has been without any one to look after her, and probably she
+has already devoured her precious step-father's entire library.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, Countess!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What would you have? Such cases do occur. Look at your sister-in-law
+Dorothea: she told me, with an air of great satisfaction, that before
+her marriage she had read all Belot.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;She avowed the same thing to me just after she came home from her
+wedding journey, and she seemed to think it very clever,&quot; replied
+Goswyn, slowly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;H'm! the wicked fairy always asserts that you were in love with your
+sister-in-law,&quot; the old lady said, archly menacing him with her
+forefinger.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Indeed? I should like to know upon what my aunt Brock founds her
+assertion,&quot; the young man rejoined, coldly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why, upon the intense dislike you always parade for your pretty
+sister-in-law,&quot; the Countess said, with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I do not parade it at all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But you feel it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn von Sydow had risen from his chair. &quot;It is very late,&quot; he said,
+picking up his cap.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I have not driven you away with my poor jests?&quot; the old lady inquired,
+as she also rose.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No,&quot; he replied,--&quot;at least not for long: if you will permit me, my
+dear Countess, I will call upon you in the autumn.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And until then----?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I shall not have that pleasure, unfortunately; I leave with the
+General to-morrow for Kiel, and came to-night only to bid you good-bye.
+When I return I shall hardly find you still in Berlin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Indeed? I am sorry,&quot; she replied, &quot;first because I really like to see
+you from time to time, although you entertain antiquated views of life
+and always disapprove of me, and secondly because I had hoped you would
+help me a little in my grand-daughter's education. Of course if she has
+already perused all Belot----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It would suit you precisely, Countess,&quot; he said, rallying her, &quot;for
+then you could--h'm--hang up your Böcklin in its old place.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What an idea!&quot; cried the Countess. &quot;But you are quite mistaken: I
+should be furious if my grand-daughter should be found to have read all
+Belot's works.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Indeed?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Of course; because then there would be absolutely no hope of your
+taking the child off my hands.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He frowned.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Do you understand me?&quot; the old lady asked, gaily.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Partly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Unfortunately, you seem to have very little desire for matrimony.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I confess that for the present it is but faint.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Let us hope that this mysterious Erika will be charming enough to----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Suddenly she turned her head: a carriage was rolling along Bellevue
+Street, already deserted at this hour because of the lateness of the
+season. It stopped before the house. The old lady started, grew visibly
+paler, and compressed her lips.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The hall door opened; the servants ran down the staircase.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Good night, Countess!&quot; Goswyn touched the delicate old hand with his
+lips and hurried away.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">On the staircase he encountered a tall slender girl in the most
+unbecoming mourning attire that he had ever seen a human being wear,
+and with gloves so much too short that they revealed a pair of
+slightly-reddened wrists. He touched his cap, and bowed profoundly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He carried into the street with him an impression in his heart of
+something pale, slender, immature, pathetic, concealing the germ of
+great beauty.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He could not forget the distress in the eyes that had looked out from
+the pale oval face. He recalled the coldly-sneering old woman in the
+room he had left, with her disdain of all emotion. He knew how she
+would be repelled by the red wrists and the disfiguring gown. &quot;Poor
+thing!&quot; he said to himself.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In thoughtful mood he walked along a path in the Thiergarten. All
+around reigned silence. The sweet vigour of the spring-time was wafted
+from the soil, from the trees, from every tender soft unfolding leaf.
+In the gentle light of countless sparkling stars the feathery young
+foliage gleamed with a ghostly pallor; here and there a lantern shone,
+a spot of yellow light in the dimness, colouring the grass and leaves
+about it arsenic-green.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">No people were here who had anything to do; only here and there a pair
+of lovers were strolling in the warm shade of the spring night.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The insistent rhythm of some popular dance interrupted the yearning
+music of spring which was sighing through the half-open leaves and
+blossoms. The noise annoyed him, reminding him unpleasantly of the
+cynicism with which unsuccessful men are wont to vaunt the bitterness
+of their existence.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He had walked far out of his way, into the midst of the Thiergarten.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">More lovers; another pair,--and still another.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Except for them the place was deserted, silent: above were the
+glimmering stars, and on the earth below them the tall trees full of
+life, striving upward to the light; everywhere breathed the fragrance
+of fresh young growth, mingled with the aroma of last year's decaying
+leaves; the thrill of life around, with the echo in the distance of the
+vulgar dance-music.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He could not have told how or why it was, but Sydow was more than ever
+conscious to-night of the discord sounding through creation, vainly
+seeking, as it has done for centuries, for its solution.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And in the midst of his discontent there arose within him the memory of
+the haunting distress in the young girl's large eyes, and he was filled
+with warm, eager compassion for the poor, forlorn creature for whom
+there was no one to care. He would have liked to take the child in his
+arms and soothe her distress as one would have petted a bird fallen
+from the nest, or a truant, beaten dog.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">The Countess Lenzdorff had gone to meet her granddaughter as far as the
+vestibule, which was hung with Japanese crape and lighted by red
+Venetian lanterns in wrought-iron frames.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She had been convinced from the first that the brilliant description
+which Doctor Herbegg had given of her grand-daughter was not to be
+trusted, and she had consequently moderated her expectations, but yet
+she was startled at what she encountered in the vestibule, the door of
+which the ever-ready Lüdecke had left open. At first she thought that
+the tall spare girl in that gown was her grand-daughter's attendant;
+but since behind the awkward creature whose clothes were all awry
+stalked a broad-shouldered female grenadier with a woollen kerchief on
+her head and a pasteboard bandbox in her hand, she doubted no longer
+which was her grand-daughter: it was not necessary for Doctor Herbegg
+to present the girl to her with, &quot;Here is the young Countess, your
+Excellency.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She advanced a step and touched the girl's forehead with her lips.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Welcome to Berlin, dear child,&quot; she said, coldly. This, then, was her
+grand-daughter,--this angular creature with red wrists and a servant
+who wore a woollen kerchief on her head and carried in her hand an
+archaic pasteboard bandbox. The Countess shuddered. &quot;Will you have a
+cup of tea, my dear Doctor?&quot; she said, turning to her lawyer with the
+hope of putting a little life into the situation. Then, seeing him look
+at her with something of the dismay in his expression which Goswyn von
+Sydow's features had shown when she had complained that this was to be
+her last comfortable evening, she added, hastily, &quot;You will not? Well,
+you are right; it is late; another time, my dear Herbegg, you will do
+me the pleasure; and I--I could hardly remain with you; I am too--too
+desirous of making acquaintance with my grand-daughter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The last words came with something of a stumble, as if the Countess had
+been obliged to give them a push before they would leave her lips.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Doctor took a ceremonious leave. Minna, with her bandbox, which she
+refused to allow any one to take from her, was conducted by a footman
+to the servants' hall, the Countess Lenzdorff having informed her
+that her own maid would attend for this evening to her young
+mistress's wants. Erika followed her grandmother through several
+brilliantly-lighted apartments, the arrangement of which produced upon
+her the impression of a fairy-tale, to an airy little room adjoining
+the old Countess's sleeping-apartment.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;This is your room,&quot; said Countess Lenzdorff. &quot;I had your bed put for
+the present in my dressing-room; it is the best arrangement, and--and
+I--I think I would rather have you close at hand. Of course it is all
+provisionary: I do not even know yet what is to be done with you,
+whether--whether you will stay with me, or go for a while to some
+school. At any rate, for the present you must try to feel comfortable
+with me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Comfortable! It was asking much of the girl that she should feel
+comfortable under the circumstances! She wanted to say something: it
+annoyed her to have to play the part of a dunce,--her poor, youthful
+pride rebelled against it,--but she said not a word; she had to summon
+up all her resolution to keep back the tears that would well up to her
+eyes. With the slow stony gaze of one who is determined not to cry, she
+looked about her upon her new surroundings.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">How airy and fragrant, how bright and fresh and inviting, it all was!
+But in the midst of this Paradise she stood, trembling with fatigue,
+sore in soul and body, timid and sad, with but one wish,--that she
+might creep away somewhere into the dark.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">â?¢ Her grandmother perceived something of the girl's suffering, but
+still could not overcome her own distaste. &quot;Will you dress first, or
+have some supper immediately?&quot; she asked, with an evident effort to be
+kind. As she spoke, her bright eyes scanned the girl from head to foot.
+Poor Erika! She understood only too clearly that her grandmother was
+disappointed in her, that personally she was in no respect what the old
+lady had hoped for.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I should like to brush off some of this dust,&quot; she stammered, meekly.
+Her voice was remarkably soft and sweet, and her accent brought a
+reminiscence of the Austrian intonation, so much admired in Berlin.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">For the first time the Countess's heart was moved in favour of the
+young creature; some chord within her vibrated agreeably. &quot;Well, my
+child, do just as you like,&quot; she said, rather more warmly, as she made
+an attempt to unfasten the top button of the ugly black garment that so
+disfigured her grand-daughter. With a shy gesture Erika raised her
+hands and held her poor gown together over her breast. There was
+something in the gesture that touched the old lady. &quot;You may go,&quot;
+she said to the maid, who had meanwhile been unpacking Erika's
+travelling-bag. &quot;I will ring for you when we want you.&quot; Then, turning
+to Erika, she added, &quot;I will help you myself to undress.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika's sensations can hardly be described. Apart from the fact that in
+consequence of her intense shyness, the shyness of a very strong, pure
+nature bred in solitude, it was terrible to her even to take off her
+gown in the presence of a stranger, it suddenly seemed very hard to her
+(she had not thought of it at first) to expose to her grandmother's
+penetrating gaze the poverty of her wardrobe. She trembled from head to
+foot as her grandmother drew down her gown from her shoulders. But,
+strange to say, it almost seemed as if with the ugly dress some sort of
+barrier of separation between herself and her grandmother were removed.
+The old lady's bright eyes were dimmed by a certain emotion as she
+noticed the coarse, ill-made, but daintily white linen shift that left
+bare a small portion of the young, half-developed shoulders. &quot;Poor
+thing!&quot; she murmured, the words coming for the first time warm from her
+heart. Then, stroking the girl's long, slender, nobly-modelled arm, she
+said, &quot;How fair you are! I only begin now to see what you look like.&quot;
+She lifted the heavy knot of shining hair from the back of Erika's
+neck, and, in an access of that absence of mind for which she was noted
+in the Berlin world of society, exclaimed, &quot;<i>Mais elle est
+magnifique!</i>--In three years she will be a beauty!--Turn your head a
+little to the left.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grand-daughter's stare of dismay recalled her. &quot;What would Goswyn
+say if he heard me?&quot; she thought, and smiled.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika had only bathed her face and hands, and slipped on a long white
+dressing-gown of her grandmother's, when the maid brought in a waiter
+with her supper. In spite of her continued sense of discomfort, youth
+demanded its rights. She was decidedly hungry, and it was long since
+she had seen anything so inviting as this dainty repast. She sat down
+and began to eat.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old Countess observed her narrowly, but saw nothing to displease
+her. Her grandchild's manner of eating and drinking, of holding her
+fork, her glass of water,--all was just as it should be.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The whole thing seemed odd to the Countess Lenzdorff: she delighted in
+everything odd.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Not to disturb the girl at her repast, she looked away from her,
+glancing at the contents of the shabby old travelling-bag which the
+maid had unpacked. How poverty-stricken it all looked, in almost
+ridiculous--no, in positively pathetic--contrast with the young
+creature who in spite of her awkwardness had a regal air. &quot;<i>Mais elle
+est superbe!</i> Where were my eyes?&quot; the Countess thought, as she
+casually picked up a book from among Erika's belongings. It was a
+volume of Plutarch. &quot;'Tis comical enough,&quot; she thought, &quot;if I am to
+have a little blue-stocking in the house.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">As she turned over the leaves rather absently, she noticed that
+passages here and there were encircled by thick pencil-marks: sometimes
+an entire page would be thus marked, sometimes only a few lines.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What does that mean?&quot; she asked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My mother always used to mark so in my books the parts that I must not
+read,&quot; Erika said, simply.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Countess's eyes flashed. How sure a way to lead a child to taste
+the forbidden fruit!--or was it possible that girls growing up in the
+country under the exclusive influence of a mother might be differently
+constituted from girls in cities and boarding-schools?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And you really did not read those portions?&quot; she asked, half smiling.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The girl's face grew dark. &quot;How could I?&quot; she exclaimed, almost
+angrily.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Brava!&quot; cried her grandmother, patting her grandchild's shoulder. &quot;You
+are an honourable little lady,--a very great rarity. We shall get along
+very well together.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But, far from the girl's expressing any pleasure at this frank
+recognition of her excellence, her face did not relax one whit.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika had gone to bed. Countess Lenzdorff was still up and pacing her
+chamber to and fro. She thoroughly understood the full significance of
+her granddaughter's being with her; she was neither heartless nor
+complaining, but, where emotion was concerned, a sensitive old woman
+who studiously avoided everything that could agitate her nerves. But at
+present she could not control her emotion; feeling awoke within her as
+from a long sleep. At first she was conscious only of a vague
+discomfort,--a strange sensation which she ascribed to nervousness that
+must be controlled; but, far from being controlled, it increased,
+growing stronger until it became a positive hunger of the heart.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The self-dissatisfaction which had begun to torment her when she
+learned that Erika after her mother's death had been entirely uncared
+for, left alone with her step-father, now increased tenfold. It was the
+fault of the Pole, who had not notified her of his wife's death. But
+this excuse did not content her. How could she blame him? What had he
+done save follow her example in caring only for his own personal ease?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The unkindness with which she had treated her daughter-in-law now
+troubled her more than her loveless neglect of her grandchild. Had she
+any right to despise and cast her off because of her weakness? Good
+heavens! she was a rare creature in spite of everything; she had shown
+herself so in her child's education. What an influence she must have
+exercised over the girl to preserve her from deterioration through
+those terrible three years. Poor Emma! The old Countess's heart grew
+heavy as she recalled her. Her injustice to the poor woman dated from
+years back. She could not deny it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She had never been fond of her daughter-in-law: each differed too
+fundamentally from the other. On the one hand was Anna Lenzdorff, with
+her keenly observant mind, self-interested even in her strict morality
+which in her arrogance she regarded as the necessity of her nature for
+moral purity and independence, something for which she claimed no
+merit, since she practised it solely for her private satisfaction;
+good-natured, but without enthusiasm, endlessly but lovelessly
+indulgent to humanity, and rather of opinion that life is nothing but a
+farce with a tragic conclusion, something out of which the most
+advantage may be gained by observing it from a safe, comfortable
+corner, without ever making an attempt to mingle in its activities,
+firmly convinced that the best conduct of life consists in
+acknowledging its glaring contradictions, its lack of harmony, in
+making use of palliatives where they are of use, and in postponing for
+as long as possible the facing of the huge deficit sure to appear
+at the close of every human existence. And on the other hand was
+Emma,--Emma, who had a positive horror of the philosophy of life,
+which her mother-in-law with easy indifference denominated &quot;my
+laughing despair,&quot;--Emma, who believed in everything, in God and in
+humanity,--yes, even, as her mother-in-law maintained, in the cure
+of leprosy and the disinterestedness of English politics,--Emma, for
+whom an existence in which she could take no active part was devoid
+of interest, and who looked upon a loveless life as worse than
+death,--Emma, whose unselfishness bordered upon fanaticism, blinding
+her conscience for a moment now and then, when she would have given to
+one person what she had no right to take from others,--Emma, utterly
+unable to appreciate proportion and moderation, and who, scorning all
+the palliatives and make shifts with which one eases existence,
+demanded from life absolute happiness, and consequently, dazzled by an
+illusion, plunged blindly into an abyss.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Ah, if it had been only an abyss! but no, it was a slough, and Anna
+Lenzdorff could not traverse it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It certainly was strange that she, who found an excuse for every
+criminal of whom she read in the papers, had never been able to forgive
+her daughter-in-law when, thanks to her inborn thirst for the romantic,
+she forgot herself so far as to adore that Polish nonentity. What in
+the world could a woman of sense find in romance?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When Anna von Rhödern, at twenty-two, had married Count Ernst
+Lenzdorff, her views of life were in great measure the same that she
+had since elaborated so perfectly. She was of Courland descent, and the
+daughter of a prominent diplomat in the Russian service. Unlike her
+daughter-in-law, she had been a courted beauty, but at two-and-twenty
+she had turned her back upon all the sentimental possibilities to which
+in virtue of her great charm she had a right, and had married Count
+Lenzdorff, whose entire part in her existence she afterwards summed up
+in declaring that he really had bored her very little. And that, she
+maintained, was a great deal in a husband.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She had become acquainted with him in Paris, where he was secretary to
+the Prussian legation, and she married him there; afterwards he took up
+his abode in Berlin, where he held a distinguished position in the
+Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In moments of insolent frankness she was
+wont to describe him as an automaton whose key was in the possession of
+whoever might be Minister of Foreign Affairs. Once wound up, he could
+perform all the duties of his office during the few hours in which they
+were required of him; when they were over he was a lifeless wooden
+figure-head--nothing more. A wooden figure-head whom one is obliged to
+drag after one in life conduces but little to one's comfort, especially
+when the wooden figure-head is of the dimensions of Count Ernst
+Lenzdorff, and of this his wife shortly became aware. With great
+courtesy and skill she removed him from her life as soon as possible,
+placing him somewhere in the background upon a suitable pedestal,--the
+best place for wooden figureheads, and one where they can be made to
+look very effective.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Countess's only son was the very image of his father, and quite as
+imposingly wooden.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">If Emma, following her mother-in-law's example, could have courteously
+and respectfully put him upon a pedestal in some corner where he would
+not have been in her way, she might have led a very tolerable life with
+him. The mistake was that she attempted to make him happy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Poor Emma! As if one possibly could make a wooden figure-head happy!
+Young Count Lenzdorff was extremely uncomfortable in view of his wife's
+exertions to make him happy. What ensued was of a very unedifying
+character: from being simply a state of contented indifference, the
+marriage became a decidedly irksome bond. Nevertheless it was most
+unfortunate for Emma when Edmund Lenzdorff, two years after their
+marriage, lost his life in a railway accident. Had he lived, her
+existence might at least have been a quiet one; in time she would have
+relinquished her ill-judged attempts to make him happy, and have found
+an object in life in the education of her child; while, as it was, he
+was no sooner dead than her existence began to totter uncertainly, like
+a ship from which the ballast has been removed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At first she sickened, as her mother-in-law expressed it, with an
+attack of acute philanthropy. She haunted the most disreputable corners
+of Berlin in search of cases of misery to be relieved, never allowing a
+servant to accompany her, because, as she explained, it might humiliate
+the poor. Upon one of her excursions her watch was snatched from her,
+and another time she caught spotted fever. This was very annoying to
+the Countess Anna, but she forgave her, with--as she was wont to
+declare--praiseworthy courage, in view of the terrible disease.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Six months afterwards Emma married Strachinsky; and this her
+mother-in-law did not forgive her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Since then fourteen years had passed, fourteen years during which she
+had had nothing whatever to do with poor Emma. And now she was sorry.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Again and again did the Countess Anna revert to the education given to
+the young girl asleep in the next room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A woman who could so educate her child, and who could continue so to
+influence her after her death, was no ordinary character.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Of course she had had fine material to work upon. And the old Countess
+was conscious of an emotion never awakened within her by her son, yet
+now aroused by her grand-daughter,--pride in her own flesh and blood.
+&quot;A splendid creature!&quot; she murmured to herself once or twice, then
+adding, with a sneer at her own lack of perception, &quot;and I was fool
+enough to think her ugly at first. Whom does she resemble? she is not
+in the least like her mother,--nor like my son!&quot; Still pondering, she
+paused in her monotonous pacing to and fro, strangely thrilled. Going
+to an antique buhl cabinet with a multitude of drawers, she opened one
+of them,--a secret drawer, which had long been undisturbed,--and began
+to look through its contents. At last she found what she sought, a
+lithograph representing a young girl, <i>décolletée</i>, and with the huge
+sleeves in fashion in 1830. A very charming young girl the picture
+portrayed,--Countess Lenzdorff when she was still Anna von Rhödern.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The little faded picture trembled in the old lady's hand: it worked
+upon her like a spell, carrying her back to a time long forgotten,--a
+time when life had been to her something different from a farce with a
+tragic ending, by which one might be vastly entertained, but in which
+one should scorn to play a part. She was suddenly deeply pained at
+sight of the beautiful, grave, proud young face: it suggested to her
+something that had begun very finely and ended in unutterable
+bitterness, something through which the best and most genial part of
+her had been destroyed, or at least paralyzed. Hark! What was that? A
+low, suppressed sob! another! They came from the adjoining room. The
+old Countess dropped the little picture, and, with a candle in her
+hand, went to her grand-daughter's bedside. When she heard her
+grandmother coming, Erika closed her eyes, feigning sleep, but she had
+not time to wipe away the tears from her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother set the candle upon the table, and then, bending over
+the girl, whispered, softly, &quot;Erika!&quot; Erika did not stir. How pathetic
+she looked!--pale and thin, and yet so noble and charming in spite of
+the traces of tears.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Countess sat down upon the edge of the bed and stroked the girl's
+wet cheeks. &quot;Erika, my darling, what is the matter? Are you homesick?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Then Erika opened her large eyes and looked gloomily at her
+grandmother. She answered not a word, but compressed her lips. How
+could her grandmother ask her if she was homesick, when all that she
+had of home was a grave?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">For one moment the old Countess hesitated; then, lifting the reluctant
+girl from the pillows, she clasped her to her breast, pressing her lips
+upon the golden head, and murmuring softly, &quot;Forgive me, my child,
+forgive me!&quot; For one moment Erika's obstinate resistance was
+maintained; then she began to sob convulsively; and then--then her
+grandmother felt the slender form nestle close within her arms, while
+the weary young head fell upon her shoulder and a sensation of sweet,
+young warmth penetrated to the Countess's very heart, which suddenly
+grew quite heavy with tenderness.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika was soon sound asleep, but her grandmother still felt no desire
+to retire to rest. &quot;I will write to Goswyn,&quot; she said to herself. &quot;I
+must tell him she is charming, and that I will make her happy.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Nine months had passed since Erika's arrival in Berlin. She had
+travelled much with her grandmother, passing the time in Schlangenbad,
+Gastein, and the Riviera. As soon as she had become further acquainted
+with her, Countess Anna had relinquished all thoughts of sending her
+grand-daughter to a boarding-school. &quot;What could you gain from a
+boarding-school?&quot; she said. &quot;H'm! Have your corners rubbed off? In my
+opinion that would be matter of regret. And as for your education,
+there's too much already in that head of yours for a girl of your age;
+but that we can't alter, and must make allowance for.&quot; And she tapped
+Erika on the cheek, and looked at her with eyes beaming with pride.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika had come to be the centre of her existence, her idol, the most
+entertaining toy she had ever possessed, the most precious jewel she
+had ever worn. Moreover, she was the late-awakened poetry of her life,
+the transfigured resurrection of her own youth. That was all very
+natural: she was not the first grand-mother in the world who had
+thought her grand-daughter a phenomenon; and it would have mattered
+little in any wise if she had not thought it necessary to impress her
+grand-daughter with the high opinion she entertained of her. Everything
+that she could do to turn the young girl's head she did, all out of
+pure inconsequence and love of talking, because never in her life had
+she been able to keep anything to herself. For in fact she was as
+unwise as she was clever: her cleverness was an article of luxury,
+something with which she entertained herself and others, with which she
+theoretically arranged the most complex combination of circumstances,
+but which never helped her over the simplest disturbance of her daily
+life. She was thoroughly unpractical, and was aware of it, without
+understanding why it was so. Since she could not alter it,--indeed, she
+never tried to,--she evaded every difficult problem of existence, with
+the Epicurean love of ease which was her only enduring rule of conduct.
+Her affection for Erika was now part of her egotism. She was never
+weary of exulting in the girl's beauty and brilliant qualities; she
+felt every annoyance experienced by her grand-daughter as a personal
+pang, every triumph as homage paid to herself; but she never thought of
+the responsibility she had assumed towards this lovely blossom
+unfolding in such luxuriance. She was convinced that Erika's life would
+develop of itself just as her own had done, and in this conviction she
+felt not the slightest compunction in spoiling the girl from morning
+until night, and in absolutely forcing her to consider herself the
+centre of the universe.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">With almost equal impatience grandmother and grand-daughter awaited the
+moment when Erika should enchant the world of Berlin society.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And now it was the beginning of February, and the first
+Wednesday-afternoon reception of Countess Anna Lenzdorff after her
+return from Italy. She, whose social indolence had long been
+proverbial, had sent out numerous cards, many of them to people who had
+long since supposed themselves forgotten by her. All this, too, without
+any idea of as yet introducing her grand-daughter to society, but
+simply that people &quot;might have a glimpse of her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">As a result of the Countess Anna's suddenly developed amiability
+towards Berlin society, this reception was largely attended. Erika
+presided at the tea-table in a toilette of studied simplicity and with
+a regal self-consciousness due to the enthusiasm which her grandmother
+displayed for her various charms, but which the girl had the good taste
+to conceal beneath an attractive air of modesty. She did not rattle her
+teacups awkwardly, she upset no cream, she never pressed a guest to
+take what had once been declined; in short, she committed none of the
+blunders so frequently the consequence of shyness in young novices; and
+she was, as her grandmother expressed it, simply &quot;wonderful.&quot; Full
+forty times the old lady had presented &quot;my grand-daughter,&quot; with the
+same proud intonation, observing narrowly the impression produced upon
+each guest,--an impression almost sure to be one of pleased surprise;
+whereupon Countess Lenzdorff--the same Countess Lenzdorff who had been
+always ready to ridicule, and to ridicule nothing more unsparingly than
+the mutual admiration characteristic of German families--would begin,
+in a loud whisper of which not one word escaped Erika's ears, to
+enumerate her grandchild's unusual attractions: &quot;What do you think of
+this child who has dropped from the skies into my house to brighten my
+old age? 'Tis my usual luck, is it not? A charming creature; and what a
+carriage! Just observe her profile,--now, when she turns her head,--and
+the line of the cheek and throat. And to think that I was actually
+reluctant to receive the child! Oh, I treated her shamefully; but I am
+atoning to her for the past. I spoil her a little; but how can I help
+it? I thought it would be such a bore to have a young girl in the
+house, but, on the contrary, she makes me young again. No need to stoop
+to her intellectually: she is interested in everything. At first I was
+going to send her to school. H'm! there is more in that golden head of
+hers than behind the blue spectacles of all the school-mistresses in
+Germany. And that is not what interests me most: she has a certain
+frank honesty of nature that enchants me. Oh, she certainly is
+remarkable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">There the Countess Lenzdorff was right,--Erika was remarkable,--but she
+was wrong in parading the child before her acquaintances: first because
+it bored her acquaintances,--when are we ever entertained by listening
+to the praises of somebody whom we hardly know?--and again because her
+exaggerated laudation of her grandchild excited the antagonism of her
+listeners. On this first reception-day she laid the foundation of the
+unpopularity from which Erika was to suffer long afterwards.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The afternoon was nearing its close; the lamps were lit; three
+or four ladies only, all in black,--the court was in mourning at the
+time,--were still sitting in the cosiest corner of the drawing-room.
+Close by the hearth sat a tiny old lady, Frau von Norbin, <i>née</i>
+Princess Nimbsch, with a delicately chiselled face framed in
+silver-gray curls, a face the colour of a faded rose-leaf, and with a
+thin clear voice that sounded like an antique musical clock and seemed
+to come from far away. She was about ten years older than Countess
+Anna, but had been one of her most intimate friends from childhood,
+belonging also to an old Courland family, which had given the Vienna
+Congress a good deal of trouble. She had known Talleyrand in her youth,
+and had corresponded with Chateaubriand. Countess Lenzdorff had a
+water-colour sketch of her as a young girl with a wreath of vine-leaves
+on her head, her hair hanging about her shoulders in Bacchante fashion,
+and with very bare arms holding aloft a tambourine. The rococo
+sentiment of the faded sketch contrasted strangely with the old lady's
+dignified decrepitude and poetically softened charm.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Opposite her, and evidently very desirous to stand well with her, sat a
+certain Frau von Geroldstein, wife of a wealthy merchant who had
+purchased a patent of nobility in one of the petty German states,
+without, as he learned too late, acquiring any court privileges for his
+wife. Indignant at the pettiness of the German sovereign in duodecimo,
+he had established himself in Berlin, where his wife hoped to find a
+suitable stage for her social efforts. She had been there three years
+without finding any aristocratic coigne of vantage for her pretensions;
+in despair she had fallen back upon celebrities, artists, professors,
+politicians (even democrats), to lend a certain splendour to her
+<i>salon</i>. After at last finding her aristocratic vantage-ground at a
+watering-place in the shape of a General's widow, with debts, and a
+daughter of forty whom she alleged to be twenty-four, she annoyed her
+old acquaintances extremely. It was the business of her life to extort
+forgiveness from society for having once invited Eugene Richter to her
+house. Society never forgives, but it sometimes forgets if it be
+convenient to do so. It began to find it convenient to forget all sorts
+of things about Frau von Geroldstein, not only her political
+acquaintances, but also that her husband had made his fortune by
+furnishing army-supplies of doubtful quality.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Frau von Geroldstein was so available, and was besides so ready to make
+any concessions required of her. She threw Eugene Richter overboard,
+and developed a touching enthusiasm for the court chaplain Dryander.
+She bombarded society with invitations to dinners which were excellent,
+and at which one was sure to meet no undesirable individuals. She paid
+endless visits, and possessed in fullest measure the article most
+indispensable to the career of social aspirants,--a very thick skin.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was about twenty-five years old, and was gifted by nature with a
+very small waist, which she pinched in to the stifling-point, and with
+a face which would have been pretty had it not given the impression, as
+did everything else about her, of artificiality. Of course her court
+mourning was trimmed with three times as much crape as that of any
+other lady present; and today she had made it her special business to
+win the favour of little Frau von Norbin. She had offered her three
+things already,--her riding-horse for Frau von Norbin's daughter, her
+lawn-tennis ground (she had a wonderful garden behind her house, which
+no one used), and her opera-box; but Frau von Norbin's manner was still
+coldly reserved. At last Frau von Geroldstein discovered from a remark
+of Countess Lenzdorff's that the old lady's principal interest lay in a
+children's hospital of which she was the chief patroness. Frau von
+Geroldstein instantly declared that the improvement of the health of
+the children of the poor was positively all that she cared for in life:
+when might she visit the hospital? Countess Lenzdorff smiled somewhat
+maliciously when Frau von Norbin, caught at last by this benevolent
+birdlime, plunged into a conversation with Frau von Geroldstein upon
+the most practical mode of nursing children.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Meanwhile, Countess Lenzdorff turned for amusement to a young maid of
+honour, a charming person, whose delicate sense of humour had been
+uninjured by the debilitating atmosphere of the court, and who was now
+detailing the latest misfortunes of a certain Countess Ida von Brock.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This Countess Brock was a notorious figure in Berlin society. She was
+usually called the twelfth fairy, since she was frequently omitted in
+the invitations to some social 'high mass' (the word was of Countess
+Lenzdorff's invention) and was then sure to appear uninvited and to do
+all kinds of mischief by her malicious gossip. Every winter she looked
+out for fresh lions for her menagerie, as her <i>salon</i> was called in
+familiar conversation,--for artists sufficiently well bred to consort
+with men of fashion, and for men of fashion sufficiently intelligent to
+appreciate artists. Since, thanks to her numberless eccentricities and
+indiscretions, she had quarrelled with all sorts of people, she was
+always obliged to entreat a few influential friends to procure for her
+her anthropological curiosities. Some time ago she had applied to
+Countess Lenzdorff to provide her with 'twelve witty Counts,'--an order
+which Countess Lenzdorff had declined to fill, upon the plea that the
+supply was just then exhausted.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">During the previous winter the glory of her <i>salon</i> had been a
+hypnotizer, a young American for whom the Countess Ida had been wildly
+enthusiastic.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Mr. Van Tromp was his name; he had a dome-like forehead, and he cost
+nothing; he was quite ready to sacrifice his time without pay for the
+pleasure of mingling in good society,--a pleasure more highly prized by
+an American, as is well known, than by any European aspirant. At the
+close of the season the Countess's footman had unfortunately put
+aqua-fortis in the chambermaid's tea, and, as the Countess ascribed the
+crime to the influence of Van Tromp, she straightway relinquished her
+hypnotic pastime, the more willingly as most of her other guests
+considered it a rather dangerous game.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Van Tromp was informed of this when he next visited the Countess. He
+acquiesced in her decision, and amiably and unselfishly hoped that
+without any further exercise of his peculiar talent she would allow him
+to visit her 'as a friend.' Countess Brock, however, wrote him a note
+thanking him for his great kindness, but at the same time insisting
+that she could not possibly allow him to waste his time at her house;
+the people frequenting it were in fact quite too insignificant to
+associate with so great a man as himself.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This mode of turning out of doors people whom she could no longer make
+use of she called treating them with delicacy and tact. What Mr. Van
+Tromp thought of it is not known: he revenged himself, however, by
+writing a book upon Berlin society, which, as it was full of scandalous
+stories and appeared anonymously, lived through twenty-five editions.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">With a view of making her Thursday evenings attractive this year,
+Countess Brock had determined to have some one of her favourite modern
+dramas read aloud at each of them, and had engaged the services of a
+handsome young actor with a broad chest and a strong voice as reader.
+The readings had begun the previous week with a German translation of
+Dumas' &quot;<i>Femme de Claude</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The young maid of honour had been present, and she declared it &quot;comical
+beyond description.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">There were several young girls among the audience, and scarcely had the
+handsome young actor with the powerful voice reached the middle of the
+second act when there was a rustling in the assembly, caused by a
+mother's conducting her daughter from the room. This went on all
+through the evening. Whilst the reader pursued his way with enthusiasm,
+each scene frightened away some two or three delicate-minded
+individuals, until the hostess found herself left almost entirely alone
+with the handsome young actor and a few gentlemen. &quot;I persisted in
+remaining,&quot; the maid of honour continued, amid the laughter of her
+audience, &quot;but I assure you----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At this moment the servant announced &quot;Frau Countess Brock,&quot; and there
+entered a woman of medium height, in a large high-shouldered seal-skin
+coat, for which departure from the prescribed court mourning a long
+crape veil atoned, a wonder of a veil, draped picturesquely over a Mary
+Stuart bonnet and hanging down over a slightly-bent back. Her grizzled
+hair was arranged above her forehead in curls, and her face, which must
+once have been handsome, was disfigured by affected contortions,
+sometimes grotesque, sometimes malicious, often both together.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Countess Lenzdorff immediately presented her niece to the new-comer,
+but the 'wicked fairy' paid no heed, and Erika made her a graceful
+courtesy which she did not see. She gave additional proof of
+near-sightedness by almost sitting down upon Frau von Norbin, and by
+mistaking Frau von Geroldstein for a distinguished authoress aged
+seventy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Frau von Norbin smiled good-naturedly, and Frau von Geroldstein
+declared the blunder delicious. Privately she was furious, not at being
+mistaken for an aged woman, but at being supposed to be an authoress.
+However, she could endure it, since she had arranged a visit with Frau
+von Norbin to the children's hospital for the next afternoon. That was
+a triumph, at all events.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;H'm! h'm! what were you all laughing at when I came in?&quot; asked the
+'wicked fairy,' taking a seat beside Countess Lenzdorff.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Upon which a rather embarrassed silence ensued, and she went on with a
+sigh: &quot;At my disaster, of course. Yes, yes, I know, Clara,&quot;--this to
+the maid of honour,--&quot;you will tell the <i>désastre</i> to all Berlin. It
+was terrible!--Oh, thanks, no,&quot;--this with a polite grin to Erika, who
+offered her a cup of tea. &quot;That frightful actor!&quot; she wailed, raising
+her black-gloved hands, palms outward,--a gesture peculiarly her own
+and used to express the climax of despair. &quot;I have already denounced
+him to our principal managers: he never will get any position in a
+Berlin theatre. Think of his insolence in reading my guests out of my
+drawing-room and showing me up as a lover of questionable literature.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Was the drama one of his selection?&quot; asked Countess Lenzdorff.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No; I chose it myself. But, good heavens! the piece was of no
+importance. The mode of delivery was everything. All he had to do was
+to skip lightly over the questionable parts; instead of which he fairly
+roared them in the faces of my guests.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Evidently he liked them best,&quot; the maid of honour said, with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Of course,&quot; the 'wicked fairy' went on, indignantly; &quot;these people
+have neither tact nor sense of decency. Well, I have forbidden the man
+my house for the future.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Like Mr. Van Tromp,&quot; Countess Lenzdorff interposed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, I am too easily imposed upon,&quot; Countess Brock sighed. &quot;The worst
+of it is that I have nothing now in prospect for my Thursdays.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I saw in the newspaper that a couple of almehs on their way from Paris
+to Petersburg are to appear at Kroll's,&quot; Countess Lenzdorff observed,
+maliciously: &quot;you might hire them for an evening.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;That would be against the law,&quot; remarked Frau von Geroldstein, who
+knew about everything and had no sense of humour. Countess Brock, who
+had declared that nothing should ever induce her to receive 'the
+Archduchess,' as she called Frau von Geroldstein, pretended not to
+hear; Frau von Norbin begged to be told what an <i>almeh</i> was. Countess
+Lenzdorff laughed, and was just enlightening her in a low tone, out of
+regard for her grand-daughter, as to this Oriental specialty, when Herr
+von Sydow was announced.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Goswyn!&quot; exclaimed Countess Anna, evidently delighted. &quot;It is good of
+you to come at last, but not good to have let us wait so long for you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I came as soon as I heard of your return,&quot; Sydow replied.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And, as usual, you come as late as possible,&quot; his old friend remarked,
+in an access of absence of mind, &quot;in hopes of finding me alone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I call that a skilful method of turning people out of doors,&quot;
+exclaimed Frau von Norbin, laughing, and in spite of her hostess's
+protestations she arose and took her leave, accompanied by the young
+maid of honour.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Whilst Erika, with the modest grace which she had learned so quickly,
+conducted the two ladies to the vestibule, where only two or three
+remained of the crowd of footmen that had occupied it early in the
+afternoon, Goswyn's eyes rested on the wall, where, to his great
+surprise, hung the same Böcklin that had been removed upon his former
+visit in view of the expected arrival of the Countess's grand-daughter.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;So you sent the young Countess to boarding-school?&quot; he remarked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What?&quot; exclaimed the Countess, indignant at such an idea. &quot;You must
+see that I am far too old to forego the pleasure of having the child
+with me.&quot; Then, observing that the young man's eyes were directed
+towards her favourite picture, she suddenly remembered the conversation
+she had had with him in the spring. &quot;Oh, yes; you are thinking of how
+hard it seemed to me to receive the child. It makes me laugh to recall
+it. As for the picture, there was no need to hide it from her: she knew
+the entire Vatican by heart when she came to me, from photographs. She
+looks at everything, and sees beyond it! I am longing to have you know
+her: did you not notice her? though this February twilight, to be sure,
+is very dim. She has just escorted Hedwig Norton from the room.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Was that your grand-daughter?&quot; Sydow asked, in surprise. &quot;I thought it
+was your niece Odette.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Where were your eyes?&quot; Countess Lenzdorff asked, in an aggrieved tone.
+&quot;Odette is pretty enough, but a grisette,--a mere grisette,--in
+comparison with Erika. Erika is a head taller; and then, my dear, <i>un
+port de reine</i>,--<i>absolument, un port de reine</i>. Ah, here she
+comes.--Erika, Herr von Sydow wishes to be presented to you: you know
+who he is,--a great favourite of mine, and the nicest young fellow in
+all Berlin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika inclined her head graciously, and, whilst the young man
+blushed at the old lady's exaggerated praise, said, with perfect
+self-possession, &quot;Of course my grandmother has enlightened you as to my
+perfections. I think we may both be quite content, Herr von Sydow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He bowed low and took the offered chair beside his hostess. He
+knew that Countess Lenzdorff expected him to say something to her
+grand-daughter, but he could not; he was mute with astonishment. It was
+true that the Countess had written him shortly after the young girl's
+arrival that she was charming, but he had regarded this asseveration as
+a piece of remorse on her part, knowing that remorse will incline
+people to exaggerate, especially kind-hearted, selfish people, for whom
+the memory of injustice done by them is among the greatest annoyances
+of life.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He could not reconcile his memory of the distressed, pale, shy girl
+whom he had seen for an instant with this extremely beautiful and
+self-possessed young lady who seemed expressly devised to act as a
+cordial for her grandmother's Epicurean selfishness. He did not know
+why, but he was half vexed that Erika was so beautiful: the previous
+tender compassion with which she had inspired him seemed ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The words for which he sought in vain with which to begin a
+conversation she soon found. &quot;It is strange that you should not have
+recognized me here in my grandmother's drawing-room, where you might
+have expected me to be,&quot; she said, gaily. &quot;I should have known you in
+Africa.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Where have you seen each other before?&quot; the Countess asked, curiously.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;On the stairs, on the evening of my arrival,&quot; Erika explained.
+&quot;Evidently you do not recall it, Herr von Sydow: I ought not to have
+confessed how perfectly I remember.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, I remember it very well,&quot; said Sydow, and then he paused suddenly
+with a faint smile, a smile peculiarly his own, and behind which some
+sensitive souls suspected a degree of malice, but which actually
+concealed only a certain agitation and embarrassment, a momentary
+non-comprehension of the situation. He was not very clever, except in
+moments of great danger, when he developed unusual presence of mind.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;After all, 'tis no wonder that you made more impression upon me than I
+did upon you,&quot; Erika went on, easily and simply. &quot;In the first place,
+you were the first Prussian officer I had ever met; I had never seen
+anything in Austria so tall and broad: your epaulettes inspired me with
+a degree of awe. And then you bowed so respectfully. You can't imagine
+how much good it did me. I was half dead with terror: you looked as if
+you pitied me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I did pity you, Countess,&quot; he confessed, frankly. The tone of her
+voice, which had first won over her grandmother, was sweet in his ears.
+Moreover, she seemed very much of a child, now that she was talking.
+The impression of self-possession which she had at first given him was
+quite obliterated.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You knew that my grandmother was not glad to have me?&quot; she asked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, I told him so, and he scolded me for it,&quot; Countess Lenzdorff
+declared, with a nod.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But, my dear Countess!&quot; Sydow remonstrated.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, I always speak the truth,&quot; the Countess exclaimed,--&quot;always, that
+is, if possible, and sometimes even oftener: it is the only virtue upon
+which I pride myself. And you were right, Goswyn. But do you know how
+you look now? As if you were ashamed of your pity. Aha! I have hit the
+nail upon the head, and a very sensitive nail, too. It is human nature.
+There is one extravagance which even the most magnanimous never forgive
+themselves,--wasted compassion. In fact, you must perceive that the
+child has no need of the article.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn was silent. If at first the Countess had hit the nail upon the
+head, he was by no means convinced of the truth of her last remark.
+Something in the old Countess's manner to her grand-daughter went
+against the grain with him: once while she was talking to him, and
+Erika, sitting beside her, nestled close to her with the innocent grace
+of a young creature to whom a little tenderness is as necessary as is
+sunshine to the opening flower, the grandmother suddenly, with a
+significant glance at Sydow, put her finger beneath the girl's chin and
+turned her face so that he might observe the particularly lovely
+outline of her cheek.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Meanwhile, Countess Brock was defending herself with much ill humour
+and many grimaces from the exaggerated amiability of the 'Archduchess,'
+which found vent especially in the offer of a specific for the cure of
+neuralgia, from which the 'wicked fairy' suffered constantly, and which
+partly explained the peculiar twitching of her features. Extricating
+herself at last with much bluntness from the snare thus spread to
+entrap her favour, Countess Brock turned to the young officer, who,
+strange to relate, was her nephew. Strange to relate; for there
+certainly could be no greater contrast than that of his characteristic
+grave simplicity with her restless affectation.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My dear Goswyn!&quot; she said, in a honeyed tone, taking a chair beside
+him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Well, aunt?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You scarcely spoke to me when you came in,&quot; she continued,
+reproachfully, in the same sweet tone.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You seemed very much occupied.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Occupied? yes, occupied indeed. For the last quarter of an hour I have
+been struggling like a fly in a trap. You come just at the right
+moment, dear boy.&quot; And she tapped his epaulette with a caressing
+forefinger.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah? Do you wish me to audit your accounts?&quot; he asked, dryly: he had
+but slight sympathy with her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;God forbid!&quot; exclaimed the 'wicked fairy,' raising her black-gloved
+hands with her characteristic gesture. &quot;Nothing so prosaic as that this
+time. It was about----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;About your Thursdays,&quot; her nephew interrupted her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Rightly guessed, dear boy. I want a new star; and you can help me a
+little. Do you know G----?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The pianist?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I have practised with him once or twice.&quot; Goswyn played the violin in
+moments of leisure, a weakness to which he did not like to hear
+allusions made.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There! I thought so. You must bring him to me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Pray excuse me,&quot; the young man said, decidedly. &quot;I will have nothing
+to do with introducing any artist to you. I know too well what will
+ensue. You will squeeze him like a lemon, and then show him the door on
+the pretence that he outrages your æsthetic sense,--that his manners
+are not to your taste. You should inform yourself on that point before
+making use of him. We all know that artists are not always well bred.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Too true!&quot; sighed Frau von Geroldstein, edging her chair nearer to the
+speaker.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;All artists are ill-mannered,&quot; Countess Lenzdorff maintained, with her
+good-humoured insolence.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Even the greatest?&quot; asked Erika, shyly. She was thinking of the young
+painter whom she had met by the monster of a bridge, and she could not
+decide whether to resent her grandmother's arrogance or to be ashamed
+of the childish admiration in which she had indulged all these years
+for the handsome vagabond of whom she had never heard since.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">As Frau von Geroldstein was gently sighing, &quot;Ah, yes, even the
+greatest,&quot; Countess Anna interposed with a laugh, &quot;They are the worst
+of all. Artistic mediocrities acquire a certain drawing-room polish far
+sooner than do the great geniuses who live in a world of their own.
+And, after all, average good manners are only the dress-suit for
+average men: they rarely sit well upon a genius. I care very little for
+them: a little <i>naïve</i> awkwardness does not displease me at all; on the
+contrary, to be quite to my mind an artist must always have something
+of the bear about him: I take no interest whatever in those trim
+dandies, 'gentlemen artists,' who think more of the polish of their
+boots than of their art.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Nor do I,&quot; sighed Frau von Geroldstein.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;H'm! your discourse is always very instructive,&quot; the 'wicked fairy'
+declared, &quot;but it does not help me in my trouble.&quot; She sighed
+tragically and arose. As she did so, her fur boa slipped from her
+shoulders to the ground. Erika picked it up and handed it to her. The
+'wicked fairy' stared at the young girl through her eye-glass, surprise
+slowly dawning in her distorted features. &quot;You are the grand-daughter
+from Bohemia?&quot; she asked, still with her eye-glass at her eyes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, Frau Countess.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah, excuse me: I have been taking you all this time for my dear Anna's
+companion. Now I remember she died last year: I sent some flowers to
+her funeral. Poor thing! she was desperately tiresome, but an excellent
+girl; you must remember her, my dear Goswyn. You used to call her the
+Duke of Wellington, because she was a little deaf and used to go on
+talking without hearing what was said to her. How could I make such a
+mistake! But I am very near-sighted, and very absent-minded.&quot; She put
+her finger beneath Erika's chin and smiled an indescribable smile. &quot;And
+you are very pretty, my dear. What is your name?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Erika.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Erika!--Heather Blossom! And you come from Bohemia. How poetic!--how
+poetic! She is positively charming, this grand-daughter of yours, Anna!
+Do you not think so, Goswyn?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Sydow flushed crimson, frowned, and was silent.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I must go: I seem to be saying the wrong thing,&quot; Countess Brock ran
+on; then, looking towards the window, &quot;Good heavens!&quot; she exclaimed,
+&quot;it is pouring! Pray let them call a droschky.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Erika, ring the bell,&quot; said Countess Lenzdorff.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Before Erika could obey, Frau von Geroldstein extended a detaining arm.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But, my dear Countess Erika, why send for a droschky, when my carriage
+is waiting below, and it will give me the greatest pleasure to drive
+Countess Brock home?--Surely you will permit me?&quot;--this last addressed
+to the 'wicked fairy.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I really cannot. I know you far too slightly to impose such a burden
+upon you,&quot; Countess Brock replied, crossly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why call it a burden? it is a pleasure,&quot; the other insisted.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There is no pleasure in driving with me: I am forced to have all the
+windows closed,&quot; said the Countess.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Meanwhile, Erika stood uncertain whether or not to ring the bell, when
+suddenly affairs took a turn most favourable for Frau von Geroldstein.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Herr Reichert was announced, and without another word Countess Brock
+vanished with Frau von Geroldstein, in whose coupé she was driven home.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She had private reasons for this hurried retreat. Reichert, a special
+favourite of Anna Lenzdorff's, an animal painter with a lion face and
+an inexhaustible fund of anecdote, was among the '<i>remords</i>' of the
+'wicked fairy.' She called her '<i>remords</i>' the assemblage of men of
+talent of whom she had made use only to throw them aside remorselessly
+afterwards.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The animal painter's visit was a brief one, and none of the Countess
+Lenzdorff's guests remained save Sydow, who stayed in obedience to the
+Countess's whispered invitation.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There! now I have had enough,&quot; she exclaimed, as the door closed
+behind her beloved animal painter. &quot;Stay and dine, Goswyn: we dine
+early--at six--tonight, and then you can go with us to the Academy.
+Joachim is to play, and I have a spare ticket for you.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">It is later by four-and-twenty hours. Countess Lenzdorff, with her
+grand-daughter, has just returned from a drive in a close carriage,--a
+drive interrupted by a couple of calls, and by a little shopping in the
+interest of the young girl's wardrobe.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She is now sitting near the fire, a teacup in her hand, and saying,
+&quot;You cannot go out very much this season, especially since you are not
+to be presented until next winter, but you can divert yourself with a
+few small entertainments. It was well to order your gown from Petrus in
+time: people must open their eyes when they see you first.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Meanwhile, Erika has taken off her seal-skin jacket, and is sitting
+beside her grandmother, thinking of the gown that has been ordered for
+her to-day,--a white cachemire, so simple,--oh, so simple! &quot;Nobody must
+think of your dress when they see you,&quot; her grandmother had said:
+nevertheless it was a triumph of art, this gown.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Everything about you must be perfect in style upon your first
+appearance in the world,&quot; her grandmother now says. &quot;People must find
+nothing to criticise about you at first: afterwards we may, perhaps,
+allow ourselves a little eccentricity. I have a couple of gowns in my
+head for you which Marianne can arrange admirably, but just at first we
+must show that you can dress like everybody else,--with a slight
+difference. You must produce a certain effect. Give me another cup of
+tea, my child.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika hands her the cup. The old lady, pats her arm caressingly.
+&quot;Petrus is quite proud to assist at your début: at first I thought of
+sending to Paris for a dress for you,&quot; she adds, and then there is a
+silence.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old lady has lain back in her arm-chair and fallen asleep. She
+never lies down to take a nap in the daytime, but she often dozes in
+her chair at this hour.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Twilight sets in,--sets in unusually soon and quickly to-night, for the
+winter which had seemed to have bidden farewell to Berlin has returned
+with cruel intensity. The rain which on the previous day had forced
+Countess Brock into Frau von Geroldstein's arms and coupé has to-day
+turned to snow: it is lying a foot deep in the gardens in front of the
+grand houses in Bellevue Street, and is falling so fast that it has no
+chance to grow black: it lies on the trees in the Thiergarten, each
+twig bearing its own special weight, and down one side of each trunk is
+a broad bluish-white stripe; it lies on the roofs, on the palings of
+the little city gardens, yes, even on the telegraph-wires which stretch
+in countless lines against the purplish-gray sky above the white city.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">For a while Erika gazes out at the noiselessly-falling flakes: the snow
+still gleams white through the twilight.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The girl has ceased to think of her gown: her thoughts have carried her
+far back,--back to Luzano. That last winter there,--how cold and long
+it had been!--snow, snow everywhere; nothing to be seen but a vast
+field of snow beneath a gloomy sky, the poor little village, the frozen
+brook, the river, the trees, all buried beneath it. The roads were
+obliterated; there was some difficulty in procuring the necessaries of
+existence. The cold was so great that fuel cost &quot;a fortune,&quot; as her
+step-father expressed it. Erika was allowed none for the school-room,
+where she was wont to sit, nor for the former drawing-room, where was
+her piano. The greater part of the day she was forced to spend in the
+room, blackened with tobacco-smoke, where Strachinsky had his meals,
+played patience, and dozed on the sofa over his novels. What an
+atmosphere! The room was never aired, and reeked of stale cigar-smoke,
+coal gas, and the odour of ill-cooked food. Once Erika had privately
+broken a windowpane to admit some fresh air. But what good had it done?
+Since there was no glazier to be had immediately, the hole in the
+window had been stuffed up with rags and straw.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Yet the worst of that last winter had been the constant association
+with Strachinsky.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">One day, in desperation, she had hurried out of doors as if driven by
+fiends, and had gone deep into the forest. Around her reigned dead
+silence. There was nothing but snow everywhere: she could not have
+got through it but that she wore high boots. Here and there the black
+bough of a dead fir would protrude against the sky. No life was to be
+seen,--not even a bird. The only sounds that at intervals broke the
+silence were the creak of some bough bending beneath its weight of
+snow, and the dull thud of its burden falling on the snow beneath.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">As she was returning to her home she was overcome by a sudden weakness
+and a sense of utter discouragement.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Why endure this torture any longer? Who could tell when it would end,
+this intense disgust, this gnawing degrading misery, suffering without
+dignity,--a martyrdom without faith, without hope?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And there, just at the edge of the forest, close to the meadow that
+spread before her like a huge winding-sheet, she lay down in the snow,
+to put an end to it: the cold would soon bring her release, she
+thought. How long she lay there she could not have told,--the
+drowsiness which she had heard was the precursor of the end had begun
+to steal over her,--when on the low horizon bounding the plain she saw
+the full moon rise, huge, misty, blood-red. The outlying firs of the
+forest cast broad dark shadows upon the snow, and upon her rigid form.
+The snow began to sparkle; the world suddenly grew beautiful. She
+seemed to feel a grasp upon her shoulder, and a voice called to her,
+&quot;Stand up: life is not yet finished for you: who knows what the future
+may have in store?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hope, curiosity, perhaps only the inextinguishable love of life that
+belongs to youth and health, appealed to her. She rose to her feet and
+forced her stiffened limbs to carry her home.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Good heavens! it was hardly a year since! and now! She looks away from
+the large windows, behind the panes of which there is now only a
+bluish-white shimmer to be discerned, and gazes around the room. How
+cosey and comfortable it is! In the darkening daylight the outlines of
+objects show like a half-obliterated drawing. The subjects of the
+pictures on the walls cannot be discerned, but their gilt frames gleam
+through the all-embracing veil of twilight. There is a ruddy light on
+the hearth, partially hidden from the girl's eyes by the figure of the
+old Countess in her arm-chair; the air is pure and cool, and there is a
+faint agreeable odour of burning wood. From beneath the windows comes
+the noise of rolling wheels, deadened by the snow, and there is now and
+then a faint crackle from the logs in the chimney, now falling into
+embers.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika revels in a sense of comfort, as only those can who have known
+the reverse in early life. Suddenly she is possessed by a vague
+distress, an oppressive melancholy,--the memory of her mother who had
+voluntarily left all this pleasant easy-going life--for what? Her
+nerves quiver.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Meanwhile, Lüdecke brings in two lamps, which in consequence of their
+large coloured shades fail to illumine the corners of the room, and
+hardly do more than &quot;teach light to counterfeit a gloom.&quot; That grave
+dignitary was still occupied in their arrangement, when he turned his
+head and paused, listening to an animated colloquy in two voices just
+outside the portière which separated the Countess's boudoir from the
+reception-rooms. Evidently Friedrich, Lüdecke's young adjutant, who was
+not yet thoroughly drilled, was endeavouring to protect his mistress
+from a determined intruder.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;If you please, Frau Countess, her Excellency is not at home,&quot; he said
+for the third time, whereupon an irritated feminine voice made reply,--</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I know that the Countess is at home; and if she is not, I will wait
+for her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The fairy,&quot; said Countess Lenzdorff, awaking. &quot;Poor Friedrich! he is
+doing what he can, but there is nothing for it but to put the best face
+upon the matter.&quot; And, rising, she advanced to meet Countess Brock, who
+came through the portière with a very angry face.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;That wretch!&quot; she exclaimed. &quot;I believe he was about to use personal
+violence to detain me!&quot; And she sank exhausted into an arm-chair.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Since I ordered him to deny me to every one, he only did his duty,
+although he may have failed in the manner of its performance,&quot; Countess
+Lenzdorff replied.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But he ought to have known that I was an exception,&quot; the fairy
+rejoined, still angrily.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, he ought to have known. And now tell me what you have on your
+mind, for I see by your bonnet's being all awry that you have not
+engaged in a duel with that simpleton Friedrich without some special
+cause.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah, yes!&quot; Countess Brock groaned. &quot;I have a request--an audacious
+request--to make, and you must not refuse me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;We shall see. Is it fifty yards of red flannel for your association
+for the relief of rheumatic old women?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, if it were only that I should have no doubt of your assent,--every
+one knows how generous you are; but you have certain whims.&quot; The wicked
+fairy's smile was sourly sweet: &quot;I begged Goswyn to prefer my request,
+for I know how much you like him, and that you would not willingly
+refuse him anything; but he would not do it. He behaves so queerly to
+me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Tell me what you mean, without any further preliminaries. I am curious
+to know what the matter is with which Goswyn will have nothing to do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It is about my next Thursday,--no, not the next, I shall simply skip
+that, but the one after the next,--which, under the circumstances,
+ought to be particularly brilliant. I want to have tableaux, and two of
+the greatest beauties in Berlin have promised to help me,--Dorothea
+Sydow and Constance Mühlberg,&quot; Countess Brock explained, breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;H'm! that is magnificent,&quot; her friend interposed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Well, yes; but every one knows them by heart, and I want to show the
+Berlin folk something new. In short, I have come to the conclusion that
+the great attraction for my next evening reception must be your
+enchanting grand-daughter,&quot; the 'fairy' declared, wriggling herself out
+of her seal-skin coat.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika, who had hitherto kept modestly in the background, occupying
+herself with some embroidery, here paused, her needle suspended in the
+air, and looked up curiously.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My grand-daughter?&quot; her grandmother exclaimed, in surprise.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, yes; I have fallen in love with your granddaughter,--actually
+fallen in love with her. She has a natural air of distinction, with a
+certain barbaric charm which is immensely aristocratic: it reminds me
+of some noble wild animal: the aristocracy always reminds me of a noble
+wild animal, and the bourgeoisie of a well-fed barn-yard fowl,--except
+that the former is never hunted and the latter never slaughtered. But,
+then, who can tell, <i>par le temps qui court? Mais je me perds</i>. The
+matter in hand is not socialism nor any other threatening horror, but
+my tableaux. There are to be only three,--Senta lost in dreams of the
+Flying Dutchman, by Constance Mühlberg, Werther's Charlotte, by Thea
+Sydow, and last your grand-daughter as a heather blossom. She will bear
+away the palm, of course: the others are not to be compared with her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Countess Lenzdorff looked at Erika and smiled good-naturedly, as she
+saw how the young girl had gone on sewing diligently as if hearing
+nothing of this conversation. It never occurred to the old lady that it
+might not be advisable thus calmly to extol that young person's beauty
+in her presence.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You will let the child do me this favour, will you not?&quot; the 'fairy'
+persisted. &quot;It is all admirably arranged. Riedel is to pose them,--you
+know him,--the little painter with such good manners who has his shirts
+laundered in Paris.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, that colour-grinder!&quot; Countess Lenzdorff said, contemptuously.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The 'fairy' shrugged her shoulders impatiently. &quot;Colour-grinder or not,
+he is one of the few artists whom one can meet socially.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, yes; and he will find it much easier to arrange a couple of
+pictures than to paint them,&quot; Countess Lenzdorff declared.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Then you consent? I may count upon your grand-daughter?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I must first consider the matter,&quot; Countess Lenzdorff replied, but in
+a tone which plainly showed that she was not averse to granting her
+eccentric old friend's request.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I see that affairs look favourable for me,&quot; Countess Brock murmured.
+&quot;Thank heaven! I think I should have killed myself if I had met with a
+refusal. What o'clock is it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Six o'clock,--a few minutes past. Where are you going?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;To dine with the Geroldsteins. We are going to the Lessing Theatre
+afterwards. There have been no tickets to be had for ten days past.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You--are going to dine with the Geroldsteins?&quot; The old Countess
+clasped her hands in frank, if discourteous, astonishment.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I am going to dine with the Geroldsteins,&quot; the 'wicked fairy'
+repeated, with irritated emphasis; &quot;and what of it? You have received
+her for more than a year.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I have no social prejudices. Moreover, I do not receive her: I simply
+do not turn her out of doors.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Well, at present she suits me,&quot; Countess Brock declared, her features
+working violently. &quot;I have been longing for two months to be present at
+this first representation, without being able to get a seat: she offers
+me the best seat in a box,--no, she does not offer it to me, she
+entreats me to take it as a favour to her. And then think how I begged
+Goswyn yesterday to introduce G---- to me. No, he would not do it. She
+will see to all that. She is the most obliging woman in all Germany.
+And then--this very morning I saw her driving with Hedwig Norbin in the
+Thiergarten. Surely any one may know a woman with whom Hedwig Norbin
+drives through the Thiergarten.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She ran off, repeating her request as she vanished. &quot;You will let me
+know your decision to-morrow, Anna?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Countess Lenzdorff shook her head as she looked after her,--shook her
+head and smiled. She is still smiling as she thoughtfully paces the
+room to and fro.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">What is she considering? Whether it is fitting thus, in this barefaced
+manner, to call the attention of society to a young girl's beauty.
+Evidently Goswyn does not think it right; but Goswyn is a prig. The
+Countess's delicacy gives way and troubles her no further. Another
+consideration occupies her: will her grand-daughter hold her own in
+comparison with the acknowledged beauties who are to share with her the
+honours of the evening? Her gaze rests upon Erika. &quot;That crackbrained
+Elise is right. Erika hold her own beside them! the others cannot
+compare with her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What do you say, child?&quot; she asked, approaching the girl. &quot;Would you
+like to do it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes,&quot; Erika confesses, frankly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It would not be quite undesirable,&quot; says her grandmother, whose mind
+is entirely made up. &quot;You cannot go out much this year, and it would be
+something to appear once to excite attention and then to retire to the
+background for the rest of the season. Curiosity would be aroused, and
+would prepare a fine triumph for you next year.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The following morning Countess Brock received a note from Anna
+Lenzdorff containing a consent to her request.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">About ten days afterwards Countess Erika Lenzdorff presented herself
+before a select public, chosen from the most exclusive society in
+Berlin, as &quot;Heather Blossom,&quot; in a ragged petticoat, with her hair
+falling about her to her knees.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was a strange <i>soirée</i>, that in which the youthful beauty made her
+first appearance in the world.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Countess Brock, the childless widow of a very wealthy man who had
+derived much of his social prestige from his wife, had inherited from
+the deceased the use during her lifetime of a magnificent mansion,
+together with an income the narrowness of which was in striking
+contrast with her residence.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The consequence whereof was much shabbiness amid brilliant
+surroundings.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The tableaux were given in a spacious ball-room, decorated with white
+and gold, at one end of which a small stage had been erected. The
+stage-decorations had been painted for nothing, by aspiring young
+artists. The curtain consisted of several worn old yellow damask
+portières sewed together, upon which the 'wicked fairy' herself had
+painted various fantastic flowers to conceal the threadbare spots.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Whatever ridicule might attach to her Thursday evenings generally, on
+this one her preparations were crowned with success. The effect of the
+whole was greatly heightened by the musical accompaniment, furnished by
+G---- at the instigation of the indefatigable Frau von Geroldstein.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">For once this talented but shy young virtuoso forgot himself, and
+presented his audience with something more than a pattern-card of
+conquered technical difficulties.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Whether it were the result of caprice, or of a vivid impression made
+upon him by Erika, or of a presumptuous desire to do all that he could
+to add to her triumph, thus irritating the acknowledged beauties of the
+day, certain it is that he played all his musical trumps in his
+accompaniment to the representation of &quot;Heather Blossom.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Old Countess Lenzdorff, who had been wont to compare his clear sharp
+performance to a richly-furnished cockney drawing-room far too
+brilliantly lighted, and with gas into the bargain, could scarcely
+believe her ears when as an introduction to the third picture the low
+wailing notes of the familiar but lovely melody &quot;Ah, had I never left
+my moor!&quot; rang through the crowded assemblage of fashionable people.
+How sweet, how melancholy, were the tones breathed from the instrument!
+they seemed to rouse an echo in the soul of Boris Lensky's magic
+violin.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The curtain drew up, and revealed a waste, dreary heath, treated with
+tolerable conventionality by the amiable Riedel, and in the midst of it
+a single figure, tall, slender, in a worn petticoat and coarse white
+linen shift that left exposed the nobly-formed neck and the long and as
+yet rather thin arms, a pale face framed in heavy gleaming masses of
+hair, the features delicate yet strong, and with unfathomable,
+indescribable eyes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The painter Riedel had tried to force the Heather Blossom into the
+attitude of Ary Scheffer's Mignon. She had apparently yielded to his
+efforts, but at the last moment had posed according to her own wish,
+with her head bent slightly forward and her arms hanging straight by
+her side.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The audacious simplicity of her pose puzzled the spectators, and those
+elegant votaries of fashion, weary of counterfeit presentments of art
+and poetry, were in a manner shaken out of the monotonous indifference
+of their lives at sight of the blank dumb despair embodied in this
+young creature. They seemed suddenly to feel among them the working of
+some mysterious force of nature.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The curtain remained lifted for a longer time than usual; the young
+girl maintained her motionless attitude with a strength born of vanity;
+the wailing, sighing music sounded on.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The curtain fell. The public was wild with enthusiasm. Three times the
+curtain rose; but when there was a demand for a fourth glimpse of the
+strange, pathetic picture, it remained obstinately down: Erika had
+retired.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, the witch!&quot; murmured old Countess Lenzdorff to Hedwig Norbin, who
+sat beside her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The stupidest and most innocent of country grandmothers could not have
+exulted more frankly in her grand-daughter's triumph than did the
+clever Countess Lenzdorff. She was never weary of hearing the child
+praised: her appetite for compliments was inappeasable.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When Erika, transformed and modestly shy in her new gown from Petrus,
+appeared among the guests, she aroused enthusiasm afresh, and was
+immediately surrounded. She won the admiration not only of all the men
+present, but also of all the old ladies. Of course the younger women
+were somewhat envious, as were likewise the mothers with marriageable
+daughters. In a word, nothing was lacking to make her appearance a
+brilliant success.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother presented her right and left, and was unwearied in
+describing in whispered confidences to her friends the girl's
+extraordinary talents and capacity. Any other grandmother so conducting
+herself would have been called ridiculous, but it was not easy so to
+stigmatize Anna Lenzdorff; instead there was some irritation excited
+against the innocent object of such exaggerated praise, the girl
+herself, to whom various disagreeable traits were ascribed. The younger
+women pronounced her entirely self-occupied and thoroughly calculating.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was both in a certain degree, but after a precocious, childish
+fashion, that was diverting, rather than reprehensible.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Countess Mühlenberg, the wife of an officer in the guards who did not
+appreciate her and with whom she was very unhappy, had appeared as
+Senta out of pure good nature, and held herself quite aloof from
+Erika's detractors,--in fact, she showed the young <i>débutante</i> much
+kindness,--but Dorothea Sydow's dislike was almost ill-bred in its
+manifestation.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was a strangely fascinating and yet repulsive person,--very well
+born, even of royal blood, a princess, in fact, but so wretchedly poor
+that she had rejoiced when a simple squire laid his heart and his
+wealth at her feet. Her family at first cried out against the
+misalliance, but finally consented to admit that the young lady had
+done very well for herself. Some of her equals in rank came even to
+envy her after a while, for all agreed that there was not in the world
+another husband who so idolized and spoiled his wife, indulging her in
+every whim, as did Otto von Sydow his Princess Dorothea.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He was Goswyn's elder brother, and the heir of the Sydow estates, which
+was why there was such a difference in the incomes of the brothers. In
+all else the advantage was decidedly on Goswyn's side.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Otto looked like him, but his face lacked the force of Goswyn's; his
+features were rounder, his shoulders broader, his hands and feet
+larger, and he had a great deal of colour. The 'wicked fairy'
+maintained that he showed the blood of his bourgeoise mother.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Countess Lenzdorff, who had been an intimate friend of the late Frau
+von Sydow, denied this, insisting that the Sydow mother had enriched
+the family not only by her money but also by her pure, strong, red
+blood. In fact, Otto was a genuine Sydow: such types are not rare among
+the Prussian country gentry.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He was one of the men who always show to most advantage in the country
+and out of doors, for whom a drawing-room, even the most spacious, is
+too confined. In a brilliant crowd he looked as if he could hardly
+catch his breath. With the shyness not unusual in men with much-admired
+wives, he was wont to efface himself in a corner, emerging to make
+himself useful at supper-time, and never speaking except when he
+encountered some one still less at home in society than himself. He was
+never weary of watching his wife, devouring her with his eyes, drinking
+in her grace and beauty.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Many people declared that she was not beautiful, only distinguished in
+appearance. In fact, she was both to an astonishing degree, and
+aristocratic to her finger-tips. Tall, slender almost to emaciation,
+with long, narrow hands and feet, a head proudly erect, and sharply-cut
+features, her carriage was inimitable, her walk grace itself. Wherever
+she went she attracted universal attention. She wore her fair hair
+short in close curls about her small head, a piece of audacity indeed,
+and she talked quickly in a rather high voice, and with a slight defect
+in her utterance, characteristic of the royal family to which she was
+related, and which made some people nervous, while her countless
+adorers declared it enchanting.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">However, beautiful or not, she had been a leader in Berlin society for
+two years, and would brook no rival near her throne.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The evening ran its course; the servants opened the doors into the
+dining-hall; the ladies took their places at small tables, while the
+gentlemen served them--the entertainment being but meagre--before
+satisfying their own appetites. Some of them performed this duty with
+skill and dexterity, while others rattled plates and glasses and
+invariably dropped something.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika, paler than usual, with sparkling eyes and very red lips, sat at
+a table with a charmingly fresh young girl about her own age, but ten
+years younger intellectually. Nevertheless the child's development
+might almost be said to be finished, while Erika's had scarcely passed
+its first stage. She had honestly tried to talk with this companion,
+but without success; nor had she much to say to the young men who,
+attracted by her beauty, thronged around her. Reaction had set in: her
+enjoyment of her triumph had been succeeded by a strange restlessness.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Dorothea von Sydow was sitting near by at a table with one of the most
+fashionable women in Berlin, an Austrian diplomat, an officer of
+cuirassiers, and one of her cousins, Prince Helmy Nimbsch. All five had
+remarkably good appetites and talked incessantly. In their midst sat
+Frau von Geroldstein, a vacant place on each side of her,--solemn and
+mute. No one knew her, no one spoke to her, but she was sitting among
+people of rank and was content. Her only regret was that she had
+mistaken the continuance of the court mourning by a day, and had
+consequently appeared in a plain black gown in an assemblage of women
+in full dress with feathers and diamonds in their hair. To justify her
+error she had hastily trumped up a story of the death of a near
+relative.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn's place was with the elder women, a distinction that frequently
+fell to his share. He looked grave and anxious, and Countess Lenzdorff,
+who had commanded his presence at her table, with her usual
+imperiousness, reproached him for being tiresome and bad-tempered. From
+time to time he glanced towards Erika, of whom he could see nothing
+save a slender neck with a knot of gold-gleaming hair, a little pink
+ear, and now and then the outline of a softly-rounded cheek.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Yes, she was bewitching, there was no denying it, but she must be
+insufferable, there was no doubt of that either. The idea of thus
+making a show of a girl scarcely eighteen! It was in such bad taste: it
+was absolutely unprincipled: the old Countess, in her senseless vanity,
+was doing the child a positive injury. At times a kind of rage half
+choked him: he could have shaken his old friend, to whom he had been as
+a son, and who had from his boyhood petted him far more than her own
+child. Again he glanced towards Erika. Then his thoughtful gaze
+wandered across to the round table where his sister-in-law was sitting.
+She looked particularly well in a dress of white velvet with an antique
+Spanish necklace of emeralds around her slender neck. It was all very
+lovely, but her short hair was not in harmony with it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Beside her sat her cousin, Prince Helmy Nimbsch, a good-tempered dandy,
+scarcely twenty-five years old, with large light-blue eyes and a face
+smoothly shaven, except for a moustache. As Goswyn looked at Thea, she
+was laughing at her cousin over the champagne-glass which she held to
+her lips. Her eyes were her greatest beauty,--large hazel eyes, but
+with no soul in them, no expression, not even a bad one. Her charm was
+entirely physical, but it was very great. It was a pity that her
+manners were so loud. That perpetual giggle of hers rasped Goswyn's
+nerves. But he was alone in his dislike: her adorers were legion.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He looked away from her. Where was his brother? Over in a corner, at a
+table without ladies, he was sitting with another gentleman.
+Fortunately he had found a man who was even more uncomfortable than
+himself in this brilliant assemblage.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This was Herr Geroldstein, husband of the ambitious dame, a pale little
+man with a bald head and mutton-chop whiskers, who looked for all the
+world like a man who had wielded a yard-stick behind a counter all his
+life long,--a decent enough little man, with an air of being
+perpetually ashamed of himself, who never made use for his own part of
+the title which he had purchased as a birthday-present for his wife. He
+spoke very softly and ate and drank but little, while Otto von Sydow
+did both with great gusto, now and then uttering some oracular remark
+as to the best wine-merchant in Rheims. His face was redder than usual,
+and produced the impression of rude health beside the pale tradesman
+who had passed his life in his office. There was in Goswyn's opinion no
+denying that no man in the room was as ill fitted to be the husband of
+the slender Princess Dorothea as was his brother Otto.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">After supper there was a little music. When Goswyn was relieved from
+duty with Countess Lenzdorff, he was about to leave the house
+unnoticed, but longed for one more glimpse of Erika, whom he wished to
+remember as she looked to-night. &quot;The dew will be brushed off so soon,&quot;
+he said to himself, adding, &quot;Oh, the pity of it!&quot; He could not find her
+anywhere. &quot;Ah, of course she is surrounded somewhere by a crowd of
+detestable admirers!&quot; he said to himself, and turned to go. Why he had
+thus decided that all her admirers were detestable we shall not attempt
+to explain.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The fourth and last in the suite of the 'wicked fairy's'
+reception-rooms was empty and dimly lighted. He suddenly seemed to hear
+low suppressed sobs, as he looked in. A red gleam of light played about
+the folds of a white gown behind a huge effective artificial palm.
+Involuntarily he advanced a step. There sat Erika, the youthful queen
+of beauty, whom he had supposed entirely absorbed in receiving the
+homage of her vassals, curled up in an arm-chair, her handkerchief to
+her eyes, crying like a tired child. Usually deliberate in thought and
+action, when once his nerves were irritated he became quick and
+impetuous. He did not hesitate a moment, but, bending over the girl,
+exclaimed, &quot;Countess Erika! in heaven's name what is the matter? Can
+any one have offended you?&quot; His voice grew angry at the bare suspicion.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah, no, no!&quot; she sobbed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Shall I go for your grandmother?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No--no!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He paused an instant. Then, in a very low and kindly voice, he asked,
+&quot;Do I annoy you? Would you rather be alone? Shall I go?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She took the handkerchief from her eyes and assured him frankly and
+cordially, &quot;Oh, no, certainly not: I am glad to have you stay with me,&quot;
+adding, rather shyly, &quot;Pray sit down.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Nothing was left of the self-possessed young lady: here was only a
+little girl dissolved in tears and dreading lest she should seem
+impolite to a friend of her grandmother's.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;She treats me exactly like an old man,&quot; the young captain said to
+himself, at once touched and annoyed; nevertheless he accepted her
+invitation, and took a seat near her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It will soon be over,&quot; she said, trying to dry her tears. But they
+would not be dried; they welled forth afresh: she was evidently quite
+unnerved by the excitement of her <i>début</i>, poor thing!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, heavens,&quot; she cried, making a supreme effort to control herself,
+&quot;I must stop crying! What a disgrace it would be if any of those people
+should see me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Apparently there was a great gulf in her mind between Goswyn and &quot;those
+people.&quot; He was glad of it. For a while he was sympathetically silent,
+and then he said, kindly, &quot;Countess Erika, would you rather keep your
+sorrow to yourself, or will you confide it to me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His mere presence had had a soothing effect; her tears ceased to flow;
+she only shivered slightly from time to time.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah, it was not a sorrow,&quot; she explained,--&quot;only a distress,--something
+like what I felt on the night when I first came to Berlin. It was not
+homesickness,--what have I to be homesick for?--but suddenly I felt so
+lonely among all those strangers who stared at me curiously but cared
+nothing for me. I seemed to feel a great chill around me: it all hurt
+me; their way of speaking, their way of looking down upon everything
+that was not as fine and proud as themselves, went to my heart.
+You--you cannot understand it, for you have grown up in the midst of
+it; you have breathed this air from your childhood.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I think you do me injustice, Countess Erika,&quot; he interposed. &quot;I can
+understand you perfectly, although I have grown up in the midst of it
+all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I felt as if I hated the people,&quot; she went on, her large melancholy
+eyes flashing angrily, &quot;and then--then, amidst all this elegance and
+arrogance,&quot;--she named these characteristics in a perfectly frank way,
+as if they were elements but lately introduced into her life,--&quot;the
+thought came to me of the misery in which I grew up, and of all the
+little pleasures and surprises which my mother prepared for me in spite
+of our poverty,--ah, such poor little pleasures!--those people would
+laugh at the idea of any one's enjoying them,--but they were very much
+to me. Oh, if you knew how my mother used to look at me when she had
+contrived a new gown for me out of some old rag!--No one will ever look
+at me so again. And then&quot;--she clinched the hand that held the poor wet
+handkerchief--&quot;to think that my mother belonged of right to all this
+bright gay world, and to remember how she died, in what sordid
+distress, and that it is past,--that I can give her nothing of all that
+I have---- My heart seemed breaking.&quot; She paused, breathless.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Poor Countess Erika!&quot; he murmured, very gently. &quot;It is one of the
+miseries of this life to remember our dead and to be powerless to be
+kind to them. All that we can do is to bestow as much love as we can
+upon the living.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But whom have I to bestow my love upon?&quot; Erika cried, with such an
+innocent insistence that, in spite of his pity, Goswyn could hardly
+suppress a smile. &quot;I cannot offer it to my grandmother: she would not
+know what I meant, and would simply think me ill.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But in fact,&quot; he said, now openly amused, &quot;it is not to be supposed
+that you will all your life have only your grandmother to love.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You mean that----&quot; She looked at him in sudden dismay.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I mean that--that----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The sound of a ritornella drummed upon the piano suddenly fell on their
+ears, and then came the notes of a thin, clear, expressionless soprano.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His sister-in-law was singing. He listened breathless.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Just then Countess Lenzdorff with Frau von Norbin appeared. &quot;Ah, here
+you are, Erika!&quot; she exclaimed. &quot;This I call pretty conduct. I have
+been looking for you everywhere. H'm! to run away from one's admirers,
+to be made love to by a young gentleman---- What do you say to it,
+Hedwig?&quot; This last to Frau von Norbin.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It was only Goswyn,&quot; the old lady replied, in her musical-box voice.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, that is an extenuating circumstance,&quot; Countess Anna admitted.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And he did not make love to me,&quot; Erika assured them.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Indeed? That I take ill of him,&quot; Countess Lenzdorff said, with a
+laugh, while Erika went on with sincere cordiality. &quot;I suddenly felt so
+lonely and sad, and he was very, very kind to me!&quot; She raised her eyes
+gratefully to his.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah, well----but come now, child; we are going home. I have had quite
+enough of this.--Adieu, Goswyn.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Perhaps you will permit me to take you home,&quot; said Goswyn.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You had much better go in there and put a stop to the mischief which,
+if I am not mistaken, is being largely added to to-night.&quot; This with a
+significant glance towards the music-room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I am powerless,&quot; Goswyn observed, dryly. He conducted the ladies to
+the anteroom, where a regiment of lackeys were in waiting. After
+attending to the old ladies, he had the pleasure of helping Erika to
+put on her cloak. He had a strange sensation as he wrapped it about the
+girl's slender figure. The white fur with which it was trimmed was
+wonderfully becoming to her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;A heather blossom in the snow,&quot; the vain grandmother remarked, with a
+glance in his direction, whereby she discovered that there was no
+necessity for calling his attention to her grand-daughter's charms.
+This discovery rejoiced her. She bade him good-night with unusual
+cordiality, smiling to herself as she descended the brilliantly-lighted
+staircase.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Meanwhile, Goswyn had returned to the music-room. His sister-in-law was
+still standing by the piano, singing. G---- was accompanying her,
+good-humouredly ready to burden his soul with any musical misdeed that
+could give pleasure to his audience, a readiness arising partly from
+the prosaic view which he took of his &quot;trade,&quot; as he was wont to call
+his music. Quite a little throng of ladies had already rustled out of
+the room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Countess Brock was beginning to be uneasy. The effect of the Princess's
+performance vividly reminded her of the effect which the young actor's
+reading had had upon her guests.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn glanced at his brother. Otto von Sydow was a picture of
+distress: he looked as if threatened with an apoplectic stroke; he
+alternately clinched and opened his gloved hands, looked uneasily at
+the men whom he saw laughing, and at the women whom he saw leaving the
+room; he stood first on one foot and then on the other; but he allowed
+his wife to go on singing.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The first verses of the music-hall song she had now selected were
+simply coarse. Goswyn comforted himself with thinking that perhaps she
+would not sing the last. He had underrated his sister-in-law's
+temerity. She went on. Sight and hearing seemed to fail him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Suddenly there came a loud burst of applause. A few of the men present,
+in pity for the unhappy husband, had thus drowned the improprieties of
+the last verse.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Princess Dorothea looked round,--saw men laughing significantly and
+women hurriedly leaving the room. She grew pale, and there came into
+her Spanish face a look of indescribable hardness. She was about to
+continue, when her hostess approached her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Charming!&quot; exclaimed the 'fairy,'--&quot;charming, my dear Thea, but you
+must not exert yourself further: you are a little hoarse.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was too unequivocal. Princess Dorothea understood. Her assumed
+gaiety took another turn. &quot;I have a sudden longing for a dance!&quot; she
+exclaimed. &quot;G----, play us a waltz: we will extemporize a ball.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">G---- began to play with immense spirit one of Strauss's waltzes, when
+a gray-haired old General raised his voice,--a clear, sharp voice,--and
+said, &quot;It would be a little difficult to extemporize a ball, for, with
+the exception of the hostess, your Excellency is the only lady
+present.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Dorothea grew paler still, held herself rather more erect than usual,
+threw back her head, and smiled. Just thus, deadly pale, hard, erect
+and smiling, Goswyn was to see her once again in his life, a couple of
+years later, when all her world was pointing at her the finger of
+scorn.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You will let me drive Helmy home, will you not, Otto?&quot; Dorothea asked
+in the hall, where she was holding a kind of little court amid her
+admirers, a yellow lace scarf wound around her head, and a black velvet
+wrap about her shoulders. &quot;Helmy has such a cold, and there is no
+finding a droschky at this hour.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Involuntarily Goswyn, who was just buckling on his sabre, paused to
+listen to this little speech of his fascinating sister-in-law's,
+uttered in the tenderest tone.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He had no idea that his brother had anything to fear from Prince Helmy:
+this was only Dorothea's way of escaping any admonition from her
+husband. If Otto did not scold on the spot he never scolded at all.
+There really was nothing objectionable in her driving home alone with
+her cousin, but then---- She laid her little hand on her husband's
+breast as she spoke: the gentlemen around her looked on. Without
+waiting to hear his brother's reply, Goswyn left the house. He had gone
+but two or three steps in the street when some one joined him: it was
+Otto.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Have you a light?&quot; he asked, in a rather uncertain voice. Goswyn
+struck a match for him, and paused in silence while his brother lighted
+his cigar with unnecessary effort.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I am really very glad to walk,&quot; said Otto, keeping pace with his
+brother. &quot;Thea cannot bear to have me smoke in the coupé.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn was silent.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I know Thea through and through,&quot; Otto continued: &quot;she is as innocent
+as a child, but a little imprudent; and then all those starched,
+stiff-necked Berlin women cannot forgive her for being more fascinating
+and original than the whole of them together. And, after all, what harm
+was there in her singing those songs? It was easy enough to see that
+she did not understand what she was singing, or at least did not think.
+The purest women are always the most imprudent. These people do not
+understand her. They admire her,--no one can help that,--but they do
+not appreciate her. When she saw that she was shocking those
+Philistines she sang on out of sheer bravado. It was perhaps not wise
+to brave public opinion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Each time that Otto von Sydow had broken the thread of his discourse in
+hopes that Goswyn would assent to his view of the situation, he had
+been disappointed. His brother was persistently mute.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Otto's footsteps sounded louder, his breath came more heavily; Goswyn,
+who knew him thoroughly, saw that he was struggling against an access
+of rage. For a while he maintained a silence like his brother's; then,
+pausing, he addressed Goswyn directly: &quot;Do you find anything to blame
+in my allowing my wife to drive home alone with a cousin who is not
+well, and who may thereby be saved a fit of illness,--a cousin, too,
+with whom her relations have always been those of a sister?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn shrugged his shoulders. &quot;Since you ask me, I must speak the
+truth,&quot; he replied. &quot;On this particular evening I think it would have
+been wiser for you to drive home <i>tête-à-tête</i> with your wife than to
+let her go with young Nimbsch.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Otto's breathing became still more audible; he stamped his foot, and,
+before Goswyn could look round, had turned off into a side-street with
+a sullen &quot;good-night.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He was greatly to be pitied: he had hoped that Goswyn would comfort
+him, but Goswyn had not comforted him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;He never understood her, and therefore never liked her,&quot; he muttered
+between his teeth. &quot;He is the worst Philistine of all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And then he recalled Goswyn's persistent opposition to his marriage
+with the Princess Dorothea, how passionately--for Goswyn, calm as he
+seemed, could be passionate--he had entreated his brother not to
+propose to her. &quot;A blind man could see how unfitted you are for each
+other: you will be each other's ruin!&quot; he had said. The words rang in
+his ears now with vivid distinctness.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was about two o'clock in the morning: the streets were dim,
+deserted. At intervals of a hundred steps the reddish lights of the
+street-lamps were reflected from the brown muddy surface of the
+asphalt. From time to time a carriage casting two bluish rays of light
+before it shot past Otto with an unnaturally loud rattle in the dull
+silence. The windows of the houses were all dark and quiet, except
+where from one open building came the muffled notes of some light
+popular airs: it was a cheap kind of music-hall. Involuntarily Sydow
+listened: something in the faint melody commanded his attention. They
+were playing the music of the very song his wife had sung but now.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His wretchedness was intolerable; his limbs seemed weighed down with
+fatigue. &quot;Pshaw! it is this confounded thaw,&quot; he said to himself. In
+his ears rang the words, &quot;You are utterly unfitted for each other.&quot;
+What if Goswyn had been right, after all?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Good God! No one could have resisted her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They had met first in Florence. The two brothers had made a tour
+through Italy just after Otto's attaining his majority. They travelled
+together so far as that means having the same starting-point and the
+same goal, but each followed his own devices, stopping where he liked,
+so that sometimes they did not meet for a long while. While Goswyn
+underwent all kinds of inconveniences for the sake of visiting many
+interesting little towns in Northern Italy, Otto, whose first
+requirement was a good hotel, went directly from Venice to Florence. He
+had been there for five days, and was terribly bored; he missed Goswyn.
+Although Otto was the elder of the two, he had always been in the habit
+of letting Goswyn think for him. Old Countess Lenzdorff maintained that
+when they were children she had often heard him ask, &quot;Goswyn, am I
+cold?&quot; &quot;Goswyn, am I hungry?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He had carried with him through life a certain sense of dependence upon
+his younger brother, looking to him for help in every difficulty, for
+support in every sorrow.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He had no acquaintances in Florence, the food was not to his taste, the
+wine was poor, the beds, in which so many had slept before him,
+disgusted him, the theatres did not edify him. He took no pleasure in
+the opera; he was thoroughly--and for a German remarkably--devoid of a
+taste for music; and the Italian drama he did not understand.
+Consequently he found his evenings intolerably long: he spoke no
+Italian, and very little French. Since there were no Germans in the
+hotel save those with whom, in spite of his homesickness, he did not
+choose to consort, he led a very lonely life. And, as he took not the
+slightest interest in art, it was no wonder that on the fifth day of
+his sojourn in Florence he declared such an &quot;Italian course of culture&quot;
+the &quot;veriest mockery of pleasure in which a Prussian country nobleman
+could indulge.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The queerest thing was that Goswyn seemed to be enjoying himself so
+much. He received delighted post-cards from him from all kinds of
+little out-of-the-way places of which Otto had never before even heard
+the names, not even when he studied geography at school, and he seemed
+entirely independent of discomfort as to his lodgings in his enjoyment
+of all that &quot;art-stuff,&quot; as Otto expressed it to himself.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">One afternoon in the cathedral, in an access of most depressing ennui,
+he was sauntering from one shrine to another, when he suddenly heard a
+sigh. He looked round. A young girl in a large Vandyke hat and a dark
+cloth dress trimmed with silver braid had just seated herself in one of
+the chairs, and was opening a yellow-covered novel. Everything about
+her, her hat, her dress, as well as her own striking figure, gave an
+impression of distinction, although of distinction somewhat down in the
+world.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was very young, and yet did not seem at all affected by her
+loneliness. Before long she noticed that Otto was observing her, and
+she bestowed a scornful glance upon him over the pages of her book.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He instantly flushed crimson, and turned away, feeling very
+uncomfortable. Then in the twilight silence of the spacious church,
+always deserted at this hour of the day, he heard a delicate
+insinuating voice call, &quot;Feistmantel, dear!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Involuntarily he looked round: it was the slender girl in the chair who
+had called.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He then observed hurrying towards her a short, stout individual in a
+striped gray-and-black water-proof with an opera-glass in a strap,--a
+wonderful creature, whom he had noticed before strolling about the
+church, but without an idea that she had anything to do with the
+attractive occupant of the chair.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Feistmantel, dear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Princess!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I am so hungry. Have you not seen enough of those stupid old relics?&quot;
+And the girl yawned, sighed, and rubbed her eyes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, pray, Princess!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Both ladies then walked to the door of exit, where they paused
+dismayed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was raining in torrents, that steady downpour that gives no hope of
+any speedy cessation.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;This is intolerable!&quot; exclaimed the young girl, in her insinuating and
+now melancholy voice, and with a slight imperfection of speech which
+struck kindly, awkward Sydow as something too charming ever to be
+forgotten. &quot;Insufferable! We cannot put our skirts over our heads, like
+female pilgrims.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Pray permit me to call a droschky for you.&quot; With these words the young
+Prussian approached the pair; then when the girl measured him from head
+to foot with a half-merry, half-haughty stare, he added, with a bow, by
+way of explanation, &quot;Von Sydow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The ladies bowed without finding it necessary to mention their names,
+and the younger said, with her bewitching voice and imperfection of
+speech, &quot;You will greatly oblige us if you will be so kind as to take
+the trouble.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And in fact it was a trouble. It is difficult to withstand the
+insistence of Italian droschky-drivers in fine weather, when one wishes
+to walk, but to find a droschky in bad weather, when one wishes to
+drive, is more difficult still.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When he at last succeeded he feared to find that the ladies had left in
+despair at the delay; but no, there they were still, the companion in
+the striped waterproof with her face shining with the rain which had
+drenched it as she stretched her neck to see if he were coming, and her
+curls dangling limp in damp disorder; the girl more bewitching than
+ever, her cheeks slightly flushed by the fresh damp breeze, and
+evidently exhilarated in mind, flattered by her conquest. She had grown
+gracious, and she smiled her thanks, as she hurried into the carriage,
+lifting her skirts to avoid wetting them, and thereby displaying a pair
+of the prettiest little feet imaginable.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What address shall I give to the coachman?&quot; he asked, after helping
+the ladies to ensconce themselves in the vehicle.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Hôtel Washington.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">He had no umbrella; he was wet to the skin, and the day was cold. But
+that was of no consequence. Otto von Sydow had never felt so warm since
+he had been in Italy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">That very evening he moved to the Hôtel Washington from the Hôtel de la
+Paix. Since the entire first floor was occupied by a banker from
+Vienna, and the hotel was overcrowded, the room assigned him was far
+from comfortable; but he did not mind that.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And that very evening, before the <i>table-d'hôte</i> dinner, he found his
+fair one. She was in the reading-room, reading a Paris paper. He also
+learned who she was,--Princess Dorothea von Ilm.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was an orphan, and very poor. The family, originally distinguished,
+had degenerated sadly, principally through the dissipated habits of the
+Princess's two brothers, notably through the marriage of the elder to a
+French circus-rider. Since her installation in Castle Egerstein the
+Princess Dorothea had been homeless, and had been wandering about the
+world with very little means and a companion who was half instructress,
+half maid.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This individual, whom Prince Ilm had hurriedly engaged for his sister
+through a newspaper advertisement, was named Alma Feistmantel, and came
+from Vienna, where she belonged to those æsthetic circles, the members
+of which interest themselves chiefly for artists and the drama. For ten
+years she had cherished a hopeless passion for Sonnenthal: her chief
+enthusiasms were for broad-shouldered men, Wagner's music, and novels
+which exalted &quot;the sacred voice of nature.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Under the protection of this lady the Princess Dorothea had for three
+years been completing her education in Vienna, Rome, and Paris
+successively.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Princess enlightened her admirer as to her affairs with the
+greatest candour, informing him that her brother had treated her
+shamefully, but that it was all the fault of the circus-rider, who
+could make him do just as she chose; and in spite of it all Willy was
+the most fascinating creature imaginable: he looked like a Spaniard.
+Sydow remembered him: he had served a year in the same regiment with
+him during his term of compulsory service.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">With equal frankness Princess Dorothea explained that she was often
+embarrassed pecuniarily; once she had been so pinched that she had sold
+her dog to an Englishman for three hundred francs; she had hated to
+part with him, for she never had loved any creature as she did that
+dog, but she needed a ball-dress to wear at an entertainment in Rome at
+the German embassy. Her aunt, Princess Nimbsch, had chaperoned her when
+she went into society: sometimes she went, and sometimes she did not;
+it depended upon her circumstances. In fact, she did not care much
+about going into society, it prevented you from doing so many amusing
+things; you could not go to the little theatres, where the funniest
+farces were played. Therefore she preferred to be in Paris, where not a
+soul knew her, and she and Feistmantel could go everywhere together.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Feistmantel had frequently during these confessions admonished the
+Princess to greater discretion by a touch of her foot beneath the
+table: of one of these hints Sydow's boot had been the recipient. But
+when she found that she could thus make no impression upon her charge
+the Viennese interposed with some temper: &quot;Pray, Baron Sydow, discount
+all this talk some fifty per cent. You must not believe that I would
+take any young girl intrusted to my care where it was not proper that
+she should go.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I know nothing about proper or improper: I only know what is amusing
+and what is tiresome,&quot; the Princess said, with a laugh, &quot;and we went
+everywhere. Feistmantel is putting on airs because of my exalted
+family, but do not you believe her, Herr von Sydow. We saw 'Ma
+Camarade,' and 'Niniche,' and we even went one evening to the Café des
+Ambassadeurs. Eh?&quot; And she pinched her companion's ear.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But, Baron Sydow, do not allow yourself to be imposed upon,&quot;
+Feistmantel exclaimed, almost beside herself. &quot;The Café des
+Ambassadeurs,--why, that is a <i>café chantant</i>. There is not a word of
+truth in all her nonsense.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Not true? oh, but it is,&quot; the Princess retorted, quite at her ease.
+&quot;Of course it was a <i>café chantant</i>, and the singer sang '<i>Estelle, où
+est ta flanelle?</i>'--it was too funny; but I can sing it just like her.
+I practised it that very evening. I must sing it to you some day, Herr
+von Sydow,--that is, when we are better acquainted. Oh, is there no
+<i>café chantant</i> in Florence to which you could take us?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But, Princess----!&quot; exclaimed Feistmantel.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why, a gentleman took us to the Café des Ambassadeurs, a man whose
+acquaintance we made in the hotel,&quot; Dorothea ran on. &quot;He was an
+American,--a Mr. Higgs: he came from Connecticut, and dealt in cheeses.
+He was very rich, and he sent us tickets for the theatre. Afterwards he
+wanted to marry me: I liked him very well, and would have accepted him,
+but my brother said he was no match for me. Well, I did not break my
+heart, but I should have liked to marry him for all that. We Princesses
+Ilm have the right, it is true, to marry crowned heads, but I never
+mean to avail myself of it. If I were an Empress I should always travel
+incognito. As soon as I am of age I shall marry a chimney-sweeper--if
+he is a millionaire, or if I fall in love with him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Both contingencies seem highly probable,&quot; Sydow observed, laughing. It
+was the only remark he allowed himself during the conversation,--a
+conversation which took place in the reading-room of the Washington
+Hotel on the first evening of his stay there.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">After the Princess had finished her confessions, she went to the
+window, and looked out upon the Arno. For a while she was perfectly
+silent; but when Alma Feistmantel, recovering from her dismay, began to
+invent all sorts of falsehoods with which to impress Sydow, Dorothea
+quietly turned to him and said, &quot;Herr von Sydow, will you not take a
+walk with us? Florence is so lovely at night!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The next day he drove with the ladies to Fiesole. He sat on the front
+seat of a very uncomfortable droschky and felt as happy as a king.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was the middle of April, and an upright crest of white and purple
+iris crowned the white wall bordering the crooked road leading to the
+famous old town. Here and there the rose-bushes trailed their
+blossoming branches in the dust. Barefooted Italian children, with
+dishevelled hair and glowing eyes tossed nosegays into the carriage and
+offered their straw wares to the ladies with persistent entreaties to
+buy. How many liri and fifty-centesimi pieces Sydow threw away on that
+wonderful day! The more he gave the rein to his liberality the longer
+grew the train of children, laughing, gesticulating, all pretty, with
+light in their eyes and flowers in their hands. Suddenly the driver
+shouted to some one who would not get out of the way. Sydow sprang out
+of the droschky and saw creeping along the dusty road a pair of
+wretched beggars, old and bent, their weary feet wrapped in rags. The
+sight of anything so miserable on the lovely spring day cut him to the
+heart. He could do no less than toss them some money.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Alma Feistmantel, as a member of the society for the suppression of
+mendicancy, lectured him for his lavish alms, and the Princess laughed
+at the beggars, whose misery struck her as comical. She flung a
+sneering &quot;Baucis and Philemon!&quot; after them. This shocked Sydow for an
+instant; the next he gave her a kindly glance, saying to himself, &quot;Ah,
+she is but a child!&quot; He was already incapable of finding any harm in
+her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The next morning the German clerk of the hotel came to him, and, after
+some circumlocution, asked him if he were intimately acquainted with
+the Princess. Quite confused, and without a suspicion of the clerk's
+motive in asking, he explained that his acquaintance with her was of
+the most superficial kind. The clerk suppressed a smile beneath his
+bearded lip. Sydow was sorely tempted to knock him down, and was
+restrained only by regard for the Princess's reputation. It appeared,
+however, that the clerk's question was not the result of impertinent
+curiosity; he had no interest in the young Prussian's relations to the
+fair Princess, he only wished to discover whether Sydow knew anything
+of her family,--if she were a genuine Princess, and if they were people
+of wealth. She was travelling without a maid, and had not paid her
+hotel bill for a month.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Whereupon Sydow snubbed the clerk sharply, informing him that he need
+be under no anxiety, the Ilms were among the first families of Germany.
+The Princess had simply forgotten to pay, supposing it to be a matter
+of small importance. The clerk was profuse in apologies.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Sydow spent three hours considering how he should offer his aid to the
+Princess. At last--it was raining, and the ladies were at home--he
+knocked at their door.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Who is it?&quot; Feistmantel's harsh voice inquired.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Sydow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, pray come in,&quot; called the high voice of the Princess. He entered.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was a small room in the third story. Feistmantel was sitting by the
+window, mending some article of dress; the Princess was sitting on her
+bed, reading &quot;Autour du Mariage,&quot; by Gyp.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Princess moved no farther than to offer him her hand with a
+charming smile; Feistmantel cleared off the articles from an arm-chair,
+that he might sit down.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, what a dreary day! I am so glad you are come! We are nearly bored
+to death,&quot; said Dorothea, rubbing her eyes, and gathering her feet
+under her so that she sat cross-legged on the bed. &quot;Can you give me a
+cigarette? mine are all gone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Feistmantel said something in disapproval of a lady's smoking, when
+Dorothea remarked, composedly, &quot;Don't listen to her; she is putting on
+airs again because of my exalted family, when the fact is that it was
+from her that I learned to smoke. Oh, what a wretched world! 'Who but
+ducks and pumps can keep out of the dumps, in a world that is never
+dry?' Oh, I am so bored,--so bored!&quot; She stretched herself slightly. &quot;I
+should like at least to go to Doney's and get an ice, but we cannot; we
+have no money.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Then Sydow blurted out the little speech he had composed with infinite
+pains, coming to a stand-still three times during the recital.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He had heard that the ladies had been expecting remittances from
+Germany. Of course there was some mistake: would they permit him to
+relieve them--from--their temporary embarrassment?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He paused in great confusion. Would they turn him out of the room? No!
+The Princess simply held out her hands and exclaimed, &quot;You are an
+angel! I could really embrace you!&quot; which of course she did not do, but
+which she could have done without thinking much of it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">That same evening the Princess's bill was paid.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Two days later Goswyn arrived in Florence. He surprised his brother at
+dinner with Dorothea and Feistmantel at a small table at the extreme
+end of a long close dining-room, beside a window looking out upon the
+Arno.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Princess was giggling and chatting in her clear high voice, which
+could be heard outside of the dining-hall; she wore a white dress, and
+a diamond ring sparkled upon her hand. At first Goswyn smiled at his
+brother's charming travelling acquaintances, but in a very little while
+the state of affairs made him grave. Of course he took his place at the
+table with the three. The Princess instantly began to flirt with him.
+First she congratulated herself that they were now a <i>partie carrée</i>;
+it was very jolly; until then Herr von Sydow had cut but a sorry figure
+between two ladies, now they could be taken for two couples on a
+wedding-tour. Then, planting both elbows upon the table, she leaned
+across to Goswyn and asked, &quot;Which of the gentlemen will appropriate
+Feistmantel?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;That is for the ladies to decide,&quot; Goswyn replied, laughing.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Then my guardian spirit shall fall to your lot,&quot; said Dorothea, &quot;for I
+prefer your brother. I perceived the instant that you appeared that you
+are a very disagreeable fellow, Herr Goswyn von Sydow,&quot; pronouncing the
+name with mock pathos,--&quot;yes, a thoroughly disagreeable fellow. I
+could not live with you three days; while I could endure a lifetime
+with your brother. He is such an honest, clumsy bear: I have always had
+a liking for bears. Look, he gave me this ring as a keepsake: is it not
+pretty?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Otto von Sydow long remembered the look which his brother gave the
+ring.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">That evening the brothers had a violent dispute.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn admitted that the Princess was charming in spite of her wretched
+training and impossible behaviour; that there could not be a more
+amusing transient travelling acquaintance; that, finally, she certainly
+did come of very good stock, and was, in spite of her free and easy
+style of conversation, a pure-minded woman,--which should make it still
+more a matter of conscience with Otto not to compromise her as he was
+doing; for a marriage with her, even although her poor but haughty
+family could be brought to consent to the misalliance, was out of the
+question.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The result of this conversation was that Otto at last hung his head and
+admitted that his wiser, stronger brother was right; he promised to
+leave Florence with Goswyn the next morning; but when the trunks were
+all piled on the coach for their departure he met the Princess Dorothea
+on the stairs, and did not leave, but stayed and was betrothed to her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It would be doing her injustice to say that she married him solely for
+his money. No, she really had a decided liking for &quot;bears,&quot; and, as far
+as she could love any one, she loved her big, clumsy husband, just as
+she preferred brown bread and sour milk to all the delicacies of the
+table. During the honey-moon, which she spent with Otto upon his estate
+in Silesia, she developed an astonishing degree of tenderness, but she
+could not love anything for any length of time. Then, too, she was
+entirely unused to any regular life, and the dull routine at Kosnitz
+soon bored her to death. At first it delighted her to revel in her
+husband's wealth, to have dress after dress made, to adorn herself with
+all sorts of trinkets; but she soon found it tiresome and monotonous.
+Oh for a small room on the third floor of some hotel in Paris with
+Feistmantel, and poverty, and liberty, and a fresh conquest every day!
+how she longed for it all!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At first in Berlin, in honour of her husband, she had assumed the
+conventional air of a great lady; but of that she soon became
+desperately tired: it was the most wearisome of all the weariness in
+her new life.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In spite of all that evil tongues might say of her, she was as yet
+perfectly innocent: of that her husband was convinced.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;She is utterly unsusceptible,--utterly,&quot; he said to himself, as he
+tramped home through the mud and wet. And with this poor consolation he
+was obliged to be content.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But, slow-witted as he was, he was aware that women unsusceptible to
+temptation are apt to be equally unsusceptible to the disgrace of a
+fall. The matter is simply of no importance to them. Princess Dorothea
+would never be led astray through passion; but at the thought of the
+devouring, degrading ennui which was continually dragging her downward,
+Otto von Sydow shuddered.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Suddenly his cheeks burned; he could have boxed his own ears for such
+thoughts with regard to his wife.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">A few days after the wicked fairy's successful Thursday two fresh
+pieces of news were circulated in Berlin: one was that Goswyn von Sydow
+had fought another duel in his sister-in-law's behalf, and the other
+stated that Countess Lenzdorff had given the fashionable artist Riedel
+permission to paint her grand-daughter as &quot;Heather Blossom.&quot; The truth
+as to the duel was never fully discovered. Goswyn von Sydow certainly
+appeared for a while with his arm in a sling, but, as he stoutly
+maintained that he had sprained his wrist in a fall from his horse,
+people were forced to be satisfied with this explanation. If some very
+sharp-sighted men added that in certain cases it was a man's duty to
+lie, no matter how strict might be his ideas of truth,--why, that was
+their affair.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">As for the portrait, it was true that the old Countess had acceded to
+Riedel's request to be allowed to paint Erika as &quot;Heather Blossom,&quot; of
+course not in the artist's studio, but in the Countess Lenzdorff's
+drawing-room, where Riedel worked away for a week, three hours daily,
+seated before a large easel, with colour-boxes beside him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The result of his well-meant efforts was a commonplace affair,
+something between Ary Scheffer's Mignon and Gabriel Max's &quot;Gretchen at
+her Wheel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Naturally the Countess Lenzdorff was in no wise charmed by this
+picture, although in view of the ability of the artist in question she
+had not expected anything better.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;A 'Book of Beauty' painter, that Riedel,&quot; she said of him: &quot;he
+flatters every one alike, and is blind to wrinkles, scars, and what he
+calls defects of all kinds. Such fellows as he are sure to be a success
+in the present day, when truth is at a discount. They never dissipate a
+single illusion, and the world--the world of society--delights in
+them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She certainly took no pains not to dissipate illusions for the world to
+which she belonged: on the contrary, she delighted to destroy them,
+jeering <i>coram publico</i> at the beautifying salve which the model
+members of society as well as her favourite artists and literary men
+plastered over every peculiarity of humanity, and which in life passes
+for 'kindly criticism' and in art for 'idealistic conception.' She
+spent her time in tearing down the rose-coloured curtains from the
+windows of her acquaintances, and naturally her acquaintances did not
+like it; they loved their rose-coloured curtains, which excluded the
+pitiless garish daylight, admitting only a becoming twilight in which
+all the sharp edges and dark stains of life faded into indistinctness.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Countess's rage for broad daylight seemed cruel to her
+acquaintances, while she in her turn called their love of twilight
+cowardly and when she alluded to the fashionable world usually
+designated it briefly as &quot;Kapilavastu.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika asked her grandmother the meaning of this word. Upon which the
+old lady shrugged her shoulders and replied, &quot;Kapilavastu is the name
+of the town in which Buddha grew up, the town where his parents hoped
+to shield him forever from the sight of old age, death, and disease!&quot;
+Then, with a quiet laugh, she added, as if to herself, &quot;Oh, what a
+world it is!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">All her life long she had sneered at the 'world of fashion,' which did
+not at all interfere with the fact that she would have greatly disliked
+being aught but 'a great lady.'</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">When Riedel had completed his picture of &quot;Heather Blossom&quot; to his own
+satisfaction, and enriched it with his valuable signature, he laid it
+as a tribute at the feet of the Countess Lenzdorff, begging permission
+to exhibit his masterpiece at Schulte's, 'unter den Linden.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Permission was accorded him,--of course with the proviso that the name
+of the model should be strictly concealed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Whether the picture were the 'sentimental daub' which the old Countess
+dubbed it, or the exquisite work of art which Riedel's numerous
+admirers pronounced it, certain it is that it attracted a great deal of
+attention,--so much, indeed, that the Countess Anna was one day seized
+with a desire to witness for herself the effect produced by it upon a
+gaping public.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was a fair, sunshiny day in March when she walked to the end of the
+Thiergarten with Erika, slowly followed by her carriage. It was a
+pleasure to her to observe the undisguised admiration excited by her
+grand-daughter. And the girl was worthy of it. Tall, distinguished in
+air and bearing, faultlessly dressed in dark-gray cloth with a long boa
+of blue-fox fur and a black hat and feathers, she walked with an air
+and a bearing that a young queen might have envied.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Every one looks after you, as if you were the Empress herself,&quot; said
+her grandmother, with a laugh, as she espied a young officer of
+dragoons, who with his hand at his cap saluted the grandmother but
+looked at the grand-daughter.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Goswyn! this is lucky,&quot; she exclaimed, beckoning to him. &quot;We are on
+our way to Schulte's to look at Erika's portrait. Will you come with
+us?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;If you will let me,&quot; he replied. &quot;But you will probably not see the
+portrait,&quot; he went on, smiling,--&quot;only a great crowd of people. At
+least that was almost all I could see the last time I was there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, you have been there?&quot; said the old Countess, with a merry twinkle
+of her eye. &quot;Then, of course, you do not care to go again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No, certainly not to see the picture; but you cannot get rid of me
+now, Countess.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Beneath the lindens on one side of the way stood a crippled boy with a
+huge hump, playing the accordion. The squeaking tones of the miserable
+instrument were but little in harmony with the splendour of the
+Thiergarten at this hour. A lady, as she passed the child, turned away
+with a shudder, and tears started in the boy's eyes and rolled down his
+pale, precocious face, as he retreated into still deeper shade.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Without interrupting what he was saying to the old Countess, Goswyn
+gave the boy some money. On a sudden Countess Lenzdorff noticed that
+Erika was not beside her. &quot;Where is the child?&quot; she exclaimed, looking
+round. Erika had fallen behind to stroke the little cripple's thin
+cheeks.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When she perceived that she was observed, she hastily left the child.
+Her own cheeks were flushed, and there were tears in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why, Erika!&quot; her grandmother cried out, in dismay, &quot;what are you
+about?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I could not help it,&quot; the girl replied: &quot;it was so hateful of that
+woman to show the boy her disgust at the sight of him.&quot; She could
+scarcely restrain her tears.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But, Erika,&quot;--her grandmother put her hand on the girl's arm, and
+spoke very gently,--&quot;you might catch some disease.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And if I did,&quot; Erika murmured, still under the influence of strong
+emotion, &quot;I should not be half so wretched as that child. Why should I
+have everything and he nothing?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">To this no reply could be made; even the Countess's talent for repartee
+failed her, and the three walked on together silently. The Countess
+Anna glanced towards Goswyn. Never before had she seen him so gravely
+impressed; and on a sudden the despair that had possessed her in view
+of the unjust arrangement of human affairs was converted into pride and
+joy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When they reached the picture-dealer's they found the portrait in an
+inner room, surrounded, in fact, by quite a crowd of people, although
+it was not great enough to satisfy the old Countess's pride: it could
+hardly have been that, indeed. Still, she did not express her
+disappointment in words, but ridiculed the assemblage.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The words 'Heather Blossom' were carved in the very effective frame of
+the portrait, and on one side could be traced a coronet.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;A beggar-girl and a coronet! nothing could appeal more strongly to
+these plebeians,&quot; the old lady exclaimed; and then she whispered to
+Erika, &quot;Thank God, no one could recognize you from that daub, or we
+should have the whole rabble around us. What do you think of the
+picture, Goswyn?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Miserable,&quot; Goswyn replied, with a frown. &quot;Between ourselves, I cannot
+understand your allowing the fellow to exhibit it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What could I do?&quot; said the Countess, shrugging her shoulders: &quot;he
+talked of the effect it would produce upon people generally, and in
+fact he seems to have been right. The Archduchess Geroldstein has
+already ordered her portrait of him. I cannot understand it. To me
+Riedel is absolutely uninteresting. If he has a really fine model he
+seems to lose even the power to flatter, upon which his reputation is
+chiefly based. Erika is ten times more beautiful than that picture.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This was Goswyn's opinion also, but he remained silent, asking himself
+whether it could be that the absent old Countess had actually forgotten
+her granddaughter's presence. Such, however, was not the case. It
+simply had never occurred to her to regard Erika's beauty as a secret
+to be confided to all the world except to the girl herself: she would
+as soon have thought of concealing from her the amount of her yearly
+income.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I want you to look at a picture which has charmed me,&quot; Goswyn said,
+after a pause, desirous to change the subject, and as he spoke he
+pointed to a picture at sight of which the old lady uttered an
+exclamation of admiration, while Erika gazed at it pale and mute.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The picture was called 'The Seeress,' and represented a peasant-girl
+standing wan and rapt, her eyes gazing into the unseen, her hand
+stretched out as if groping. On the right of the girl were a couple of
+willows in the midst of the level landscape, their trunks rugged and
+scarred and here and there tufted with wild flowers, while in the
+background a little trickling stream was spanned by a huge stone
+bridge, through the arches of which could be seen glimpses of a
+miserable village half obscured by rising mists.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Berlin public were too much spoiled by the mediocre artistic
+euphemism of the day to have the taste to appreciate this masterpiece.
+A couple of art critics passed it by with a shake of the head,
+muttering, &quot;Unripe fruit.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Countess Lenzdorff repeated the phrase as the wise-acres disappeared.
+&quot;Unripe fruit!--Quite right, but a most noble specimen. I only trust it
+may ripen under favourable conditions. The thing is full of talent. 'A
+Seeress.' Apparently a Jeanne d'Arc.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Probably,&quot; said Goswyn. &quot;It certainly is original in conception: there
+is nothing conventional in it. What inspiration there is in the pale
+face! what maidenly grace in the noble and yet almost emaciated figure!
+It is a most attractive picture.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The strange thing about it is that this Seeress in reality looks far
+more like Erika than does Riedel's 'Heather Blossom,'&quot; exclaimed the
+old lady. &quot;I must have this picture!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You are too late, Countess,&quot; rejoined Goswyn.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Is it sold already? What was the price?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It was very reasonable,--a beginner's price,&quot; Goswyn replied, with a
+slight blush.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old Countess laughed: she had no objection that Goswyn, with his
+limited means, should buy a picture just because it resembled her
+grand-daughter.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Meanwhile, Erika was trembling in every limb. Who but <i>he</i> could have
+painted the picture?--who else had seen Luzano,--Luzano, and herself?
+She felt proud of her <i>protégé</i>. In the corner of the picture she read
+'Lozoncyi.' It pleased her that he had so fine-sounding a foreign name.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You shall find out for me where the young man lives,&quot; Countess
+Lenzdorff cried, eagerly: &quot;he must paint Erika for me while his prices
+are still reasonable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn cleared his throat. &quot;Much as I admire this young artist,&quot; he
+observed, &quot;if I were you I would not have him paint Countess Erika.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Because he has another picture on exhibition here, to see which an
+extra price of admission is asked.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Indeed!&quot; cried the old lady. &quot;Is it so very bad?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The worst of it is the curtain that hides it from the public, and the
+extra price paid to look at it,&quot; Goswyn replied, half laughing. &quot;It
+certainly is a powerful thing,--painted later than 'The Seeress,' and
+under a different inspiration. If you would like to see it, let me play
+the part of Countess Erika's chaperon for a few minutes: you go behind
+that curtain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Countess Anna could not let such an opportunity slip. She was an
+old woman; no one--not even the over-scrupulous Goswyn--could object to
+her looking at the picture. So she blithely went her way.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Meanwhile, Erika had grown very pale. She felt as if some dear old
+plaything, to which she had attached all sorts of pathetic memories,
+had fallen into the mire! It was gone; let it lie there: she would not
+stoop to pick it up and wipe it off.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn, who was observing her narrowly, could not understand the sudden
+change in her face. He had often had occasion to notice the
+sensitiveness of her moral nature, but to-day the key to the riddle was
+lacking. What could it possibly matter to her whether or not an obscure
+artist painted an improper picture?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He tried to begin a conversation with her, but had hardly done so when
+Countess Lenzdorff returned, walking slowly, with her head held
+haughtily erect, a sign with her of extreme indignation.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You seem more shocked, Countess, than I expected you to be,&quot; Goswyn
+remarked, as she appeared. &quot;Do you think the picture so very bad?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Nonsense!&quot; the old lady replied, impatiently. &quot;It was not painted for
+school-girls and boys: it did not shock me. It is not the picture that
+has made me angry, but--whom do you think I found in the room with her
+cousin Nimbsch and two or three other young men? Your sister-in-law
+Dorothea! So young a woman had better not look at a picture before
+which it is thought necessary to hang a curtain, but it is beyond a
+jest when she takes a train of young men with her to see it. If one is
+without principles,--good heavens! it is hard enough to hold on to
+principles in this philosophic age, when one is puzzled to know upon
+what to base them,--one ought at least to have some feeling of decency,
+some æsthetic sentiment.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">For some time of late the loungers in Bellevue Street had enjoyed an
+interesting morning spectacle. Before the hotel the first story of
+which was occupied by Countess Anna Lenzdorff, three beautiful
+thoroughbred horses pawed the ground impatiently between the hours of
+eight and nine. A stable-boy in velveteens held two of the horses,
+while a groom in a tall hat and buckskin breeches reverently held the
+bridle of the third steed, which was provided with a lady's saddle. The
+groom was bow-legged and red-faced, very English in appearance,--in
+fact, an ideal groom.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Before long a young lady would appear at the tall door of the house, a
+young lady in a close-fitting dark-blue riding-habit and a tall silk
+hat beneath which the knot of her gleaming hair showed in almost too
+great luxuriance, and close behind her would come a fair-haired officer
+of dragoons. After stroking her steed and feeding it with sugar, the
+young lady would place her foot in the willing hand of her tall escort
+and lightly leap into the saddle. Then there would be a slight
+arrangement of skirt and stirrup, and &quot;Is it all right, Countess
+Erika?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, Herr von Sydow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And in an instant the officer and his groom would mount and the little
+cavalcade would wend its way with clattering hoofs to the adjacent
+Thiergarten.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At the close of the season Countess Lenzdorff had declared that her
+grand-daughter looked ill and needed exercise.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At first she prescribed a course of riding-lessons in the Imperial
+School; but Erika found this very irksome, and Goswyn was intrusted
+with the task of procuring her a riding horse and of teaching her to
+ride. Under his guidance she made astonishing progress, and then--she
+looked so lovely on horseback. When she began, the Thiergarten was cold
+and bare,--it was towards the end of March: now it was the end of
+April, and there was spring everywhere.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">On the tall old trees the foliage, young and tender, drenched with
+sunlight, showed golden green, gleaming brown, and rosy red, shading
+off into transparency in the gradations of colour native to early
+spring, and in the midst of this harmonious variety here and there a
+grave dark fir would show its dark boughs not yet decorated with the
+slender green fingers in the gift of May. Among the trees the smooth
+surface of a pond would reflect the myriad tones of colour of the
+spring; the long shadows of morning stretched dark across the level
+sunlit sward of the openings in the woodland. The air was fresh and
+filled with the fragrance of cool moist earth and young vegetation, but
+mingling with its invigorating breath there was suddenly wafted a
+languid odour, intoxicatingly sweet, but with something sickening in
+its essence, and as the riders looked for its source they perceived
+among the spring greenery, covered to the tip of every bough with
+gleaming white blossoms, the luxuriant wild cherry.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika inhaled its heavy breath with eager delight, while Goswyn's
+dislike of it amounted almost to disgust.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Every day they rode thus together along the avenues of the Thiergarten,
+until they became familiar with every pond, every statue,--yes, even
+with the appearance of every rider. At times they would meet a couple
+of cavalry officers and exchange greetings; or a few infantry officers,
+much-enduring warriors, who seemed to find riding the most difficult
+duty required of them; or some gentleman in trade testing upon a hired
+steed his skill in horsemanship and pale with terror if he happened to
+lose a stirrup. Squadrons of young girls under the guardianship of a
+riding-master would come cantering along the smooth drive, some
+overflowing with youthful vitality, others evidently taking the
+exercise by order of a physician.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Of course Countess Lenzdorff had requested Goswyn's supervision for
+only the few first efforts in horsemanship made by her grand-daughter,
+never dreaming that he would sacrifice two hours of each day in
+trotting about the Thiergarten with the young girl. But week followed
+week and he was still riding daily with Erika. In themselves there
+could have been but little pleasure in these excursions always along
+the same familiar avenues,--longer flights into the surrounding country
+with only a groom as escort would have been thought indecorous,--and
+yet the two morning hours thus passed were more to the young dragoon
+than the whole day beside.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The girl was in such harmony with the early, fresh nature about them.
+She was still but a child; but just as she was, with her unblunted
+sensibilities, her eager warm-heartedness, he would fain have clasped
+her in his arms, and have claimed the right to cherish and nurture to
+their glorious development all the fine qualities now dormant within
+her, before she should be wounded and sore from the thorns that beset
+her pathway.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">That her sentiments towards him bore no comparison with those he
+cherished for her he was perfectly aware; but what of that? Passion too
+easily aroused on her part would not have pleased him, and she frankly
+showed her preference for him among all the men of her acquaintance.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old Countess did all that she could to further his wooing: if he
+had not been in love he would have thought that she did too much. It
+was foolish to delay.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The leaves had lost their first tender beauty and were full-grown,
+strong, and shining, as they rode one day along one of the narrowest
+bridle-paths in the Thiergarten,--a path where here and there a huge
+tree, which those who had laid out the park had not had the heart to
+sacrifice, almost obstructed the way. They trotted along briskly, like
+all beginners. Erika preferred a very swift pace, at which Goswyn
+sometimes demurred. On a sudden the girl's horse shied, violently
+startled by a wayfarer who had fallen asleep in the shade by the side
+of the path.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Very calmly, with no thought of danger, Erika not only kept her seat in
+the saddle, but quickly succeeded in soothing her horse.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">All the more was Goswyn terrified, and no sooner was he convinced that
+Erika did not need his assistance than he turned angrily and soundly
+berated the unfortunate man, who was apparently intoxicated. Then,
+somewhat ashamed of his outburst, he rejoined Erika, who awaited him
+with a smile of surprise. He frowned; his cheeks were flushed. &quot;Pardon
+me, Countess; I am very sorry,&quot; he said. &quot;I could think of nothing but
+that you might have been thrown,---that tree--if you had lost your
+presence of mind----&quot; He shuddered.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She shrugged her shoulders. &quot;And what if I had? You were by.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At these words his face cleared. &quot;Do you really feel such confidence in
+me?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I?&quot; She looked at him in utter surprise. Why should he ask a question
+to which the reply was so self-evident?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His grave, manly face took on an expression of almost boyish
+embarrassment, and suddenly she became aware of his sentiments,--for
+the first time. She made a nervous effort to devise something that
+should hinder his confession, something that should spare him
+humiliation and herself pain: she could invent nothing. In vain did she
+search her mind for some, even the smallest, sensible evasive phrase,
+and at last she murmured, &quot;The trees are very green for the time of
+year. Do you not think so?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He smiled in spite of his agitation and confusion, and then said, in
+the slightly hoarse tone which always with him betokened intense
+earnestness, &quot;Countess Erika, beyond a certain point twilight, lovely
+as it is, becomes intolerable; one longs for light.&quot; He paused, looked
+full in her face, and cleared his throat. &quot;You must long have been
+aware of how I regard you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But she interrupted him hurriedly: &quot;No, no; I have been aware of
+nothing,--nothing at all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She trembled violently, and turned into a broad road, where a gay
+cavalcade came cantering towards her,--the Princess Dorothea and her
+train of several gentlemen.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Turn to the right,&quot; called Goswyn, and the cavalcade passed, the dust
+raised by their horses enveloping everything like a misty cloud.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika coughed slightly. &quot;Good heavens! perhaps he understood, and will
+save me from replying,&quot; she thought.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But no, he did not save her from replying.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Well, Countess Erika?&quot; he began, after a short pause, gently, but very
+firmly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Wha--what?&quot; she stammered.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Will you be my wife?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She gasped for breath: never could she have believed that she should
+find it so hard to refuse an offer. But accept it--no; something within
+her rebelled against the thought--she could not.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;N--no. I am very sorry,&quot; she stammered, every pulse throbbing wildly.
+She was terribly agitated as she glanced timidly up at him. Not a
+muscle in his face moved.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I was prepared for this,&quot; he murmured.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Thank God, he does not care very much!&quot; she thought, taking a long
+breath; and the next moment--nay, even that very moment--she was vexed
+that he did 'not care very much.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They had reached the railway bridge, beneath which they were wont to
+turn into the grand avenue for a final gallop. For a moment she
+contemplated sacrificing to her rejected suitor this gallop, the crown
+and glory of their daily ride. She reined in her horse.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No gallop?&quot; he asked, as if nothing had passed between them, except
+that his voice was still a little hoarse.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, if you will. I only thought----&quot; she stammered.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He replied with the chivalric courtesy with which he always treated
+her, &quot;I am entirely at your service.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">For a moment she hesitated; then, with a touch of the whip on her
+steed's right shoulder, she started.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, how glorious!&quot; she exclaimed, as they turned just before reaching
+the pavement. &quot;Shall we not have one more?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And so they rode twice up and down the grand avenue. The air was clear
+and cool, and there was in it the fragrance of freshly-planed wood,
+coming from a large shed that was being erected on one side of the
+avenue for an exhibition of horses.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Years afterwards Erika could never recall that ride and her miserable
+cruelty without again perceiving that peculiar fragrance.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The young man was in direful plight. Whatever he might say, he had not
+been prepared for this. The last few days had been passed by him in a
+state of blissful agitation in which, try as he might, he could not
+torment himself with doubts. He had fallen from an immense height, and
+he was terribly bruised. In spite of all his self-control, he began to
+show it. Erika grew more and more depressed, glancing sympathizingly
+aside at him from time to time. Now she would far rather that he had
+not cared so much. Evidently she did not herself know what she really
+wished.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They trotted along side by side; then just as they turned into Bellevue
+Street he heard a low distressed voice say,--</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Herr von Sydow--I would not have you think that--that--I--intended to
+say that to you. I so value your friendship--I should be so very sorry
+to lose it--and--and----&quot; She threw back her head slightly, and,
+looking him in the face from beneath the stiff brim of her riding-hat,
+she said, with a charming little smile, &quot;Tell me that all shall be just
+as it has been between us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;As you please, Countess Erika,&quot; he replied, unable to restrain a smile
+at this novel way of treating a rejected suitor.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When he lifted her from her horse shortly afterwards, he just touched
+her gray riding-glove with his lips; she looked kindly at him, and as
+he gazed after her from the hall as she ascended the staircase she
+turned her head to give him a friendly little nod.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">His heart grew lighter; he would not take too seriously her rejection
+of his suit; it was not final. &quot;After all,&quot; he thought, &quot;in spite of
+her precocious intelligence she is but a charming, innocent child; and
+that is what makes her so bewitching.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The sunlight gleamed on the gilded tops of the iron railings of the
+front gardens in Bellevue Street, upon the leaves of the trees, and
+upon the long line of red-painted watering-carts stretching away in
+perspective like the beads of a huge rosary. The heat was already
+rather oppressive in Berlin. But Goswyn was robust, and sensitive
+neither to heat nor to cold. His ride with Erika was but the beginning
+of his daily exercise, and he trotted off to finish it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the Charlottenburg Avenue he encountered the same cavalcade he had
+seen before in the Thiergarten in the midst of his declaration to
+Erika. Thanks to her agitation, the girl had recognized none of the
+party, but he had bowed to his sister-in-law and her esquires. Now she
+beckoned to him from a distance, and called, &quot;Goswyn!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was considerably taller and more slender than Erika, but she looked
+well in the saddle. Her gray-green eyes sparkled with malicious mockery
+from beneath the brim of her tall hat. &quot;Goswyn,&quot; she cried, speaking
+with her accustomed rapidity in her high piercing voice and with her
+strange lisp, &quot;you were just now made the subject of a wager.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But, Thea,&quot; Prince Nimbsch interrupted his cousin, &quot;we none of us
+agreed to wager with you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What was it about?&quot; asked Goswyn, with a most uncomfortable
+presentiment that some annoyance threatened him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The three men with Dorothea looked at one another; Dorothea giggled. At
+last Prince Nimbsch said, &quot;My cousin wished to wager that the Countess
+Erika would be wooed and won this spring.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, no,&quot; Dorothea interrupted him; &quot;that was not it at all. I wagered
+that you had been refused by Erika this morning in the Thiergarten,
+Gos. Helmy would not believe me; but I have sharp eyes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She said it still giggling, with the wayward insolence of a spoiled
+child, not consciously cruel, who for very wantonness pulls a beetle to
+pieces. &quot;Am I not right?&quot; she persisted.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The men turned away as men of feeling would turn away from beholding an
+execution.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">There was a red cloud before Goswyn's eyes, but he maintained his
+outward composure perfectly. &quot;Yes, Dorothea, I have been rejected,&quot; he
+said, and the words sounded oddly distinct in the midst of the absolute
+silence of the little group, surrounded as it was by the bustle and
+noise of the capital. &quot;May I ask what possible interest this can have
+for you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh,&quot; she laughed still more insolently, ready as she always was to
+exaggerate her ill-breeding when she was tempted to be ashamed of
+it,--&quot;oh, I only wanted to make sure I was right. Helmy contradicted
+me so positively, declaring that a man like you never could be
+rejected. Aha, Helmy! Well, the other Berlin men will be glad!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And why?&quot; Goswyn asked, with the unfortunate persistence in pursuing a
+disagreeable subject often shown by strong men who would fain establish
+their lack of sensitiveness.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why? Because you are a dangerous rival, Goswyn,&quot; cried Dorothea. &quot;Do
+you suppose that you are the only one to covet the hand of the
+heiress?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">For a moment Goswyn felt as if a naming torch had been hurled in his
+face. He grew giddy, but, still maintaining his self-control, he simply
+rejoined, &quot;Dorothea, there are circumstances in which your sex is an
+immense protection,&quot; and then, turning with a bow to the three men, he
+galloped off in an opposite direction.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Dorothea still giggled, but she turned very pale; her companions, on
+the other hand, were scarlet.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ride home with whomsoever you please: I am ashamed to be seen with
+you!&quot; Prince Nimbsch said, angrily; and he hurried after Sydow. But
+when he overtook him the two men looked at each other and were silent.
+At last Nimbsch began, &quot;I only wanted to say----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn interrupted him: &quot;There is nothing to be said;&quot; and there was a
+hoarse tone in his voice that pained the young Austrian. &quot;I know you to
+be a gentleman, Prince, and that you consider me one. There is nothing
+to be said.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Before the Prince could say another word, Goswyn was well-nigh out of
+sight.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Two hours afterwards Goswyn von Sydow might have been seen on a horse
+covered with foam galloping over the sandy hilly tracts of land by
+which Berlin is surrounded. He had never bestowed a thought upon
+Erika's wealth: now he felt that he never could forget it. He had been
+robbed of all ease in her society. It was all over.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">If Erika could have known anything of the unpleasant scene in
+Charlottenburg Avenue, her warm-hearted indignation would immediately
+have developed into vigour the germ of affection for Goswyn that
+already, unknown to herself, slumbered in her heart. She would
+certainly have committed some exaggerated, irresponsible act, which
+would have overthrown at a blow Goswyn's rudely-aroused, tormenting
+pride. She never could have borne to have another inflict upon him pain
+or humiliation. The entire disagreeable complication would have come to
+a crisis in a most touching scene, and in the end two people absolutely
+made for each other would have been sitting hand clasped in hand on the
+lounge beneath the fan-palms in Countess Lenzdorff's drawing-room,
+conversing in low tones, and Erika would have arrived at the sensible
+and agreeable conviction that there could be nothing better in the
+world than to share the life of a strong, noble husband to whom she
+could implicitly confide her happiness. The problem of her life would
+have found its solution, and she would have been spared the perilous
+errors and hard trials awaiting her in the future.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But the ugly story never reached her. The three men who had been
+auditors of Dorothea's coarse cruelty would have considered as a breach
+of honour any report of it, and the Princess Dorothea contented herself
+with a giggling declaration to all who chose to listen that her
+brother-in-law Goswyn had had the mitten from Erika Lenzdorff, without
+referring to the way in which her information had been procured.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Thus Erika passed the rest of the day with a rather sore, compassionate
+feeling in her heart, never doubting that she should have her usual
+ride with Goswyn the next morning, when she promised herself to be
+particularly amiable. All would come right, she said to herself.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But that same evening, when she was taking tea with her grandmother,
+old Lüdecke brought his mistress a letter which she read with evident
+surprise and then laid down beside her plate. She did not eat another
+morsel, and scarcely spoke during the meal. Observing that Erika,
+distressed by her silence, had also ceased eating and was anxiously
+glancing towards her grandmother from time to time, she asked, &quot;Have
+you finished?&quot; Her voice was unusually stern. Erika was startled.
+&quot;Yes,&quot; she stammered, and, trembling in every limb, she followed her
+grandmother out of the dining-room and into the Countess's cheerful,
+cosey boudoir. There the old lady began to pace thoughtfully to and
+fro: she looked very dignified and awe-inspiring. Erika had never
+before seen her thus, walking with short impatient steps, frowning
+brow, and a face that seemed hewn out of marble. She began to be
+frightfully uncomfortable in the presence of the angry old woman, and
+was trying to slip away unobserved, when her grandmother barred her way
+and said, harshly, &quot;Stay here: I have something to say to you, Erika.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, grandmother.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Sit down.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika obeyed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The room looked very pleasant, with its light furniture revealed in the
+shaded brilliancy of coloured hanging lamps. One window was open; a low
+rustle of leaves was wafted in through the pale-green silken curtains
+upon the warm languorous breath of the spring night. Her grandmother
+seated herself in her favourite arm-chair beside her reading-table,
+with Erika opposite her on a frail-looking little chair, bolt upright,
+with her hands in her lap, and a very distressed expression of
+countenance.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;This letter is from Goswyn,&quot; the old lady began, tapping the letter in
+her lap.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, grandmother,&quot; murmured Erika.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You guessed it?&quot; the old lady asked, in a hard, unnatural voice, and
+with an exaggerated distinctness of utterance, which were very strange
+to her granddaughter.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I know his handwriting.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;H'm! You know what is in the letter?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;How should I?&quot; Erika's pale cheeks flushed crimson.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;How should you? Well, then, I must tell you&quot;--she smoothed down her
+dress with an impatient gesture--&quot;that you refused his offer to-day:
+that is what the letter contains. Surely you should know it. Such
+things are not done in sleep.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah, yes, I know that,&quot; Erika murmured, beginning to be irritated in
+her turn; &quot;but how was I to suppose that he would write it to you? I
+cannot see what he does it for?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What for? He informs me that he must deprive himself of all
+intercourse with us for a time, that he has obtained leave of absence
+and is going away from Berlin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But why?&quot; exclaimed Erika. &quot;This is perfect nonsense! It was settled
+that we should ride together to-morrow as usual.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Indeed! You expected him to ride with you after you had rejected him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;He was perfectly agreed,&quot; Erika eagerly declared: &quot;we parted the best
+of friends. I do not want to marry him, but I prize his friendship
+immensely. I told him so. He has surely put that in the letter. He is
+never unjust; he must have told you that I was nice to him. How could I
+help being so, when I pitied him so much?&quot; The girl's voice trembled.
+&quot;You have missed something in the letter; you must have missed
+something,&quot; she persisted.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother opened the letter again, and read, first in an
+undertone, then aloud: &quot;Yes, here it is: 'Never was man rejected more
+charmingly, with greater sweetness, than I by the Countess Erika; but
+it did me no good. I only thought her more bewitching than ever before
+in her tender kindliness,--yes, even in all her dear, child-like,
+awkward attempts to reconcile what in the very nature of things is
+irreconcilable.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'For a while I shall be very wretched; but you know me well enough to
+feel sure that I shall not go through life hanging my head, any more
+than I shall now butt that same head against the wall. I trust that the
+time will come when I shall be of some use to you, my dear old friend,
+and, it may be, to <i>her</i>; but at present I am good for nothing.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'It is best that I should retire into the background. To-morrow I
+leave Berlin. Forgive me for finding it impossible to take leave of you
+in person, and believe in the faithful devotion of yours always,</p>
+
+<p class="right">&quot;'<span class="sc">G. Von Sydow</span>.'&quot;</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">After the old lady had finished the reading of the letter, not without
+a certain pathetic emphasis, she looked up. Erika's face was bathed in
+tears. Her grandmother was dismayed, and after a pause began again, but
+in a very different and a very gentle tone.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;This affair annoys me excessively, Erika.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The girl nodded.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The fact is,&quot;--the grandmother laid her hand on Erika's arm,--&quot;you are
+very inexperienced in such affairs. Another time you must not let
+matters go so far. One must do everything in one's power to spare an
+honourable gentleman such a humiliation. Your conduct would have given
+the most modest of men reason to suppose you cared for him. You misled
+me completely.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Misled!--cared for him!&quot; Erika repeated, tapping the carpet nervously
+with her foot. &quot;But I do like him very much.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother all but smiled. &quot;My dear child, I do not quite
+understand you. Consider! Shall I write and tell Goswyn that you were a
+little unprepared, and that you are sorry,--there's no disgrace in
+admitting that,--and--Heaven knows I shall be glad enough to write the
+letter!&quot; She rose to go to her writing-table, but Erika detained her,
+nervously clutching at her skirts.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No! no! oh, no, grandmother!&quot; she almost screamed. &quot;I do like him; I
+know how good he is; but I do not want to marry him, I am still so
+young. For God's sake do not force me to do so!&quot; She had grown deadly
+pale, as she clasped her hands in entreaty.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother looked at her with a grave shake of the head. &quot;As you
+please,&quot; she said, no longer stern, but depressed, worried,--a mood
+very rare with her. &quot;Now go and lie down: rest will do you good; and I
+should like to be alone for a while.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Far into the night did the old Countess pace restlessly to and fro in
+her boudoir, amidst all the graceful works of art which she had
+collected about her with such satisfaction and which gave her none at
+present. At last she seated herself at her writing-table, and before
+Goswyn left Berlin the next day he received the following letter:</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;<span class="sc">My Dear Boy</span>,--</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;This matter affects me more than you would think. I was so sure of my
+case. At first I was disposed to scold the girl; but there turned out
+to be no reason for doing so. Not a trace did she show of vulgar love
+of admiration, nor even of heartless thoughtlessness. Everything that
+she said to you is true: she likes you very much. I tried to set her
+right,--in vain! For the present there is nothing to be done with her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In the course of conversation I perceived that there was nothing for
+which the child was to blame; the fault was all mine. Can you forgive
+me?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But that is a mere phrase. I know that it never will occur to you to
+blame me.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My words will not come as readily as usual, and I am very
+uncomfortable. I am writing to you not only to tell you how much I pity
+you, but also to relieve my anxiety somewhat by talking it over with
+you.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I have come to see that my grandchild, whom I so wrongly
+neglected--the words are not a mere phrase--for so long, and for whom I
+now have an affection such as I have never felt for any one in my life
+hitherto, will give me many an unhappy hour.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Her sad, dreary youth has left its shadow on her soul, and has
+exaggerated in her a perilous inborn sensitiveness.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There are depths in her character which I cannot fathom. She is good,
+tender-hearted, noble, beautiful, and rarely gifted; but there is with
+her in everything a tendency to exaggeration that frightens me. I
+forebode now that my long neglect of the child from mere selfish love
+of ease will be bitterly avenged upon me.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;If I had watched her from childhood, I should now know her; but,
+fondly as I love her, I cannot but feel that I do not understand her,
+and the great difference in our ages makes any perfect intimacy between
+us impossible. Moreover, in spite of my trifle of sagacity, of which I
+have availed myself for my own pleasure and never for the benefit of
+others, I am an unpractical person, and shall make many a stupid
+mistake in my treatment of the child. And it is a pity; for I do not
+over-estimate her: she is bewitching!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yet, withal, I cannot help thinking that you have not acted as wisely
+as I should have expected you to,--that with a little more heartfelt
+insistence you might have prevailed where my persuasion failed. In
+especial your sudden flight is a perfect riddle to me. I looked for
+more perseverance from you. But this is your affair.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I am very sorry not to see you again before your hurried departure. I
+shall miss you terribly, my dear boy, I have become so accustomed to
+refer to you in all my small perplexities. Still hoping, in spite of
+everything, that sooner or later all may be as it should be between
+Erika and yourself, I am your affectionate old friend,</p>
+
+<p class="right">&quot;<span class="sc">Anna Lenzdorff</span>.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Chafed and sore in heart as Goswyn was at the time, this letter did him
+good. After reading it through he murmured, &quot;When she thus reveals her
+inmost soul, it is easy to understand how, with all her faults and
+follies, one cannot help loving the old Countess.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">A Thread in the web of Erika's existence snapped with Goswyn's
+departure. The sudden separation from him without even a farewell she
+felt to be very sad, and long after he had gone the mere mention of his
+name would thrill her with a vague, restless pain, a nervous
+dissatisfaction with herself, with the world, with him, a dim sense
+that some error had crept into her life's reckoning and that the story
+ought to have turned out otherwise. In the depths of her heart she was
+bitterly disappointed when after a rather gay summer and autumn she
+heard upon her return to Berlin that young Sydow had been transferred
+to Breslau.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Soon, indeed, she lacked the time for occupying her thoughts with her
+dear good friend but unwelcome suitor. Existence developed brilliantly
+for her, and the world's incense mounted to her head, and bewildered
+her, as it bewilders all, even the wisest and gravest, if they are
+exposed to its influence.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was presented at court, where she produced the most favourable
+impression, and was distinguished by the highest personages in the land
+in a manner to excite much envy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Of course she went out a great deal,--so much that her grandmother, who
+had always been characterized by a certain social indolence, grew weary
+of accompanying her, and, whenever she could, intrusted her to the
+chaperonage of her oldest friend, Frau von Norbin.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But when Erika reached home at midnight or after it she had to recount
+her triumphs at her grandmother's bedside. The old Countess would
+scrutinize her closely, as she would have done a work of art, and once
+she said, &quot;Yes, you are a rare creature, it cannot be denied: you are
+more lovely after a ball than before it. How life thrills through you!
+But I do not understand you. I know your mind, and your nerves, but I
+have never proved the depths of your heart.&quot; Then she shook her head,
+sighed, kissed the youthful beauty upon her eyelids, and sent her to
+bed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Yes, there was no end to the homage paid her. No young girl had ever
+been so admired and caressed as was Erika Lenzdorff in the first two
+years after her presentation. It fairly rained adorers and suitors.
+Then--not because her beauty began to fade; no, she had never been more
+beautiful, she had developed magnificently--her conquests decreased.
+Her admirers were capricious, returning to her at times, and then
+holding aloof again; and as for suitors, they entirely disappeared.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">One fact was too patent not to be acknowledged by even the girl's
+adoring grandmother. To the usual society man Erika was duller and more
+uninteresting than the rawest pink-and-white village girl whose natural
+coquetry taught her how to flatter his vanity and emphasize his
+superiority. She did not know how to talk to her admirers, and her
+admirers did not know how to talk to her. The men thought her 'queer.'
+She passed for a blue-stocking because she read serious books, and for
+'highfalutin' because she speculated upon matters quite uninteresting
+to young girls in general. Since with all her feminine refinement of
+mind she combined not an iota of worldly wisdom, she harboured
+the conviction that every one regarded life from her own serious
+stand-point, and would fearlessly propound the problems that occupied
+her to the most superficial dandy who happened to be her partner in the
+german.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother once said to her, &quot;You scare away your admirers with
+your attempts to teach them to fly. Men do not wish to learn to fly:
+you would succeed far better if you should try to teach them to crawl
+on all fours. Most of them have a decided predilection for doing so,
+and those women who can furnish them with a plausible pretext for
+it--for crawling on all fours, I mean--are sure to be the most popular
+with them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In reply to such a declaration Erika would gaze at her grandmother with
+an expression 'so pathetically stupid' that the old Countess could not
+help drawing the girl towards her and kissing her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It is a pity you would not have Goswyn,&quot; the old Countess generally
+concluded, with a sigh: &quot;you are caviare for people in general, and
+Goswyn was the only one who knew how to value you. I cannot comprehend
+you, Erika. Goswyn is the very ideal of a husband; warm-hearted, brave,
+and true, there is real support in his stout arm, and his broad
+shoulders are just fitted to bear a burden that another would find too
+heavy. He is no genius, but instead is brimful of the noblest kind of
+sense. Understand me, Erika; there is a great difference between the
+noblest kind and the inferior article.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But by the time she had reached this point in her eulogy of Goswyn,
+Erika was standing with her hand on the latch of the door, stammering,
+&quot;Yes, yes, grandmother; but I--I have a letter to write.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She liked to avoid any discussion of Goswyn: a sensation of unrest,
+always the same, never developing into any distinct desire, was sure to
+assail her heart at the mention of his name.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">The girls who had made their <i>débuts</i> with her were now almost all
+married. Very commonplace girls, whom she had treated with
+condescending kindness, married her own former admirers: she was no
+longer wooed. At first she laughed at the airs of superiority which the
+young wives took on in her society; but the second winter she was
+annoyed by them. Meanwhile, a fresh bevy of beauties made their
+appearance, and many a girl was admired and fêted, simply because she
+had not been seen as often as the Countess Erika.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the depths of her heart, she had no desire whatever to marry. In her
+thoughts marriage was simply a clumsy, inconvenient requirement of our
+social organization, compliance with which she would postpone as long
+as possible. Against 'all for love' her inmost being rebelled, and yet
+her lack of suitors vexed her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Then, when the first social feminine authorities of Berlin began to
+shake their heads over her as a 'critical case,' she suddenly startled
+society by the announcement of her betrothal to a very wealthy English
+peer, Percy, Earl of Langley.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She became acquainted with him at Carlsbad, whither her grandmother had
+gone for the waters. For several days she noticed that an elderly,
+distinguished-looking man followed her with his eyes whenever she
+appeared. At last, one morning he approached the old Countess, and with
+a smile asked whether she had really forgotten him or whether it was
+her deliberate intention persistently to cut him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She offered him her hand courteously, and replied, &quot;Lord Langley, on
+the Continent a gentleman is supposed to speak first to a lady.
+Moreover, if I had been willing to comply with your national custom, I
+should hardly have known whether it were well to present myself to
+you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He laughed, with half-closed eyes, and rejoined that her remark could
+bear reference only to a period of his life long since past; now he was
+an old man, etc. &quot;I have sown my wild oats,&quot; he declared, adding, &quot;I've
+taken a long time to sow them, haven't I? But it's all over now!&quot;
+Whereupon he requested an introduction to the Countess's companion.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">From that time he devoted himself to the two ladies. Erika was
+flattered by his respectful admiration, and liked to talk with him. In
+fact, she had never conversed with so much pleasure with any other man.
+He had formerly belonged to the diplomatic corps, and had known
+personally all the people mentioned by Lord Malmesbury in his
+memoirs,--in short, everybody who during the past forty years had been
+either famous or notorious, from the Emperor Nicholas, for whom he had
+an enthusiasm, to Cora Pearl, concerning whom he whispered anecdotes in
+the old Countess's ear, and whose career he declared, with a shrug, was
+a riddle to him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He was the keenest observer and cleverest talker imaginable,
+distinguished in appearance, always well dressed, a perfect type of the
+Englishman who, casting aside British cant, leads a gay life on the
+Continent, without faith, without any moral ideal, saturated through
+and through with a refined, cynical, witty Epicureanism, gently
+suppressed when in the society of ladies, although from indolence he
+did not entirely disguise it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Two weeks after recalling himself to the Countess Lenzdorff's memory,
+he wrote her a letter asking for her grand-daughter's hand. The old
+lady, not without embarrassment, informed the young girl of his
+proposal. &quot;It certainly is trying,&quot; she began. &quot;I cannot see how it
+ever entered his head to think of you. A blooming young creature like
+you, and his sixty years! What shall I say to him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika stood speechless for a moment. The old Englishman's proposal was
+an utter surprise to her, but, oddly enough, it did not produce so
+disagreeable an impression upon her as upon her grandmother. She had
+always wished to mingle in English society. Wealthy as she was, she was
+aware that her wealth bore no comparison to that of Lord Langley. And
+then the position of the wife of an English peer was very different
+from that of the wife of any Prussian nobleman. Her fatal inheritance
+of romantic enthusiasm had latterly found expression with her in a
+certain craving for distinction. What a field opened before her! She
+saw herself fêted, admired, besieged with petitions, one of the
+political influences of Europe.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Well?&quot; asked Countess Lenzdorff, who had meanwhile taken her seat at
+her writing-table.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Well?&quot; Erika repeated, in some confusion.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What shall I say? That you will not have him, of course; but how shall
+I courteously give him to understand---- It is intolerable! Do not get
+me into such a scrape again. Although, poor child, you cannot help it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika was silent.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother had begun to write, when she heard a very low, rather
+timid voice just behind her say,--</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Grandmother!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She turned round. &quot;What is it, child?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You see--if I must marry----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother stared, then exclaimed, sharply, &quot;You could be
+induced----?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika nodded.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old lady fairly bounded from her chair, tore up the letter she had
+begun, threw the pieces on the floor, and left the room. The door was
+closed behind her, when she opened it again to say, curtly, &quot;Write to
+him yourself!&quot;</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Two days after his betrothal, Lord Langley left Carlsbad to superintend
+the preparations at Eyre Castle for the reception of his bride, whom he
+hoped to take to England at the end of August.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The lovers shed no tears at parting, and there was no other display of
+tenderness than a reverential kiss imprinted by Lord Langley upon his
+betrothed's hand. This respectful homage appeared to Erika highly
+satisfactory.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">After the old Countess had taken the cure at Carlsbad she betook
+herself with Erika to Franzensbad to complete it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At that time a great deal was said, in the sleepy, lounging life of
+Franzensbad, of the Bayreuth performances. 'Parsifal' was the topic of
+universal interest. The old Countess at first absolutely refused to
+listen to Erika's earnest request to go to Bayreuth; in fact, she had
+been in a bad humour ever since the betrothal, and her tenderness
+towards Erika had ostensibly diminished. She contradicted her
+frequently, was quite irritable, and would often reply to some
+perfectly innocent proposal of her grand-daughter's, &quot;Wait until you
+are married.&quot; She would not hear of going to Bayreuth, maintaining that
+the bits of 'Parsifal' which she had heard played as duets had been
+quite enough for her,--she had no desire to hear the whole performance;
+moreover, she had had a headache--ever since Erika's betrothal.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her opposition lasted a good while, but at last curiosity triumphed,
+and she announced herself ready to sacrifice herself and go to Bayreuth
+with her granddaughter.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Lord Langley's last letter had come from Munich, where one of his
+daughters (he was a widower, and had no son) was married to a young
+English diplomat. Grandmother and grand-daughter were to meet him
+there, and then all were to proceed to Castle Wetterstein in
+Westphalia, the family seat of Count Lenzdorff, a great-uncle of
+Erika's, where the marriage was to take place.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Highly delighted at her grandmother's consent to her wishes, Erika
+wrote to Lord Langley asking him to meet them at Bayreuth instead of
+waiting for them at Munich, although, she added, he was to feel quite
+free to do as he pleased.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Lüdecke, the faithful, was sent to Bayreuth to arrange for lodgings and
+tickets, and a few days afterwards the old Countess, with Erika and her
+maid Marianne, left Franzensbad, with its waving white birches, its
+good bread and weak coffee, its symphony concerts, and its languishing,
+pale, consumptive beauties. The dew glistened on leaves and flowers as
+they drove to the station. After they had reached it, Marianne, the
+maid, was sent back to the hotel for a volume of 'Opera and Drama,' and
+a pamphlet upon 'the psychological significance of Kundry,' in the
+former of which the old Countess was absorbed during the journey to
+Bayreuth.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They were received with genial enthusiasm by the fair, fresh wife of
+the baker, in whose house Lüdecke had procured them lodgings, and they
+followed her up a bare damp staircase to the tile-paved landing upon
+which their rooms opened. They consisted of a spacious, low-ceilinged
+apartment, with a small island of carpet before the sofa in a sea of
+yellow varnished board floor, furnished with red plush chairs, two
+india-rubber trees, a bird in a painted cage, and a cupboard with
+glass doors, on either side of which were doors opening into the
+bedrooms,--everything comfortable, clean, and old-fashioned.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">After some refreshment the two ladies drove about the town, and out
+into the trim open country through beautiful, shady avenues, avenues
+such as usually lead to princely residences, and into the quiet
+deserted park, where there were few strangers besides themselves to be
+seen. Returning, they dined at 'the Sun,' at the same table with
+Austrian aristocrats, Berlin councillors of commerce, and numerous
+pilgrims to the festival from known and unknown lands. Then they
+sauntered about the dear old town, with its many-gabled architecture,
+and visited the Master's grave and the old theatre. The old Countess
+lost herself in speculations as to what the Margravine would have
+thought of the great German show that now wakes the lethargic old
+capital from its repose at least every other year; and Erika, laughing,
+called her grandmother's attention to the 'Parsifal slippers' and the
+'Nibelungen bonbons' in the unpretentious shop-windows.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The sun was very low, and the shadows were creeping across the broad
+squares and down the narrow streets, when the old Countess proposed to
+go back to their rooms to refresh herself with a cup of tea. Erika
+accompanied her to the door of their lodgings, and then said, &quot;I should
+like to look about for a volume of Tauchnitz. May I not go alone? This
+seems little more than a village.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;If you choose,&quot; her grandmother, already halfway up the staircase,
+replied.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">With no thought of ill, Erika turned the corner of the nearest street.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She walked slowly, gazing up at the antique house-fronts on either side
+of her. Suddenly she heard a voice behind her call &quot;Rika! Rika!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She turned, and started as if stunned by a flash of lightning. Before
+her, his whiskers brushed straight out from his cheeks, rather more
+florid than of yore, in a very dandified plaid suit, with an eye-glass
+stuck in his eye, stood--Strachinsky.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Rika, my dear little Rika!&quot; he cried, holding out his hand. &quot;What a
+surprise, and what a pleasure, to find you here, and without the
+Cerberus who always has barred our meeting! Fate will yet avenge it
+upon her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika trembled with indignation, but her tongue clove to the roof of
+her mouth. Try as she might, she could not reply. A senseless, childish
+panic mastered her, as terrible as it would have been had this man
+still had power over her and been able to snatch her from her present
+surroundings and carry her back to the dreary life at Luzano.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You are quite speechless,&quot; he went on, having meanwhile seized her
+hand and carried it to his lips. &quot;No wonder, it is so long since we
+have seen each other. That jealous old drag----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I must beg you not to allude to my grandmother in that way!&quot; she
+exclaimed, conscious of a benumbing, nervous pain at the remembrance of
+her terrible, sordid existence with this man.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You are under the old woman's influence,&quot; Strachinsky declared, &quot;and
+nothing else was to be expected; but now all will be different: when
+you are once married, more cordial relations will be established
+between us. I bear no malice; I forgive everything: I was always too
+forgiving,--it was my only fault. My poor wife always called me an
+idealist, a Don Quixote,--my poor, idolized Emma,--I never can forget
+her.&quot; And he passed his hand over his eyes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I must go home: my grandmother is expecting me,&quot; Erika murmured.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I should think you could consent to bestow a few minutes upon your old
+father, if only out of regard for your mother's memory,&quot; Strachinsky
+observed, assuming his loftiest expression.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Regard for her mother's memory! Certainly, she would not let him starve
+or suffer absolute want. &quot;Do you need anything?&quot; she asked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No,&quot; he replied, curtly, with a show of wounded feeling.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Then followed a pause. She looked round, ignorant of where she was, for
+during this most unwelcome interview she had continued to walk on
+without observing whither she was going.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Will you show me the way to Maximilian Street?&quot; she asked him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;To the left, here,&quot; he replied, laconically; then, with lifted
+eyebrows, he observed, &quot;Unpractical idealist that I am, I was disposed
+to forget and forgive the outrageous ingratitude with which you have
+treated me in these latter years,--nay, always. I had even resolved to
+call upon your betrothed; although that would have been to reverse the
+order of affairs. But I perceive that your arrogance and pride are
+greater than ever. No matter! I only hope you may not be punished for
+them too severely!&quot; With these words, he touched his hat with grotesque
+dignity and was gone before she could collect herself to reply.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Meanwhile, the sky had become overcast; a keen wind began to blow, and
+large drops of rain were falling before Erika reached the door of the
+lodgings in Maximilian Street.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">As she mounted the staircase she heard her grandmother's voice in the
+drawing-room and recognized the cordial tone which she used when
+speaking to the few people in the world with whom she was in genuine
+sympathy. Nevertheless, agitated by her late interview, Erika inwardly
+deplored the arrangement of their apartments which made it impossible
+that she should reach her bedroom without passing through the
+drawing-room. She opened the door: her grandmother was seated on the
+sofa, and near her, in an arm-chair, with his back to the casement
+window, was a man in civilian's dress. He arose, looking so tall that
+it seemed to Erika he must strike his head against the low ceiling of
+the room. She did not instantly recognize him, as he stood with his
+back to the light, but before he had advanced a step she exclaimed,
+&quot;Goswyn!&quot; and ran to him with both hands extended. When, with rather
+formal courtesy, he kissed one of the hands thus held out as if seeking
+succour, and then dropped it without any very cordial pressure, she was
+assailed by a certain embarrassment: she remembered that she should
+have called him Herr von Sydow, and that it became her to receive
+her rejected suitor with a more measured dignity. But she was not
+self-possessed today. The shock of meeting her step-father had unstrung
+her nerves; the numbness which had of late paralyzed sensation began to
+depart; her youthful heart throbbed almost as loudly as it had done
+when she had first ascended the thickly-carpeted staircase in Bellevue
+Street, as strongly as upon that brilliant Thursday at the Countess
+Brock's, when, suddenly overcome by the memory of her unhappy mother,
+she had fled from the crowd of her admirers to sob out her misery in
+some lonely corner.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Lord Langley's worldly-wise, self-possessed betrothed had vanished, and
+in her stead was a shy, emotional young person, oppressed by a sense of
+her exaggerated cordiality towards the guest. She now seated herself as
+far as possible from him in one of the red plush arm-chairs.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;How long have you been in Bayreuth, Herr von Sydow?&quot; she asked, in a
+timid little voice, which thrilled the young officer's heart like an
+echo of by-gone times.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika, whose eyes had become accustomed to the darkened light of the
+room, noted that he smiled,--his old kind smile. His features looked
+more sharply chiselled than formerly; he had grown very thin, and had
+lost every trace of the slight clumsiness which had once characterized
+him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I came several days ago: my musical feast is already a thing of the
+past,&quot; he replied.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Indeed! And what then keeps you in Bayreuth?&quot; Erika asked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He laughed a little forced laugh, and then blushed after his old
+fashion, but replied, very quietly, &quot;I learned from your factotum
+Lüdecke, whom I met the day before yesterday, that you were coming, and
+so I determined to await your arrival.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She longed to say something cordial and kind to him, but the words
+would not come. Instead her grandmother spoke.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It was kind of you to stay in this tiresome old hole just to see us. I
+call it very kind,&quot; she assured him, and Erika added, meekly, &quot;So do
+I.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A pause ensued, broken finally by Goswyn: &quot;Let me offer you my best
+wishes on the occasion of your betrothal, Countess Erika.&quot; He uttered
+the words very bravely, but Erika could not respond: she suddenly felt
+that she had cause to be ashamed of herself, although what that cause
+was she did not know.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Are you acquainted with Lord Langley, Goswyn?&quot; the old Countess asked,
+in the icy tone which she always assumed when any allusion was made to
+her grand-daughter's engagement.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No. You can imagine how eager I am to hear about him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;He is one of the most entertaining Englishmen I have ever met,--a very
+clever man,&quot; the Countess declared, as if discussing some one in whom
+she took no personal interest.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It was not to be supposed that the Countess Erika would sacrifice
+her freedom to any ordinary individual,&quot; said Goswyn, with admirable
+self-control.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">For all reply the Countess raised the clumsy teacup before her to her
+lips.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">With every word thus spoken Erika's sense of shame deepened, and she
+was seized with an intense desire to be frank with Goswyn, and to
+dispel any illusion he might entertain as to her betrothal. &quot;Lord
+Langley is no longer young,&quot; she said, hurriedly. &quot;I will show you his
+photograph.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She went into the adjoining room and brought thence the photograph in
+its case, which she opened herself before handing it to Goswyn. He
+looked at the picture, then at her, and then again at the picture. His
+broad shoulders twitched; without a word he closed the case, and put it
+upon a table, beside which Erika had taken her seat.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">An embarrassing silence ensued. The sound of rolling vehicles was heard
+distinctly from below, and one stopped before the dark door-way. Soon
+afterwards the staircase creaked beneath a heavy tread. Lüdecke opened
+the low door of the old-fashioned apartment, and announced, &quot;Frau
+Countess Brock.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The 'wicked fairy' unconsciously had a novel experience: her appearance
+was a relief.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">As usual, she bowed and nodded on all sides, but, as she was unable for
+the moment to find her eye-glass, she saw nobody, and fell into the
+error of supposing a tall india-rubber tree in a tub before a window to
+be her particular friend the chamberlain Langefeld. Not until Goswyn
+discovered the eye-glass hanging by its slender cord among the jet
+ornaments and fringes with which her mantle was trimmed and humanely
+handed it to her, did she find out her mistake. Goswyn was about to
+withdraw after having rendered her this service, but she tapped him
+reproachfully on the shoulder and begged him to stay a moment with his
+old aunt. He might have resisted her request; but when Countess
+Lenzdorff added that he would please her by remaining, he complied, and
+seated himself again, although with something of the awkwardness apt to
+be shown by an officer when in civilian's dress.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The 'wicked fairy' established herself beside the Countess Anna upon
+the sofa behind the round table, and accepted from Erika's hand a cup
+of tea, which she drank in affected little sips. She was clad, as
+usual, in trailing mourning robes, although no one could have told for
+whom she wore them, and the Countess Anna's first question was, &quot;Do you
+not dislike wandering about Bayreuth as the Queen of Night?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;On the contrary,&quot; replied the 'wicked fairy,' rubbing her hands,
+&quot;I like it. Awhile ago one of my friends declared that I appeared
+in Bayreuth as the mourning ghost of classic music. Was it not
+charming?--but not at all appropriate, for I adore Wagner!&quot; And she
+began to hum the air of the flower-girl scene, &quot;trililili lilili----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What do you think of 'Parsifal'?&quot; Countess Anna asked, turning to
+Goswyn. &quot;One of the greatest humbugs of the century, eh? They howl as
+if possessed by an evil spirit, and call it joy,--call it song!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;At the risk of falling greatly in your esteem, I must confess that
+'Parsifal' made a profound impression upon me, Countess,&quot; Goswyn
+replied.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Et tu, Brute!&quot; his old friend exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I do not entirely approve of it, if that is anything in my favour,&quot; he
+rejoined.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah, there is nothing like Wagner! there is but one God,--and one
+Wagner!&quot; The 'wicked fairy' went on humming, closing her eyes, and
+waving her hands affectedly in the air.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The scene containing the air which you are humming is not one of my
+favourites,&quot; Goswyn remarked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, it charmed us most of all,--Dorothea and me,&quot; the 'wicked fairy'
+declared. &quot;Those hovering little temptresses, so seductive, and
+Parsifal, the chaste, in their midst!&quot; She clasped her hands in an
+ecstasy. &quot;The other evening at Frau Wagner's we met Van Dyck. He is
+rather strong in his mode of speech. Dorothea seemed much entertained
+by him, but afterwards she thought him shocking.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Your niece seems to have a positive mania just now for thinking
+everything 'shocking,'&quot; Countess Anna said, dryly. &quot;She sings no more
+music-hall ditties, and casts down her eyes modestly when she sees a
+French novel in a book-shop. Such a transformation is, to say the
+least, startling. Oh, I beg pardon, Goswyn; I always forget that
+Dorothea is your sister-in-law.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No need to remember it while we are among ourselves,&quot; Goswyn rejoined.
+&quot;<i>Coram publico</i>, I would beg you to modify your expressions, for my
+poor brother's sake.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;He cannot endure Thea,&quot; Countess Brock said, laughing, as she shook
+her forefinger at him; &quot;but I know why that is so. Look how he
+blushes!&quot; In fact, Goswyn had changed colour. &quot;He fell in love with her
+in Florence. She told me all about it--aha!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Does she really fancy so, or has she invented the story for her own
+amusement?&quot; Goswyn murmured, as if to himself.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The 'fairy' continued to giggle and writhe about in the corner of the
+sofa.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You must have been much with Dorothea of late,&quot; the Countess Anna
+remarked, quietly: &quot;you have acquired all her airs and graces. Is the
+lady in question in Bayreuth at present?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No; she left early this morning, for Berlin, where she has various
+matters to attend to before she goes to Heiligendamm. But we have been
+together for some time. We were in Schlangenbad for six weeks. Oh, we
+enjoyed ourselves excessively,--made all sorts of acquaintances whom we
+should never have spoken to at home. But--I came to see you, Anna,
+for a special purpose,--two purposes, I might say. One concerns
+Hedwig Norbin's birthday,--her seventieth,--and the other--yes, the
+other--guess whom I met in Schlangenbad?&quot; She threw back her head and
+folded her arms across her breast, the very impersonation of
+anticipated enjoyment in a disagreeable announcement.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;How can I?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Your grand-daughter's step-father: yes,&quot; nodding emphatically.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika started. Countess Lenzdorff said, calmly, &quot;Indeed! I pity you
+from my heart; but, since I had no share in bringing such a misfortune
+upon you, I owe you no further reparation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;H'm! you need not pity me. He interested me extremely. You and your
+grand-daughter have seen fit simply to ignore him; but you do not know
+what people say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Nor does it interest me in the least.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Well, you may not care about the verdict of society, but it is
+comfortable to stand well with one's conscience, as Dorothea said to me
+the other day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Indeed! did she say that to you?&quot; Countess Anna murmured in an
+undertone.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, and she was indignant at the way in which you have treated the
+poor man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Is it any affair of hers?&quot; Countess Lenzdorff asked, sharply.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, she is quite right; I am entirely of her opinion,&quot; the 'fairy'
+went on; then, turning to Erika, &quot;I cannot help remonstrating with you.
+He certainly cared for you like a father until you were seventeen. He
+was a man whom your mother loved passionately.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika sat as if turned to marble: every word spoken by the old 'fairy'
+was like a blow in the face to her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Countess Lenzdorff's eyes flashed angrily. &quot;Do not meddle with what
+you do not in the least understand, Elise!&quot; she exclaimed. &quot;As for my
+daughter-in-law's passion for that stupid weakling, it was made up of
+pity on the one hand for a man whom she came to know wounded and ill,
+and on the other hand of antagonism towards me. The fact is, I provoked
+her; the marriage would never have taken place if I had not most
+injudiciously set myself in opposition to Emma's betrothal to the Pole.
+Her second marriage was a tragedy, the result of obstinacy, not of
+love.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My dearest Anna, that is entirely your own idea,&quot; the Countess Brock
+asserted. &quot;Every one knows that you cannot appreciate any tenderness of
+affection because your own heart is clad in armour, but you can never
+convince me that your daughter-in-law did not love the Pole
+passionately. In the first place, her passion for him was the only
+possible motive for her marriage; how else could it have occurred to
+her?--bah!--nonsense! and in the second place, Strachinsky read me her
+letters,--letters written soon after their marriage. He carries these
+proofs everywhere with him: his devotion to his dead wife is most
+touching. Poor man! he wept when he read the letters to us, and we wept
+too. I had invited a few friends, and he spent two evenings in reading
+them aloud to us. When he had finished he kissed the letters, and said,
+with a deep sigh, 'This is all that is left to me of my poor, adored
+Emma,' and then he told us of the tender relations that had existed
+between himself and his step-daughter, until she, when a brilliant lot
+fell to her share, had cast him aside--like an old shoe-string, as he
+expressed it. I do not say that such a connection is the most
+desirable, but <i>on choisit ses amis, on subit ses parents</i>. Certain
+duties must be conscientiously fulfilled, and, my dear Erika, be sure
+that I advise you for your good when I beg you to be friends with your
+step-father: you owe him a certain amount of filial affection. He is
+here in Bayreuth, and has requested me to effect a reconciliation
+between you and him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika made no reply. She sat motionless, speechless. The 'fairy' played
+her last trump. &quot;People are talking about your unjustifiable treatment
+of him,&quot; she said; &quot;but that can all be arranged. May I tell him that
+you are ready to receive him, Anna?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Countess Lenzdorff rose to her feet. &quot;Indeed!&quot; she exclaimed, with
+an outburst of indignation; &quot;you wish me to receive a man who, for the
+sake of exciting sympathy, reads aloud to your invited guests the
+letters of his dead wife? What do you take me for? I will have him
+turned out of doors if he dares to show his face here! And I have no
+more time at present to listen to you, Elise: I am going to pay a visit
+to Hedwig Norbin. Will you come with me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;With the greatest pleasure!&quot; cried the 'wicked fairy,' decidedly
+cowed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Bring me my bonnet and gloves from my room, my child,&quot; her grandmother
+said to Erika, and when the girl brought them to her she kissed her on
+the cheek.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn had risen to depart with the two ladies. Erika looked after him
+dully as, after taking a formal leave of her, he had reached the door
+of the room. Then she suddenly followed him. &quot;Goswyn,&quot; she murmured,
+&quot;stay for one moment!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He stayed; the door closed after the others, and they were alone.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">What did she want of him? He did not know: she herself did not know. He
+would advise her, rid her of the weight upon her heart: her old habit
+of appealing to him in all difficulties returned to her in full force.
+The time was past for her when she could relieve herself in any
+distressing agitation by a burst of tears: she sat there white and
+silent, plucking at the folds of her black lace dress.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At last, passing her hand across her forehead once or twice, she began
+in a forced monotone, &quot;You know that I idolized my mother; I have told
+you about her; perhaps you remember----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I do not think I have forgotten much that you have ever told me,&quot; he
+interrupted her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The words were kind, but something in his tone pained her. Something
+interposed between them. It had seemed so natural to turn to him for
+sympathy, but she suddenly felt shy. What was her distress to him?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Forgive me,&quot; she murmured. &quot;I longed to pour out my heart to some one.
+I have no one to go to, and I suffer so! You cannot imagine what this
+last quarter of an hour has been to me. My poor mother's marriage was a
+tragedy; my grandmother was right. No one who did not live with her can
+dream of all that she suffered for years. Her last request to me when
+she was dying was that I would not let him come to her. And now that
+wretch is boasting to strangers--oh, I cannot endure it! Can you
+understand what it all is to me? Can you understand?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The question was superfluous. She knew very well that he understood,
+but she repeated the words mechanically again and again. Why did he sit
+there so straight and silent? She was pouring out her soul to him,
+revealing to him all that was most sacred, and he had not one word of
+sympathy for her. A kind of anger took possession of her, and, with all
+the self-control which she could summon up, she said, more calmly, &quot;I
+know I have no right to burden you with my misery----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Countess Erika!&quot; he exclaimed, with a sudden unconscious movement of
+his hand, which chanced to strike the case containing Lord Langley's
+photograph. It fell on the floor; Goswyn picked it up and tossed it
+contemptuously upon the table, while his face grew hard and stern.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He was the first to break the silence that followed. &quot;Is this
+Strachinsky staying in Bayreuth?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes. I met him to-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Do you know his address?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No. Why do you ask?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;For the simplest reason in the world: I wish to procure your mother's
+letters for you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The letters!&quot; she exclaimed. &quot;Oh, if that were possible! But upon what
+pretext could you demand them of him? they belong to him; we have no
+right to them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Might is right with such a fellow as that,&quot; Goswyn said, as he rose to
+go.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She offered him her hand; he took it courteously, but there was no
+cordial pressure on his part, nor did he carry it to his lips.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In a moment he was gone. She stood gazing as if spell-bound at the door
+which closed behind him. She did not understand. He was the same, but
+in his eyes she was no longer what she had been. This conviction
+flashed upon her. He was, as ever, ready to help her, but the tender
+warmth of sympathy of former days had gone, as had the reverence with
+which the strong man had been wont to regard her weakness: she was
+neither so dear nor so sacred to him as she had been.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the midst of the pain caused her by the 'wicked fairy's' malicious
+speeches she was aware of a paralyzing consciousness that she had sunk
+in the esteem of the one human being in the world whom she prized most
+highly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When the Countess Lenzdorff returned at the end of an hour, her
+grand-daughter was still sitting where she had left her, in the dark.
+When Erika heard her grandmother coming, she slipped into her own room.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">The next forenoon Erika was sitting in the low-ceilinged drawing-room.
+She was alone in the house. Lord Langley had announced his arrival
+during the forenoon, and the Countess Anna had gone out, to avoid being
+present at the meeting of the betrothed couple. The young girl's pulses
+throbbed to her fingertips; her eyes burned, her whole body felt sore
+and bruised, as if she had had a fall. For an hour she sat listening
+breathlessly. Would Goswyn come before Lord Langley arrived? Should she
+have a moment in which to speak to him? Ah, how she longed for it! She
+wanted to explain to him---- At last she heard a step on the stair: of
+course it was Lord Langley. No, no! Lord Langley's step was neither so
+quick nor so light: it was Goswyn; she could hear him speaking with
+Lüdecke, and the old servant, with the garrulous want of tact at which
+she had so often laughed, was explaining to him that her Excellency had
+gone out, but that the Countess Erika had stayed at home to receive
+Lord Langley.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika listened, and heard Goswyn say, in a clear, cold tone, &quot;In that
+case I will not disturb the Countess. Tell her----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She could endure it no longer, but, opening the door, called, &quot;Goswyn!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Countess!&quot; He bowed formally.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Come in for one moment, I entreat you,&quot; she begged, involuntarily
+clasping her hands. Of course he could not but obey.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They confronted each other, she trembling in every limb, he erect and
+unbending as she had never before seen him. In his hand he held a small
+packet.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There, Countess,&quot; he said, &quot;I am convinced that these are all the
+letters which this Herr von Strachinsky ever received from your mother:
+some of the epistles with which he edified my amiable aunt and her
+guests were the productions of his own pen. But you may rest assured
+that while I live he will not be guilty of any further indiscretion in
+that direction.&quot; There was such a look of determination in his eyes as
+he spoke that Erika easily guessed by what means he had contrived to
+intimidate Strachinsky.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was filled with the warmest gratitude towards him, but there was
+something so repellent in his air that, instead of any extravagant
+expression of it, she stood before him without being able to utter a
+word of thanks. Instead, she fingered in an embarrassed way the packet
+which he had given her, a very little packet, wrapped in a sheet of
+paper and sealed with a huge coat of arms. In her confusion she fixed
+her eyes upon this seal.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The arms of the Barons von Strachinsky,&quot; Goswyn explained. &quot;Pray
+observe the delicacy with which the very letters read aloud for the
+entertainment of Heaven only knows how many gossiping old women are
+sealed up carefully lest I should read them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika smiled faintly. &quot;It is hardly necessary that you should be
+understood by Strachinsky,&quot; she said. &quot;Men always judge from their own
+point of view. You judged me by yourself, and consequently estimated me
+more highly than I deserved. Sit down for a moment, I pray you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I do not wish to intrude,&quot; he said, bluntly, almost discourteously.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;How could you intrude? You never can intrude.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Not even when you are expecting your betrothed?&quot; He looked her full in
+the face.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She blushed scarlet; a burning desire to regain his esteem took
+possession of her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You take an entirely false view of my position,&quot; she exclaimed. &quot;Mine
+is not the betrothal of a sentimental school-girl. I--I&quot; and she burst
+into a short, nervous laugh that shocked even herself--&quot;I do not marry
+Lord Langley for love.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">There was a pause. Goswyn bowed his head; then, suddenly raising it, he
+looked straight into Erika's eyes in a way which made her very
+uncomfortable, and said, &quot;I guessed that; but why, then, do you marry
+him,--you, a young, pure, gifted girl, and a man with such a past as
+Lord Langley's? I know that no man is worthy of such a girl as you are;
+but, good God, there is some difference---- Why, why do you marry him?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why? why?&quot; She tried to collect herself and to answer him truly. &quot;I
+marry him because the position he offers me suits me,--because one is
+condemned to marry at a certain age, if one would not be sneered at and
+ridiculed; I marry him because he is an old man and will not require of
+me any warmth of affection, and because I have determined that there
+shall be nothing romantic in my marriage. Ah,&quot; with a glance at the
+small packet in her hand, &quot;after all that you know of my wretched
+experience, you ought to understand why I do not choose to marry for
+love.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A long silence followed. He looked at her as he had never hitherto
+done, searchingly, inquiringly. Suddenly his glance grew tender: it
+expressed intense pity. &quot;I understand that you talk of love and
+marriage as a blind man talks of colours,&quot; he said, slowly. &quot;I
+understand that you unwittingly contemplate the commission of a crime
+against yourself, and that you should be prevented from it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He ceased speaking on a sudden, and bit his lip. A voice was heard in
+the hall,--the characteristic voice of an old English <i>bon viveur</i> with
+a Continental training. &quot;Is the Countess at home?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What am I doing here?&quot; Goswyn exclaimed, and, without touching the
+hand extended to him, he turned on his heel and was gone.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Outside the door stood an old gentleman with a tall white hat and a
+dark-blue cravat spotted with white. One glance of rage and curiosity
+Goswyn darted at the correct florid profile and white whiskers, and
+then he rushed down-stairs like one possessed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Yes, he had not been mistaken. It was the same Englishman whom he had
+once seen at Monaco with a most disreputable train. Then he was
+travelling under an assumed name,--Mr. Steyne: his English regard for
+appearances forbade him in such society to profane his title and his
+social dignity.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn's blood fairly boiled in his veins.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">When, some time afterwards, Countess Lenzdorff entered the
+drawing-room, after her walk, Lord Langley, rather redder in the face
+than usual, and with a baffled, puzzled expression of countenance, was
+sitting in an arm-chair; Erika, very pale, with sparkling eyes and very
+red lips, strikingly beautiful, and evidently tingling in every nerve,
+was in another on the other side of a table between the pair, upon
+which was an open jewel-case containing a diamond necklace. The
+Countess suspected that some kind of disagreement had arisen between
+the couple, and, as soon as she had returned Lord Langley's greeting,
+asked, carelessly, what it had been.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, nothing to speak of,&quot; he replied. &quot;My queen was a little
+ungracious; but even that has a charm. A perfectly docile woman is as
+tiresome as a quiet horse: there is no pleasure in either unless there
+is some caprice to subdue.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika's grandmother bestowed a keen, observant glance, first upon the
+speaker, and then upon her grand-daughter, after which she remarked,
+dryly, &quot;If we wish for any dinner we had better betake ourselves to
+'The Sun.'&quot;</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">The sleepy afternoon quiet is broken by a sudden stir and excitement.
+It is time to go to the theatre, and the Lenzdorffs in a rattling,
+clumsy, four-seated hired carriage join the endless train of vehicles
+of all descriptions that wind through the narrow street of the little
+town and beyond it, until upon an eminence in the midst of a very green
+meadow they reach the ugly red structure looking something like a
+gasometer with various mysterious protuberances,--the temple of modern
+art.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Lenzdorffs are among the last to arrive, but they are in time:
+unpunctuality is not tolerated at Bayreuth.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Summoned by a blast of trumpets, the public ascend a steep short flight
+of steps to a large, undecorated auditorium. The Countess Lenzdorff and
+her granddaughter have seats on the bench farthest back, just in front
+of the royal boxes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At a given signal all the ladies present take off their hats. It
+suddenly grows dark,--so very dark that until the eye becomes
+accustomed to it nothing can be discovered in the gloom. Gradually row
+upon row of human heads are perceived stretching away in what seems
+endless perspective: such is the auditorium of the theatre at Bayreuth.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The most brilliant toilette and the meanest attire are alike
+indistinguishable; here is positively no food for idle curiosity,
+nothing to distract the attention from the stage.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Agitated as Erika already was, and consequently sensitively alive to
+impressions, the first sound of the trumpets thrilled her every nerve,
+and before the last note of the prelude had died away she had reached a
+condition of ecstasy closely allied to pain, and could with difficulty
+restrain her tears.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">All the woe of sinning humanity wailed in those tones,--the mortal
+anguish of that humanity which in its longings for the imperishable,
+the supernatural, beats and bruises itself against the barriers that it
+cannot pass,--that humanity which, dragged down by the burden of its
+animal nature, grovels on the earth when it would fain soar to the
+starry heavens.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Just when the music wailed the loudest, she suddenly started: some one
+in a seat in front of her turned round,--a handsome Southern type of
+man, with sharply-cut features, short hair, and a pointed beard; in the
+gray twilight she encountered his glance, a strange searching look
+fixed upon her face, affecting her as did Wagner's music. At the same
+time a tall, fair woman at his side also turned her head. &quot;<i>Voyons,
+qu'est-ce qu'il y a?</i>&quot; she asked, discontentedly. &quot;<i>Ce n'est rien; une
+ressemblance qui me frappe</i>,&quot; he replied, in the weary tone of
+annoyance often to be observed in men who are under the domination of
+jealous women.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A couple of young Italian musicians blinding their eyes in the darkness
+by the study of an open score exclaimed, angrily, &quot;Hush!&quot; and the
+stranger riveted his eyes upon the stage, where the curtain was just
+rolling up.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika shivered slightly: some secret chord of her soul--a chord of
+which she had hitherto been unaware--vibrated. Where had she seen those
+dark, searching eyes before?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The musical drama pursued its course, and at first it seemed as if the
+enthusiasm produced in Erika's mind by the prelude was destined to fade
+utterly: the painted scenes were too much like other painted scenes;
+she had heard them extolled too highly not to be disappointed in them;
+the music, to her ignorant ears, was confused, inconsequent, a tangle
+of shrill involved discords, in the midst of which there were now and
+then musical phrases of noble and poetic beauty.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The effect was not to be compared with the impression produced upon the
+girl by the prelude,--when suddenly she seemed to hear as from another
+world a voice calling her, arousing her,--something unearthly,
+mystical, interrupted by the same shuddering, alluring wail of anguish,
+and when the nerves, strung to the last degree of tension, seemed on
+the point of giving way, there came rippling from above like cooling
+dew upon sun-parched flowers with promise of redemption the mystic
+purity of the boy-chorus,--</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="t0" style="text-indent:-8px">
+&quot;Made wise by pity,<br>
+The pure in heart----&quot;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No one shall ever induce me to come again. I am fairly consumed with
+nervous fever. No one has a right under the pretence of art to stretch
+his fellow-creatures thus on the rack! Parsifal is altogether too fat.
+Wagner should have cut his Parsifal out of Donatello,&quot; exclaims
+Countess Lenzdorff, as she leaves the theatre at the close of the first
+act.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I don't quite understand the plot,&quot; Lord Langley confesses. &quot;The
+leading idea seems to me unpractical. I must say I feel rather
+confused.&quot; He then speaks of Kundry as 'a very unpleasant young woman,'
+and asks Erika if she does not agree with him; but Erika shrugs her
+shoulders and makes no reply.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;She is very ungracious to-day,&quot; his lordship remarks, with a rather
+embarrassed laugh. &quot;Shall I take offence, Countess?&quot; (This to the
+Countess Anna.) &quot;No, she is too beautiful ever to give offence. Only
+look! She is creating quite a sensation.--Every one is staring after
+you, Erika.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The theatre is empty. The audience is streaming across the grass
+towards the restaurant to refresh itself.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Close behind the Lenzdorffs walks the Russian Princess B----, who hires
+an entire suite of rooms for every season and attends every
+representation. She is dressed in embroidered muslin, and from the
+broad brim of her white straw hat hangs a Brussels lace veil partially
+concealing her face, which was once very handsome.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She addresses the old Countess: &quot;<i>Êtes-vous touchée de la grâce, ma
+chère Anne?</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Countess Anna shakes her head emphatically: &quot;No; the music is too
+highly spiced and peppered for me. It bas made me quite thirsty. I long
+for a draught of prosaic beer and some Mozart.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Russian smiles, and immediately begins to tell of how she had once
+reproved Rubinstein when he ventured to say something derogatory with
+regard to Wagner.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A stout tradesman, whose poetically-inclined wife has apparently
+brought him to Bayreuth against his will, exclaims, &quot;What a humbug it
+is!&quot; to which his wife rejoins, &quot;You cannot understand it the first
+time: you must hear 'Parsifal' frequently.&quot; &quot;Very possibly,&quot; he
+declares; &quot;but I shall never hear it again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Lenzdorffs and Lord Langley take their seats at a table in the airy
+balcony of the restaurant, to drink a cup of tea: table and tea have
+been reserved for them by Lüdecke's watchful care. The greater part of
+the assemblage can scarcely find a chair upon which to sit down, or a
+glass of lemonade for refreshment. The consequence is that there is
+much unseemly pushing and crowding.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika eats nothing. Lord Langley complains, as do all Englishmen, of
+the German food, and the old Countess complains of the shrill music.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Meanwhile, a tall, striking woman advances to the table where the three
+are sitting, and where there is a fourth chair, unoccupied. &quot;<i>Vous
+pardonnez!</i>&quot; she exclaims: &quot;<i>je tombe de fatigue!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika gazes at her: it is the companion of the man who had turned to
+look at her in the theatre during the prelude. A disgust for which she
+cannot account possesses her: it is as if she were aware of the
+presence of something impure, repulsive; and yet she could not possibly
+explain why the stranger should excite such a sensation: she is
+undeniably handsome, well formed, with regularly-chiselled features,
+and fair hair dressed with great care and knotted behind beneath the
+brim of her broad Leghorn hat. A red veil is tied tightly over her
+face. There is nothing else to excite disapproval in her dress, and
+inexperienced mortals would pronounce her age to be scarcely thirty. It
+would require great familiarity with Parisian arts of the toilette to
+perceive that her whole face is painted and that she is at least forty
+years old. Everything about her is exquisitely fresh and neat, and from
+her person is wafted the peculiar aroma of those women whose chief
+occupation in life is to take care of their bodies. Her air is
+respectable, and somewhat affected.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Lord Langley, to whom her unbidden presence seems especially annoying,
+is about to intimate this to her, when her escort approaches, and,
+hastily whispering to her, obliges her to leave her place, which she
+does unwillingly and even crossly. Courteously lifting his hat, the
+young man utters an embarrassed &quot;Excuse me,&quot; and retires. She can be
+heard reproaching him petulantly as they walk away, and their places in
+the theatre remain unoccupied during the other acts of the drama.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Disgusting!&quot; mutters Lord Langley. &quot;Do you know who it was?&quot; he asks,
+turning to the Countess Anna. &quot;Lozoncyi, the young artist who created
+such a sensation a couple of years ago. She was his mistress. I
+remember her in Rome.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Although upon Erika's account the words are spoken in an undertone, she
+hears them, and the blood rushes to her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And now 'Parsifal' is over, the second act, with its fluttering
+flower-girl scene, in rather frivolous contrast with the serious motive
+of the work, its crude inharmonious decorations, and its wonderful
+dramatic finale; the third act too is over, with its sadly-sweet
+sunrise melody, its Good Friday spell resolving itself into the angelic
+music of the spheres.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">With the hovering harp-arpeggio of the final scene still thrilling in
+their souls, Erika and her grandmother with Lord Langley drive back to
+town, leaving behind them the melancholy rustle of the forest, and
+hearing around them the rolling of wheels, the cracking of whips, and
+the footsteps of hundreds of pedestrians.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Life throbs in Erika's veins more warmly than it is wont to do; she is
+filled with a vague foreboding unknown to her hitherto. She seems to
+herself to be confronting the solution of a great secret, beside which
+she has pursued her thoughtless way, and around which the entire world
+circles.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">At the door of their lodgings Lord Langley takes his leave of the
+ladies: with a lover's tenderness he slips down the glove from his
+betrothed's white wrist and imprints upon it two ardent kisses, as he
+whispers, &quot;I trust that my charming Erika will be in a more gracious
+mood to morrow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The disagreeable sensation caused by his warm breath upon her cheek was
+persistent; she could not rid herself of it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She sent away her maid, and whilst she was undressing took from her
+pocket the packet of letters which Goswyn had left with her. She had
+carried it with her all day long, without finding a moment in which to
+destroy the papers. Now she removed their outside envelope, merely to
+assure herself that they were her mother's letters. Yes, she recognized
+the handwriting,--not the strong, almost masculine characters which had
+distinguished her mother's writing in the latter years of her life, but
+the long, slanting, faded hand which Erika could remember in the old
+exercise-books of her school-days. Nothing could have tempted the girl
+to read these letters: she kissed the poor yellow sheets twice, sadly
+and reverentially, and then she held them one by one in the flame of
+her candle.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her heart was very heavy; a yearning for tenderness, for sympathy,
+possessed her, and she felt sore and discouraged. The wailing music,
+the shuddering alluring strains of sinful worldly desire, still haunted
+her soul with the glance of the stranger who seemed to her no stranger.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She felt a choking sensation at the thought of his companion. Never
+before had she come in contact with anything of the kind.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She lay down, but could not sleep. How sultry, even stifling, was the
+atmosphere! The windows of the little room were wide open, but the air
+that came in from without was heavy and inodorous: it brought no
+refreshment.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The tread of a belated pedestrian echoed in the street below, and there
+was the sound of laughter and song from some inn in the neighbourhood.
+Suddenly the door opened, and the old Countess entered, in a white
+dressing-gown and lace night-cap. She had a small lamp in her hand,
+which she put down on a table, and then, seating herself on the edge of
+the bed, she scanned the young girl with penetrating eyes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Is anything troubling you, my child?&quot; she began, after a while.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika tried to say no, but the word would not pass her lips. Instead of
+replying, she turned away her face.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What was the difficulty between Lord Langley and yourself to-day?&quot; the
+grandmother went on to ask.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika was mute.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Tell me the simple truth,&quot; the old Countess insisted. &quot;Did you not
+have some dispute this morning?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, it was nothing,&quot; Erika replied, impatiently; &quot;only--he attempted
+to play the lover, and I thought it quite unnecessary. Such folly is
+very unbecoming in a man of his age; and, besides, I cannot endure
+anything of the kind.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A strange expression appeared upon the grandmother's face,--the same
+that Goswyn had worn when his indignation had suddenly been transformed
+into pity for the girl. She cleared her throat once or twice, and then
+remarked, dryly, &quot;How then do you propose to live with Lord Langley?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika stared at her in dismay. &quot;Good heavens! I have thought very
+little about it. You know well that I do not wish to marry for love.
+That is why I accepted an old man instead of a young one,--because I
+supposed he would refrain from all lover-like folly. You have always
+told me that you married my grandfather without love, and that it
+turned out very well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother was silent for a while before she rejoined, &quot;In the
+first place, constituted as you are, I should wish for you a less
+prosaic companion for life than your grandfather; but, at the same
+time, the torture which, with your exaggerated sensitiveness, awaits
+you in marrying Lord Langley bears no comparison with the simple tedium
+of my married life. We married in compliance with a family arrangement;
+and if I did so with but a small amount of esteem for him, he for his
+part brought to the match no devouring passion for me,--which I should
+have found most annoying. But the case is entirely different with Lord
+Langley. He is as desperately in love with you as an old fool can be
+whose passion is stimulated by the consciousness of his age.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Something in the horrified face of the inexperienced young girl must
+have intensified the old Countess's pity for her. &quot;My poor child, I had
+no idea of your innocence and inexperience. I have lived on from day to
+day without in the least comprehending the young creature beside me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She kissed the girl with infinite tenderness, put out the light, and
+left her alone, her burning face buried in the pillows and sobbing
+convulsively, a picture of despair.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The next day Erika broke her engagement to Lord Langley.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika's betrothal to Lord Langley had produced a sensation in society,
+but it had been regarded as a very sensible arrangement. The girl had
+been envied, and all had declared that her ambition had achieved its
+aim in a marriage with an English peer. Malice had not been silent: she
+had been credited with heartlessness,--but then she had done vastly
+well for herself. The announcement that the engagement was dissolved
+gave rise to all sorts of reports. No one knew the real reason of the
+breach, and had it been known it would not have been credited.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The belief steadily gained ground that Lord Langley had been the first
+to withdraw, dismayed by the discovery of Erika's objectionable
+relative Strachinsky, and shocked by the girl's heartless treatment of
+him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Countess Brock furnished the material for this report, the Princess
+Dorothea detailed it with various additions, and in the eyes of Berlin
+society Erika was nothing more than an ambitious blunderer who had
+experienced a tremendous rebuff. It was edifying to hear Dorothea
+descant upon this theme, winding up her remarks with, &quot;I do not pity
+Erika,--I never liked her,--but poor old Countess Lenzdorff. She has
+always been one of Aunt Brock's friends.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">There had been an apparent change in the Princess Dorothea from the day
+when she had publicly insulted Goswyn von Sydow in Charlottenburg
+Avenue. The story had been told greatly to her discredit, and not only
+had her cousin Prince Helmy forsworn his allegiance to her, but the
+other men who had been present at that memorable interview had since
+held aloof from her. She found herself compelled to attract a fresh
+circle of admirers,--which she did at the sacrifice of every remnant of
+good taste which she yet possessed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">After this for a while she pursued her madly gay career; but for a year
+past there had been a change. The number of her admirers had greatly
+diminished,--was reduced, indeed, to a Prince Orbanoff, who was now her
+shadow. She boasted of her good resolutions, went to church every
+Sunday, was shocked at the women who read French novels, and was
+altogether rather a prudish character.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Society held itself on the defensive, and did not put much faith in her
+boasted virtue. But when she calumniated Erika society believed her; at
+least this was the case with the society of envious young beauties whom
+she met every Friday at the 'wicked fairy's,' where they made clothes
+for the poor.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">When, late in the autumn, the Lenzdorffs returned to Berlin, supposing
+that the little episode of Erika's betrothal was already forgotten by
+society, they were met on all sides by a malicious show of sympathy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika regarded all this with utter indifference, and withdrew from all
+gaiety as far as she could, but the old Countess fretted and fumed with
+indignation.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She could not comprehend why all the world could not view Erika from
+her own point of view; and her exaggerated defence of the girl
+contributed to make Erika's position still more disagreeable. Moreover,
+age was beginning to cast its first shadows over the Countess's clear
+mind. She was especially annoyed, also, by Goswyn's holding aloof. He
+had replied courteously, but with extreme reserve, to the Countess's
+letter informing him, not without exultation, of the breaking of
+Erika's engagement. This was as it should be; but when the answer to a
+second letter written much later was quite as reserved, the old
+Countess was vexed and impatient. Erika insisted upon reading this
+second epistle herself. Her hands trembled as she held it, and when she
+had finished it she laid it on the table without a word, and left the
+room as pale as ashes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">To the grandmother, whose heart was filled with tenderness, all the
+more intense because it had been first aroused in her old age, her
+grand-daughter's evident pain was intolerable. After a while she went
+to her in her room. The girl was sitting at the window, erect and pale.
+She had a book in her hand, and the Countess observed that she held it
+upside down.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Erika,&quot; she said, tenderly laying her hand on the girl's shoulder, &quot;I
+only wanted to tell you----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika arose, cold and courteous. &quot;You wanted to tell me--what?&quot; she
+asked, as she laid aside her book.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;That--that----&quot; Erika's dry manner embarrassed her a little, but after
+a pause she went on: &quot;I wanted to tell you not to take any fancies into
+your head with regard to Goswyn.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Fancies? Of what kind?&quot; Erika asked, calmly, becoming absorbed in the
+contemplation of her almond-shaped nails.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You would do him great injustice by supposing that his regard for you
+is one whit less than it ever was.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Indeed! I should do him injustice?&quot; Erika questioned in the same
+unnaturally quiet tone. &quot;I think not. It is not my fashion to deceive
+myself. I know perfectly well that--that I have sunk in Goswyn's
+esteem; it is a very unpleasant conviction, I confess; and, to be
+frank, I would rather you did not mention the subject again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But, Erika, if you would only listen,&quot; the old Countess persisted. &quot;He
+adores you. His pride alone keeps him from you: you are too wealthy;
+your social position is too brilliant.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika waved aside this explanation of affairs. &quot;Say no more,&quot; she
+cried. &quot;I know what I know! But you must not waste your pity upon me:
+my vanity is wounded, not my heart. I value Goswyn highly, and it
+troubles me that he no longer admires me as he did, but, I assure you,
+I have not the slightest desire to marry him. I pray you to believe
+this: at least it may prevent you, perhaps, from throwing me at his
+head a second time, without my knowledge. If you do it, I declare to
+you, I will reject him.&quot; As she uttered the last words, the girl's
+self-command forsook her, her voice had a hard metallic ring in it, and
+her eyes flashed angrily.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother turned and left the room with bowed head.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Scarcely had the sound of her footsteps died away when Erika locked her
+door, threw herself upon her bed, buried her face in the pillows, and
+burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">What she had declared to her grandmother was in a measure true: she
+herself supposed it to be entirely true. She really had no wish to
+marry, and there was in her heart no trace of passionate sentiment for
+Goswyn, but she was bruised and sore, and she longed for the tender
+sympathy he had always shown her. At times she would fain have fled to
+him from the cold judgment and scrutiny of the world.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">After she had relieved herself by tears, she understood herself more
+clearly. Sitting on the edge of her bed, her handkerchief crushed into
+a ball in her hand, she said, half aloud, &quot;I have lied to my
+grandmother. If he had come I would have married him,--yes, without
+loving him; but it would have been wrong: no one has a right to marry
+such a man as Goswyn out of sheer despair because one does not know in
+what direction to throw away one's life. But why think of it? He does
+not care for me. Why, why did my grandmother write to him? I cannot
+bear it!&quot;</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">A few days afterwards the Lenzdorffs left Berlin, to spend the winter
+in Rome, where Erika, incited thereto by her grandmother, went into
+society perpetually, without taking the least pleasure in it. And she
+made no secret of her indifference, her discontent. The bark of her
+existence, once so safe and sure in its course, seemed to have lost its
+bearings: she saw no aim in life worthy the effort to pursue it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She indulged in fits of causeless melancholy; yet all the while her
+beauty bloomed out into fuller perfection, and all unconsciously to
+herself life throbbed within her and demanded its right. The old
+Countess, who did not understand her condition, looked upon it as a
+morbid crisis in the girl's life; but she never dreamed how fraught
+with danger the crisis was.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Thus she utterly failed to appreciate or to sympathize with her
+grand-daughter; and, whether because of her exaggerated admiration for
+her, or because her age was beginning to tell upon her powers of
+perception, she did not suspect the slow approach of the fever which
+had begun to undermine the young creature's existence.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Towards the end of February, just at the close of the Carnival, Erika
+told her grandmother that she was heartily tired of Rome, and wished to
+see Italy from some other point of view.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">After much deliberation, Venice was chosen for their next abode; and
+here the old Countess refused to follow the usual custom of foreigners
+and rent a palazzo: she declared that in Venice true comfort was to be
+found only in a hotel. So a suite of rooms was hired in the Hotel
+Britannia,--four airy apartments, in which their predecessor had been a
+crowned head, and two of which looked out upon the church of Santa
+Maria della Salute, whilst the other two had a view of the small garden
+of the hotel, and, across its low wall, of the Grand Canal.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Of course they had a gondola for their own private use; but Erika was
+not fond of availing herself of it. The rocking motion, the monotonous
+plash of the water, excited still further her irritated nerves; she
+preferred taking long walks,--at first, out of deference to her
+grandmother's wishes, accompanied by the maid Marianne. She soon tired,
+however, of such uncongenial companionship, and induced her grandmother
+to allow her to pursue alone her investigations of the corners and
+by-ways of Venice. She explored the curiosity-shops, spent whole days
+in the galleries, and made wonderful discoveries in the way of bargains
+in old stuffs and artistic antiquities, until her little salon became a
+museum of such treasures. In one corner stood a grand piano, seated at
+which at times she poured out her soul in all that is most beautiful
+and most tragic in music.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old Countess left her to pursue her own path, and occupied herself
+very differently.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In spite of her original and independent view of life, and her
+readiness to criticise frankly all that was artificial and
+conventional, she loved <i>les chemins battus</i>. She went the way of the
+multitude,--saw nothing of Venetian by-ways, but devoted her time to
+museums and works of art, being indefatigable in her daily round of
+sight-seeing. And yet, although her health seemed as robust as
+ever, and she could apparently endure far more fatigue than her
+grand-daughter, she was no longer what she had been.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her extraordinary memory began to fail, and the interest which formerly
+had been excited only by affairs of some moment was now ready to be
+aroused in petty concerns. She took pleasure in gossip, allowed
+Marianne to detail to her scraps of the Venetian <i>chronique
+scandaleuse</i> picked up from the couriers in the hotel, and, worst of
+all, the fine edge of her moral sentiment seemed in a degree blunted.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She would repeat to Erika, without the slightest idea of the pain she
+was inflicting, stories and reports of a nature to offend the girl's
+sense of morality and delicacy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Nothing any longer shocked her: love and hatred of her kind seemed
+blunted under the influence of a low estimate of human nature which she
+called a philosophic view of life.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She simply never observed how Erika's cheeks burned when she suddenly
+disclosed to her the lapse from virtue, hidden from the superficial
+world, of some woman whom they had met in society; she never perceived
+the girl's feverish agitation upon hearing her grandmother calmly
+advance all sorts of excuses for the so-called indiscretion. She did
+not suppose her revelations could affect Erika disagreeably; although
+Erika did not always allow her to talk on without interruption; she
+would sometimes bluntly declare that she could not believe what her
+grandmother thus told her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Then the old Countess would reply, &quot;I really cannot see what reason you
+have to disbelieve it. You cannot alter human nature by shutting your
+eyes to its defects.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Whereupon Erika would say, with annihilating emphasis, &quot;If human nature
+really is what you describe it, I cannot understand your pleasure in
+frequenting society, since you must despise unutterably those who
+compose it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Despise!&quot; her grandmother repeated, shaking her head. &quot;I despise no
+one. Knowing, as I do, how mankind struggles under the burden of animal
+instincts, I wonder to see it ever rise above them, and I am forced to
+esteem men in spite of everything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika only repeated, angrily, &quot;Esteem! esteem!&quot; Her grandmother's mode
+of esteeming mankind was certainly extraordinary.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">The Princess Dorothea was pacing her salon restlessly to and fro. From
+time to time she gazed out of the window into the dreary Berlin March
+weather, upon the heaps of dirty snow shovelled up on each side of the
+street and slowly melting beneath the falling rain.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Princess was annoyed. She had been left out in the invitation to a
+court ball. Usually she would have ascribed the omission to an
+oversight of the authorities, but to-day the matter disturbed her:
+instead of an oversight she suspected the omission to have been an
+intentional slight, and her steps as she walked to and fro were short
+and impatient.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Why were they so frightfully moral in Berlin, so aggressively moral?
+she asked herself. Everywhere else people might do as they chose, if
+only appearances were preserved.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">What had she done, after all? Long ago in Florence Feistmantel had
+explained to her that marriage, as arranged in civilized countries, was
+entirely unnatural. The Princess, still pure, in spite of the
+degradation about her, had laughed aloud at the philosophic view thus
+advanced by her companion and guide. Years afterwards she had recalled
+this theory that it might serve to justify herself to herself; and
+lately--only yesterday--Feistmantel, who was established in Berlin and
+gave music-lessons in the most aristocratic circles, had enunciated the
+same views at a breakfast to which Dorothea had invited her, and the
+Princess had contradicted her positively, had been rude to her, had
+nearly turned her out of doors, but at the last moment had apologized
+almost humbly and had finally dismissed her with a handsome present.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She had suspected behind Feistmantel's assertion of her philosophic
+view a mean attempt to ingratiate herself with her hostess. &quot;As if
+Feistmantel could suspect anything! No human being can suspect
+anything,&quot; she repeated several times. &quot;And, after all, there is
+scarcely a woman, beautiful and admired, who is not worse than I.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the midst of all her superficiality and moral recklessness, she had
+always been characterized by a certain frankness, which at times had
+passed the bounds of decorum; now she writhed under a burden of
+hypocrisy which weighed most heavily upon her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And why was this so?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It had all been the gradual result of the tedium of the life she led. A
+man more coarse and rough than any of her other admirers had paid court
+to her in a way that flattered her vanity; he amused her, he brought
+some variety into her life; his lavishness was astounding. Once when he
+had lost a wager to her he brought her a diamond necklace in an Easter
+egg.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She knew that this was wrong, but she had been wont as a girl to accept
+presents from men, and then she had an almost morbid delight in
+diamonds. And what stones these were!--a chain of dew-drops glittering
+in the morning sun! And he had so careless a way of throwing the costly
+gift into her lap, as if it had been the merest trifle.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She could not resist wearing the necklace once at the next court
+ball,--explaining to her husband, who understood nothing of such
+things, that she had purchased it for a mere song at a sale of old
+jewelry.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She intended to return it; but she did not return it. From that moment
+he had her in his power. He lured her on as a serpent lures a bird,
+extorting from her one innocent concession after another, until one
+day---- Good God! if she could but obliterate the memory of that day!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">To call the torment which she suffered from that time stings of
+conscience would be to invest it with ideality. No, she felt no stings
+of conscience; her moral sense was entirely blunted; but she was
+enraged with herself for having fallen into the snare; her pride was
+humbled in the dust, and she was in mortal dread of discovery. She was
+a coward to the core. What would she not have given to be free? She
+would have broken with her lover ten times, but that she feared him
+more than she did her husband.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He was a Russian, fabulously wealthy, and notorious in the Parisian
+demi-monde which he habitually frequented. Orbanoff was his name, and
+outside of his own country he was credited with princely rank to which
+he had no title,--a man with no moral sense, brutal on occasion, with
+no idea of the laws of honour prevailing in Western Europe, but of an
+undoubted physical courage, which helped him to maintain his present
+position.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Princess Dorothea was convinced that should she break with him he would
+commit some reckless, impossible crime.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Oh, if he would only release her! She began to build castles in the
+air. Never, never again would she be concerned in such an adventure.
+All the romances that she had read were lies: there was nothing in the
+world more hateful than just this. Only once in her life had she been
+conscious of any real preference for a man, and that had been for her
+cousin Helmy; now of all men her own clumsy, thoroughly honourable and
+intensely good-natured husband was the dearest. He was at present on
+his estate in Silesia, where he was much happier than in the society of
+the capital. Dorothea had made him so uncomfortable in Berlin that he
+always stayed as long as possible in Silesia.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">To-day she longed for him; she wanted him to take her on his knee and
+soothe her like a tired child, and then to have him carry her in his
+strong arms down the broad staircase of his old castle in Kossnitz, as
+he used to do when they were first married. Yes, she longed for his
+strong supporting arm.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Ah, if she were only free! She would turn her back on Berlin and go
+with him to Kossnitz. She positively hungered for Kossnitz,--for the
+odour of stone and whitewash in the broad corridors, for the airy, bare
+rooms, for the farm-yard with the brown farm-buildings. How picturesque
+it must all look now in the snow!--for the snow was still deep in
+Silesia. They would go sleighing: oh, how delicious it would be to rush
+along, warmly wrapped up, with only her face exposed to the fresh
+wintry breeze, the sleigh-bells ringing merrily, the horses mad with
+their exciting gallop, the snow-clad forest gleaming silvery white
+around them!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And how delicious would be the supper when they got home!--she would
+have done with all fashionable division of the day: they would dine at
+one, and she would have potatoes in their skins at supper-time,--she
+had not had them since she was a child,--and black bread, and sour
+milk:--how she liked sour milk!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">One hope she had. Was it not Orbanoff whom she had seen last night in
+the background of the box of a young actress? It was not his habit to
+conceal himself on such occasions: probably he had been thus discreet
+on her account. An idea suddenly occurred to her. What an opportunity
+this might afford her to recover her freedom! All she had to do was to
+feign furious jealousy, and break with her dangerous lover without
+wounding his vanity.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">On the instant she felt relieved, and even gay, in the light of this
+hope.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The clock struck five,--the hour of her appointment with Orbanoff.
+Without ringing for her maid, she dressed herself in the plainest of
+walking-costumes and left the house. She walked for some distance, then
+hired a droschky and was driven to a shop in Potsdam Street, where she
+dismissed the vehicle, bought some trifle, and walked on still farther
+before hiring another conveyance.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">At about eight o'clock of the same day, Goswyn von Sydow, who had
+lately been transferred to Berlin, where he was acting as adjutant to
+an exalted personage, issued from the low door of a small house in a
+side-street where he had attended the baptism of the first-born son of
+one of his early friends, a young fellow of decided talent, who had
+married a girl without a fortune, and who did not at all regret his
+choice. The home was modest enough, but was so unmistakably the abode
+of the truest happiness that Sydow could not but envy his friend his
+lot in life. How pleasant it had all been!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He lighted a cigar, but held it idly between his fingers without
+smoking it, and reflected upon his own requirements in a
+wife,--requirements which one woman alone could fulfil, and she----</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Could he forget his pride, and try his fortune once more? His heart
+throbbed. No! under the circumstances, he could not. He never could
+forget that he had been taunted with Erika's wealth. Even if he could
+win her love, their marriage would begin with a discord.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">If she were but poor!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The blood tingled rapturously in his veins at the thought of how, if
+trial or misfortune should befall her, he might take her to his arms
+and soothe and cheer her, making her rich with his devotion and
+tenderness. He suddenly stood still, as if some obstacle lay in his
+path. Had he really been capable of selfishly invoking trouble and
+trial upon Erika's head? He looked about him like one awaking from a
+dream.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Just at his elbow a young woman glided out of a large house with
+several doors. He scarcely noticed her at first, but all at once he
+drew a long breath. How strange that he should perceive that peculiar
+fragrance, the rare perfume used by his sister-in-law, Dorothea! He
+could have sworn that Dorothea was near. He looked around: there was no
+one to be seen save the girl who had just slipped by him, a poorly-clad
+girl carrying a bundle.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He had not fairly looked at her before, but now--it was strange--in the
+distance she resembled his sister-in-law: it was certainly she.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He was on the point of hurrying after her to make sure, but second
+thoughts told him that it really mattered nothing to him whether it
+were she or not: it was not his part to play the spy upon her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He turned and walked back in the opposite direction, that he might not
+see her. As he passed the house whence she had come, a man muffled in
+furs issued from the same door-way. The two men looked each other in
+the face. Goswyn recognized Orbanoff.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">For a moment each maintained what seemed an embarrassed silence. The
+Russian was the first to recover himself. &quot;<i>Mais bon soir</i>,&quot; he
+exclaimed, with great cordiality. &quot;<i>Je ne vous remettais pas</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn touched his cap and passed on. He no longer doubted.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">The next morning Dorothea von Sydow awaked, after a sound refreshing
+sleep, with a very light heart. She was free! All had gone well. She
+had first regaled Orbanoff with a frightfully jealous scene to spare
+his vanity, but in the end they had resolved upon a separation <i>à
+l'aimable</i>, and the Princess Dorothea had then made merry, declaring
+that their love should have a gay funeral; whereupon she had partaken
+of the champagne supper that had been prepared for her, had chatted
+gaily with Orbanoff, had listened to his stories, and they had parted
+forever with a laugh.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Now she was sitting by the fire in her dressing-room, comfortably
+ensconced in an arm-chair, dressed in a gray dressing-gown trimmed with
+fur, looking excessively pretty, and sipping chocolate from an
+exquisite cup of Berlin porcelain. &quot;Thank God, it is over!&quot; she said to
+herself again and again.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But, superficial as she was, she could not quite convince herself that
+her relations with Orbanoff were of no more consequence than a bad
+dream.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She felt no remorse, but a gnawing discontent: she would have given
+much to be able to obliterate her worse than folly. She sighed; then
+she yawned.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She still longed for her husband and Kossnitz: she would leave
+Berlin this very evening for Silesia and surprise him. How delighted he
+would be! She clapped her hands like a child. Suddenly--it was
+intolerable--again she was conscious of that gnawing discontent. Could
+she never forget? And all for what she had never cared for in the
+least. She thrust both her hands among her short curls and began
+to sob violently. Just then the door of the room opened; a tall,
+broad-shouldered man with a kindly, florid face entered. She looked up,
+startled as by a thunderclap. The new arrival gazed at her tearful
+face, and, hastening towards her, exclaimed, &quot;My dear little Thea, what
+in heaven's name is the matter?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She clasped her arms about his neck as she had never done before. He
+pressed his lips to hers.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn was sitting at his writing-table,--an enormous piece of
+furniture, somewhat in disarray,--trying to read. But it would not do;
+and at last he gave it up. He was distressed, disgusted beyond measure,
+at his discovery with regard to Dorothea. The Sydows had hitherto
+prided themselves upon the purity of their women as upon the honour of
+their men. Nothing like that which he had discovered had ever happened
+in the family. He had suspected the mischief before; since yesterday he
+had been sure.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Must he look calmly on? What else could he do? To open his brother's
+eyes, to play the accuser, was impossible. Yes, he must look on calmly.
+He clinched his fist. At that moment he heard a familiar deep voice
+outside the room, questioning his servant. &quot;Otto! What is he doing in
+Berlin?&quot; he asked himself; &quot;and he seems in a merry mood.&quot; He sprang
+up. The door opened, and Otto rushed in, rough, clumsy as usual, but
+beaming with happiness. He laid his broad hand upon his brother's
+shoulder, and cried,--</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;How are you, old fellow? Why, you look down in the dumps. Anything
+gone wrong?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Nothing,&quot; Goswyn declared, doing his best to look delighted.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Is everything all right?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Everything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;That's as it should be. I suppose you are surprised to see me drop
+down from the skies in this fashion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I am indeed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'Tis quite a story. But I say, Gos, how comfortable you are here!&quot; and
+he began to stride to and fro in the bachelor apartment; &quot;although you
+don't waste much time or money in decoration, old fellow: not a pretty
+woman on the walls. H'm! my room looked rather different in my bachelor
+days. What have you done with your gallery of beauties, Gos?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I bequeathed all my youthful follies to my cousin Brock, who got his
+lieutenancy six weeks ago,&quot; said Goswyn, to whom his brother's chatter
+was especially distasteful to-day.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;H'm! h'm! you're right: you're getting quite too old for such
+nonsense.&quot; And Otto stooped to examine two or three photographs that
+adorned his brother's writing-table. &quot;That's a capital picture of old
+Countess Lenzdorff,&quot; he exclaimed,--&quot;capital! Here is our father when
+he was young,--I look like him,--and here is Uncle Goswyn, our famous
+hero, killed in a duel at thirty years of age. They say old Countess
+Lenzdorff was in love with him. As if she could ever have been in love!
+And you look like him: our mother always said so. Oh, here is our
+mother!&quot; He took the faded picture, in its old-fashioned frame, to the
+window to examine it. &quot;This is the best picture there is of her,&quot; he
+said. &quot;Think of your ever being that pretty little rogue in a white
+frock in her arms, and I that boy in breeches by her side! Comical, but
+very attractive, such a picture of a young mother with her children.
+How she clasps you in her arms! She always loved you best. Where did
+you get this picture?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My mother gave it to me when I was quite young. She brought it to me
+when she came to see me in my first garrison, shortly before her
+death,&quot; said Goswyn.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I remember; you had been wounded in your first duel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes; she came to nurse me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah, you've a deal on your conscience. No one would believe you were
+worse than I; but&quot;--with a look at the picture--&quot;I'd give a great deal
+for such a little fellow as that.&quot; And he put the picture back in its
+place with a care that was unlike him, and that touched Goswyn.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">With his usual want of tact, Otto proceeded to efface the pleasant
+impression he had produced. &quot;Have you no picture of the Lenzdorff
+girl?&quot; he asked, looking round the room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I may have one somewhere,&quot; Goswyn replied, evasively. Indeed, he had a
+charming picture of her in the first bloom of her maiden loveliness;
+but he kept it behind lock and key, that no profane eye might rest upon
+his treasure.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What a tone you take!&quot; Otto rejoined. &quot;Why, she was a flame of yours.
+A capital girl, only rather too full of crotchets: she was always a
+little too high up in the sky for me, but she would have suited you. I
+cannot understand why you did not seize your chance----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Now you are going too far,&quot; Goswyn said, with some irritation. &quot;Do not
+pretend that you do not know that Erika Lenzdorff rejected me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What!&quot; exclaimed Otto, in some dismay. &quot;True, I remember hearing
+something of the kind; but that was a hundred years ago. Forgive me,
+Gos: the 'no' of a girl of eighteen who looks at one as the young
+Countess looked at you ought not to be taken seriously. Why don't you
+try your luck a second time? You cannot attach any importance to that
+intermezzo with the Englishman! Why, you are made for each other; and
+she is quite wealthy, too----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Otto, for God's sake stop marching up and down the room like a lion in
+a cage,&quot; cried Goswyn, unable to bear it any longer; &quot;do sit down like
+a reasonable creature and tell me how you come to appear so
+unexpectedly in Berlin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Otto lit a cigar and obediently seated himself in an arm-chair opposite
+his brother. &quot;'Tis quite a story,&quot; he began, just as he had a quarter
+of an hour before.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You've told me that already.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Now, don't be so impatient. I know I am rather slow at explanations.
+You see, Gos, of late matters have not gone quite right between Thea
+and myself. There is sure to be fault on both sides in such cases: I
+could not be satisfied with the stupid life here in town, and she did
+not care for Silesia, so we agreed that I should stay at home, while
+she diverted herself for a while in town, and perhaps she would come
+back to me and be more contented in the end. I know that certain people
+disapproved of my course; but I had my reasons. There's no good in
+fretting a nervous horse: better give it the rein. But the time seemed
+long to me, she wrote so seldom and her letters were so incoherent. In
+short,&quot;--he suddenly began to be embarrassed,--&quot;I got some foolish
+notions into my head, and so, without letting her know, I appeared in
+Berlin this morning. And how do you think I found poor Thea? Sitting
+crying by the fire. Just think of it, Gos! Of course I was frightened,
+and did all that I could to comfort her, and when she was calm I asked
+her what was the matter. Homesickness, Gos! Yes, a longing for the old
+home and for the clumsy bear who is, after all, nearer to her than any
+other human being. She reproached me for neglecting her,--said I had
+not even expressed a wish in my letters to see her, and she was just on
+the point of starting for Kossnitz; and she was jealous too,--poor
+little goose! In short, there were all sorts of a misunderstanding, and
+the end of it all was that she begged me--begged me like a child--to
+carry her back to Kossnitz. I wish you could have heard her describe
+our life together there! She would not hear of my going a few days
+before to make ready for her, but clung to me as if we had been but
+just married. What is the matter with you, Gos?&quot; for his brother had
+walked to a window, where he stood with his back turned to Otto,
+looking out.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What could be the matter?&quot; Goswyn forced himself to reply.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Then why do you stand looking out of the window as if you took not the
+least interest in what I am telling you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Forgive me: there is a crowd in the street about a horse that has
+fallen down.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Very well: if every broken-down hack in the street can interest you
+more than what is next my heart, there is no use in my talking. But I
+know what it is; you were always unjust to Thea; you never understood
+her. Adieu!&quot; And Otto took his hat and walked towards the door.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn conquered himself. What affair was it of his if his brother was
+happy in an illusion? he ought to do all that he could to prevent his
+eyes from being opened.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He laid his hand upon Otto's arm and said, kindly, &quot;Forgive me, Otto;
+you must not take it ill if such a confirmed old bachelor as I does not
+share as he should in your happiness; it all seems so foreign to such a
+life as mine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Otto's brow cleared. &quot;I was silly,&quot; he confessed. &quot;I ought not to have
+been so irritable. Poor Gos! But indeed I should rejoice from my heart
+if you could marry. There is nothing like it in the world. You need not
+frown: I never will mention the subject to any one else.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, yes, Otto. And when are you going home?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;To-morrow. We are going to spend a few weeks at Kossnitz, and then we
+are to take a trip together. I came to ask you if you would not lunch
+with us to-day, that we might see something of you in comfort. This
+room of yours is decidedly cold. Do you never have it any warmer?
+Dorothea especially begs you to come,--at one o'clock.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Indeed! does Dorothea want me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Gos!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I will come. I have one or two things to attend to, but I will be with
+you in half an hour.&quot; And the brothers parted.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">A few hours have passed. Goswyn had appeared punctually at lunch, and
+had done his best not to be a spoil-sport. They were now sitting by the
+fire in the little <i>salon</i> in which they had taken coffee, Goswyn and
+his brother. The early twilight began to make itself felt, but no
+object was as yet indistinct.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Dorothea had gone out to inform her aunt Brock of her projected
+departure and to ask her to make a few farewell calls for her. She had
+met Goswyn with such gay indifference that he had been puzzled indeed,
+and had finally begun to believe that he had been mistaken,--that the
+person whom he had supposed to be Dorothea Sydow was not she at all.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Something had happened in her life, however; of that he was convinced.
+Never had Dorothea been so simply charming. She gave him her hand in
+token of reconciliation, alluded, not without regret, to her defective
+education, told an anecdote or two with much grace and in a softened
+tone of voice, and clung to Otto like an ailing child.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;We are going to begin all over again,--all over again,&quot; she repeated,
+adding, &quot;And when Gos has forgotten what a bad creature I used to be,
+and that he could not bear me, he will come and see us at Kossnitz:
+won't you, Gos? You shall see how pleasant I will make it for you
+there. You have absolutely hated me; or perhaps you thought me not
+worth hating,--you only detested me as one detests a caterpillar or a
+spider. I confess, I hated you. I always felt as if I ought to be
+ashamed in your presence; and that is not a pleasant sensation.&quot; She
+laughed, the old giggling silvery laugh, but there was a pathetic tone
+in it as she brushed away the tears from her eyes, and left the room,
+to return in a few moments, fresh and smiling, equipped for her walk.
+She kissed her husband by way of farewell, and held out her hand to
+Goswyn. &quot;Shall I find you here when I return, Gos?&quot; she asked, just
+before the door closed behind her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There is no one like her!&quot; murmured Otto. &quot;And to think that I could
+ever fancy a bachelor existence a pleasant one! But all is different
+now.&quot; The good fellow's eyes were moist as he passed his hand over
+them.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Shortly afterwards they heard a ring at the outside door. &quot;Some
+visitor,--the deuce!&quot; growled Otto. Goswyn looked about for his sabre,
+which he had stood in a corner.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But it was no visitor. Dorothea's maid entered. &quot;A package has come for
+her Excellency,&quot; she announced. &quot;Perhaps the Herr Baron will sign the
+receipt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Give it to me, Jenny.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Sydow signed it, and then said, &quot;And give me the package. I will hand
+it to your mistress.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The maid gave it to him: it was a thick sealed envelope.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A dreadful suspicion flashed upon Goswyn's mind: in an instant he
+guessed the truth. What if it should occur to his brother to open the
+envelope? Apparently he had no thought of doing so: he simply laid it
+upon Dorothea's writing-table, a pretty, useless piece of furniture,
+much carved and decorated. Goswyn felt relieved. He suddenly became
+garrulous, talked of the latest political complication, told the last
+story of the intense piety of the Countess Waldersee, as narrated by
+the Prince at a recent supper-party, and described the four magnificent
+horses sent by the Sultan to the Emperor.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Otto sat with his back to the ominous packet. It did not escape Goswyn
+that he became very monosyllabic and did not show much interest in his
+brother's conversation.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;If she would only return!&quot; Goswyn thought to himself. He was convinced
+that the packet contained Dorothea's letters to Orbanoff. He had not
+been mistaken the previous evening: it had been Dorothea who had passed
+him, evidently returning to her home from a last interview. The affair,
+odious as it was, was at an end: Dorothea was relieved that it was so.
+She was not fitted to engage in a dangerous intrigue.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Suddenly Otto began to sniff, as if perceiving some odour in the air.
+&quot;'Tis odd,&quot; he said. &quot;Don't you perceive a peculiar fragrance? If it
+were not too silly, I should say that it smells like Dorothea.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;That would not be odd,&quot; his brother rejoined, &quot;since she left the room
+only half an hour ago.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But I did not perceive it before,&quot; Otto said; and then, with sudden
+irritability, turning towards the writing-table, he added, &quot;It is that
+confounded packet!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It probably contains something of Dorothea's which she has
+accidentally left at a friend's.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But Otto had taken the packet from the table. He turned it over. &quot;I
+know the seal,--a die with the motto <i>va banque</i>: it is Orbanoff's
+seal!&quot; His breath came quick. &quot;What can Orbanoff have sent her?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Probably some political treatise. I do not see how it can interest
+you,&quot; said Goswyn.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Once more Otto turned the packet over in his hands. He seemed about to
+lay it down on the writing-table again; then, at the last moment,
+before Goswyn could bethink himself, he opened it hastily. About a
+dozen short notes, in Dorothea's childish handwriting, fell out, then a
+note of Orbanoff's. Otto's eyes were riveted upon it with a glassy
+stare; he could not yet comprehend. Then with a sudden cry he crushed
+the note together, tossed it to Goswyn, and buried his face in his
+hands.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A dull, brooding silence followed. Goswyn held the note in his hand,
+without reading it: it was not for him to pry curiously into his
+brother's anguish and disgrace.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">After a while Otto raised his head. &quot;What have you to say?&quot; he
+exclaimed, bitterly. &quot;That such another idiot as I does not live upon
+the earth? Say it! Ah, you have not read the note, Goswyn. Why do you
+look at me so? Could you have known---- Oh, my God! my God!&quot; The strong
+man buried his face in his hands again, and sobbed hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn was terribly distressed. He had never known his brother to weep
+since his childhood. He would far rather have had him fall into a fury.
+But no; he was weeping: the sense of disgrace was drowned in agony.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Before long he collected himself, ashamed of his weakness, and there
+was the quiet of despair in the face he lifted to Goswyn.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You knew it--since when?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I know nothing,&quot; Goswyn replied.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No, you know nothing,--good God! who ever knows anything in such
+affairs?--but you suspected, did you not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn was silent.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Perhaps you can tell me how many people in Berlin--suspect it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn bit his lip. What reply could he make? after a while he began:
+&quot;Otto, I would have given anything in the world to prevent you from
+learning it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Indeed!&quot; Otto interrupted him. &quot;You would have let me go through life
+grinning amiably, ridiculously, with a stain on my name at which people
+would point contemptuously, and you never would have told me of that
+stain? Goswyn!&quot; He started up; Goswyn also arose, and the brothers
+confronted each other beside the hearth, upon which the fire had fallen
+into glowing embers and ashes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I ought certainly to have given Dorothea opportunity to expiate her
+fault. She was in the right path,&quot; said Goswyn. &quot;The result of her
+frivolity had caused her a panic of terror: the entire affair had been
+a burden to her from the beginning, as you can see by her relief that
+it is at an end. One must take her as she is. All this has less
+significance for Dorothea than for any other woman whom I know. It has
+not entered into her soul. It has left nothing behind it but a horror
+of it all from beginning to end.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Otto looked suspiciously at his brother. Was this Goswyn who talked
+thus?--Goswyn the strict,--Goswyn, so uncompromising where honour was
+concerned?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Yes, it was Goswyn; there was no denying it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And you think that I should--I should--forgive?&quot; murmured Otto,
+hoarsely, as if ashamed to utter the words.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;If you can so far conquer yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Otto stooped and picked up the letters that had fallen upon the floor.
+He glanced through one of them. &quot;There is not much tenderness in these
+lines, I must say.&quot; And he dropped at his side the hand holding the
+packet.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;One piece of advice I must give you,&quot; said Goswyn, with a coldness in
+his tone which he could not quite disguise. &quot;If you forgive, you must
+have the strength of soul to forgive absolutely. If you forgive, throw
+those letters into the fire: Dorothea must never learn that you know
+anything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes,&quot; Otto said, dully. Suddenly he went close to Goswyn, and, looking
+him full in the eye, said, between his teeth, &quot;Would you forgive?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn started. He had no answer ready. &quot;I--I never should have married
+Dorothea,&quot; he said, evasively.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I understand,&quot; Otto said, in the same hoarse whisper. &quot;You never would
+have forgiven; but it is all right for stupid Otto.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Again there was a distressing pause. Otto had turned away from his
+brother, with an inarticulate exclamation of pain. Goswyn gave him some
+moments in which to recover himself; then, laying his hand on his
+brother's arm, he said, &quot;Do not take it so ill of me, Otto; I have no
+doubt I talk foolishly. I cannot decide; I am confused.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No wonder,&quot; groaned Otto. &quot;The position is a novel one for you: there
+has never been anything like it in our family. Oh, God!&quot; he struck his
+forehead with his clinched fist; &quot;I cannot believe it! I used to be
+jealous at times, but of no special person. Never, never could I have
+believed,--never!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Otto.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Since you cannot bring yourself to forgive----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Since I cannot bring myself to forgive----&quot; Otto repeated, with bowed
+head.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You must at least look the matter boldly in the face and decide what
+to do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Decide--what--to do----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Are you going to procure a divorce?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Otto stood motionless. Goswyn laid his hand upon his shoulder; Otto
+shrank from his touch. &quot;Leave me, Gos!&quot; he gasped. &quot;I beg you, go!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The clock on Dorothea's writing-table struck: the tone was almost like
+that of Dorothea's voice. Goswyn looked round. Six o'clock. At seven he
+was invited to dine with a great personage,--an invitation tantamount
+to a command: he could not be absent. It was high time for him to go
+home to dress, but he could not bear to leave Otto alone.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I must go,&quot; he said, &quot;but I entreat you to come with me; you must not
+see Dorothea just now, and the fresh air will do you good and clear
+your thoughts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why should they be clearer than they are?&quot; Otto said, wearily and with
+intense bitterness. &quot;I see more than you think. But go,--go: in a few
+minutes she will be here, and it would be more terrible to me than I
+can tell you to see her before you. No need to say more: I know that
+you will stand by me through thick and thin! There, give me your hand.
+I will do nothing unworthy of us, I promise you. Now go!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn had gone, but Dorothea had not yet returned. Otto sat alone
+beside the dying fire. He could not comprehend what had befallen him.
+He must rid himself of this terrible oppression, but how? Some way must
+be found,--some solution of the problem: he sought for it in vain.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Forgive!&quot; The word rang in his ears, and his cheeks burned. How had
+Goswyn dared to suggest such a thing? No, it was impossible. Be
+divorced,--have her name dragged in the mire, and his shame published
+in all the newspapers? He stamped his foot. &quot;No! no!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">What then?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He could challenge Orbanoff, and send Dorothea adrift in the world, a
+wife, not divorced, but separated from her husband. This was what the
+world would expect of him. He shivered as with fever. Send her adrift
+into the world without protection, without support, without moral
+strength, beautiful as she was,--expose her to insult from women, to
+sneering homage from men: she would sink to the lowest depths, not from
+depravity, but from despair. He wiped the moisture from his forehead.
+That would be the correct thing to do,--only---- Suddenly a sound that
+was half laughter, half sob, burst from his lips: he knew perfectly
+well that, while she lived, sooner or later the moment would come when
+he could no longer endure life without her; and then--then he should
+follow her, Heaven only knew whither, and take her in his arms, even
+were she far, far more lost than now.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And again there rang through his soul, &quot;Forgive!&quot; and again his whole
+being revolted. The packet of letters which he had thrust into his
+breast weighed him down. It was all very well for Goswyn to say that
+Dorothea must never know that the packet had fallen into his hands.
+Why, she would ask for it. Ah,--he bit his lip,--he could not think of
+it! He could not forgive!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His burden grew heavier every moment. On a sudden he felt very
+tired,--overcome with drowsiness. What was that? The rustle of a gown.
+The door opened. Framed by the folds of the portière, indistinct in the
+gathering twilight, appeared Dorothea's tall, lithe figure.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She had come, and he had determined upon nothing,--nothing.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He did not stir.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Gos not here?&quot; she asked, in her high, twittering voice. He tried to
+summon up his anger against her; he told himself that he ought to
+strike her,--kill her. But he was as if paralyzed; he could not stir;
+he trembled in every limb. She did not perceive it, and she could not
+distinguish his features in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;So much the better!&quot; she exclaimed. &quot;I am so glad of a quiet cosy
+evening with you. Do you want to please me, Otto? Come with me now to
+Uhl's and dine, and then let us go to the theatre. Will you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She came up to him. He had arisen, and the fresh sweetness of her
+feminine nature seemed to envelop him. She put both her hands on his
+shoulders and nestled close to him. &quot;Will you?&quot; she murmured again.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He put his arms around her and kissed her twice as he never had kissed
+her before, with a tenderness in which there was a mixture of rage and
+glowing, frantic passion. Twice he kissed her, and then he suddenly
+became aware of what he was doing. He thrust her away.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What is the matter?&quot; she asked, startled.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Nothing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But something is the matter.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I tell you no!&quot; He hurled the words in her face as it were, and
+stamped his foot. &quot;Go--get ready!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She lingered for a moment, and then left the room. He looked after her.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Goswyn's state of mind was indescribable. He hastily changed his
+uniform and made ready for the dinner. His nerves were quivering with a
+dread that he could not explain. &quot;He never can bring himself to get a
+divorce,&quot; he said to himself; &quot;and if he forgives----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Disgust seemed fairly to choke him; he took shame to himself for having
+suggested such a course to Otto for a moment. He had no right to
+despise Otto. The old family affection for his brother revived in him
+in full force.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">As soon as he was dressed he belied his usual Spartan habits by sending
+for a droschky. It would give him time to stop for a moment at
+Dorothea's lodgings to see what was going on there. The monotonous
+jogging of the vehicle soothed his nerves: his thoughts began to stray.
+As it turned into Moltke Street the droschky moderated its speed, and
+at the same instant a dull sound as of the excited voices of a crowd
+struck upon his ear. He looked out of the carriage window, upon a close
+throng of human beings. The vehicle stopped; he sprang out.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">There was a crowd before the house occupied by his sister-in-law.
+Shoulder to shoulder men were pushing eagerly forward. A smothered
+murmur made itself heard; now and then a cynical speech fell distinctly
+on the ear, or a burst of laughter that died away without an echo,
+mingled with the curses of coachmen who could not make their way
+through the mass of humanity crowding there in the pale March twilight,
+through which the glare of the lanterns shone yellow and dreary. At
+first he could not get to the house; but the crowd soon made way for
+his officer's uniform.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He rang the bell loudly. Some time passed before the door was opened
+for him. Measures had evidently been taken to baffle the curiosity of
+the crowd.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The door of Dorothea's apartments, however, was open. He hurried
+onward, finding at first no one to detain him or to give him any
+information.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the cosy little room, now brilliantly lighted, where he had left his
+brother, stood Dorothea, evidently dressed to go out, in a gray gown,
+and a bonnet trimmed with pale pink roses, her cheeks ashy pale, her
+face hard and set in a frightful, unnatural smile.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What has happened?&quot; cried Goswyn.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She tried to reply, but the words would not come. The smile grew
+broader, and her eyes glowed. Her face recalled to him the evening at
+the Countess Brock's, when she looked around after her song and found
+herself the only woman in the room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">One or two persons had made their way into the room. Goswyn ordered
+them out, with an imperious air of command. &quot;Where is he?&quot; he asked,
+hoarsely. She pointed mutely to a door. He entered. It was her
+sleeping-room, airy, bright, luxurious; and there, at the foot of the
+bed, lay a dark figure, face downward, with outstretched arms.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Two officials, one of whom was writing something in a note-book, were
+in the room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The servant told him it had been entirely unexpected. When her
+Excellency came home, she had exchanged a few words with the Herr
+Baron, and had then gone to dress for the theatre. The Herr Baron had
+gone into the other room to write a note, and then--while her
+Excellency was in the <i>salon</i> putting on her gloves they had heard--a
+shot. Her Excellency had been the first to find him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">On the table lay two notes, one to Goswyn, the other to Dorothea.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The contents of Dorothea's Goswyn never knew: in his own note there was
+nothing save</p>
+<br>
+
+<p style="text-indent:10%">&quot;<span class="sc">Dear Gos</span>,--</p>
+
+<p style="text-indent:20%">&quot;I have forgiven.</p>
+
+<p style="text-indent:40%">&quot;<span class="sc">Otto</span>.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Yes, he had forgiven, but his life had paid the forfeit.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">The news of Otto von Sydow's sudden tragic death produced a profound
+impression upon old Countess Lenzdorff.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She immediately wrote a long letter to Goswyn,--eight pages of
+affectionate and sincere sympathy. Erika said very little about the
+matter, but she looked forward eagerly to Goswyn's reply.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When it came it was dry, almost formal,--the reply of a man crushed to
+the earth, who is not wont to discourse about his emotions and is shy
+of expressing himself with regard to them.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Thus the Countess Lenzdorff understood it. Her sympathy for the young
+officer increased after reading his brief note. Erika, on the other
+hand, after perusing the epistle, which her grandmother handed to her
+with a sigh, showed an unaccountable degree of irritability.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Surely he might have written you more cordially!&quot; she exclaimed. &quot;Such
+a letter as this means nothing! It is simply a receipt for your
+sympathy,--nothing more.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother shook her head, and tried to set her right. But Erika
+would not listen. She had greatly changed of late: her state of mind
+was growing more and more distressing. She ate and slept but little.
+Her sentiment was searching for a new stay; her life lacked a purpose.
+At any risk she would gladly have fled from the chill brilliance which
+characterized her grandmother's philosophy of life to take refuge in
+some inspiration of the heart, even although it might perhaps lead her
+astray. Religion had been taken from her, and even the sacred nimbus of
+morality had been frayed by her grandmother's cynicism. When her God
+had been taken from her she had at first wept hot, bitter tears, but
+she had aroused herself anew, and faith had been born within her in a
+transfigured form: it was no longer the conventional belief, expressed
+in worn-out formulas, with which the multitude satisfy themselves in
+view of the mysteries of creation, but an apprehension, however faulty,
+of an order of affairs, incomprehensible to her finite intellect,
+lifting her above that part of us which is of the earth, earthy,--a
+faith which may bring with it but little consolation, but which is
+certainly elevating. When her grandmother first attacked in her
+presence what she called the 'by God's grace principle' of morality,
+and coldly proved that all morals culminated in a number of laws not
+founded in nature,--nay, even at variance with nature,--which had been
+illogically framed by society for its preservation, she did not weep,
+but her whole being was poisoned by a discontent which she could not
+away with. If her grandmother had had the least idea of the effect upon
+the girl of her cold reasoning, she would have kept to herself the
+aphorisms which she was so fond of handing about like little
+delicately-prepared tidbits. Her nature, however, was a thoroughly
+sound and rather cold one, which took no pleasure in overwrought
+emotion, and which was absolutely free from the devouring thirst which
+glowed in Erika's soul. How could she understand the young creature, or
+know how to protect her from herself?</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">But if, on the one hand, the old Countess had but a poor opinion of
+mankind, on the other it was impossible for her to forego society.
+Although she had promised Erika to resist its temptations in Venice,
+she not only yielded to them herself, but did all that she could to
+induce the girl to accompany her. Her efforts were, however, of no
+avail, in view of Erika's misanthropic and unamiable mood; and thus it
+came to pass that society witnessed the unusual spectacle of a
+venerable matron of seventy appearing with indefatigable enjoyment
+at one afternoon tea after another, while her beautiful young
+grand-daughter at home confused her mind with the study of metaphysical
+works or visited the poor abroad. This last had of late been her
+favourite occupation: she had a long list of beneficiaries, whom she
+befriended with enthusiastic zeal, and of whom she had learned from the
+kindly hostess at the hotel and from the doctor when he came to visit
+his patients there.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was on a cloudy afternoon towards the end of March, after her
+grandmother had parted from her with a sigh of compassion, that Erika
+set out on foot, as was her wont, to visit a poor music-teacher.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The way to the modest lodgings where Fräulein Horst resided led Erika
+far from the busy Riva by a narrow alley to the quiet Piazza San
+Zacharie, where grass was growing between the stones. Thence the road
+grew more difficult to find, and it was not without some pride that she
+threaded accurately the labyrinth of narrow streets and reached the
+small dwelling in question without having been obliged to inquire her
+way.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She found the poor woman in bed in a wretchedly-furnished room. A table
+beside her served to hold her various bottles of medicine, and a green
+screen before the window shut out the light. In the midst of this
+poverty the music-teacher lay reading &quot;Consuelo,&quot; and--was happy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A wave of compassion--a compassion that brought the tears to her
+eyes--overwhelmed Erika. She leaned over the invalid and kissed her
+throbbing temples. Then, with the graceful kindliness which
+characterized her in the presence of sickness or misery, she adorned
+the room with the flowers she had with her, cleared away the grim
+witnesses from the table, had a cup of tea made and brought, and set
+out various little dainties from her basket, talking the while so
+cheerfully that the invalid forgot her pain. The poor music-teacher
+followed her every movement in a kind of ecstasy; at last, taking the
+girl's hand and pressing her feverish lips upon it, she exclaimed, &quot;How
+could I ever dream that the beautiful Countess Lenzdorff, whom I have
+admired at the theatre and at concerts, would ever come to drink a cup
+of tea with me! Ah, what a pleasure it is!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I am so glad,&quot; Erika replied, stroking the thin hand held out to her.
+&quot;I will come often, since you really like to have me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;One never ought to despair, while life lasts,&quot; said the sick woman.
+&quot;Just now I received a letter from an old school-mate, Sophy Lange.
+When she was a poor girl she fell in love with a gentleman. Of course
+their union was not to be thought of. Now, after many years, she writes
+me that she has reached the goal of her desires: she is married,--she
+is his wife,--and she is almost crazy with delight.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Sophy Lange!&quot; Erika cried, with peculiar interest. &quot;That was the name
+of our governess. She must be forty years old.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;About that,&quot; the woman replied, smiling to herself. &quot;A truly loving
+heart keeps young even at forty years of age.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And what is her husband's name?&quot; asked Erika, smitten by a strange
+suspicion.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Baron Strachinsky,&quot; replied Fräulein Horst. &quot;He is of ancient Polish
+lineage, not very wealthy, but dear Sophy does not mind that, for a
+rich old gentleman whom she took care of during his ten-years' illness
+has left her all his property.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And she is happy?&quot; Erika asked, in a kind of terror.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, how happy! I am so glad!--so glad! A little romance is so
+refreshing in these prosaic days. They met each other again on the
+Rigi, at sunrise,--just think, Countess! and Sophy is not at all
+pretty,--only dear and kind. Now they are in Naples; but she tells me
+that in the course of the spring she and her husband may come to
+Venice. She has had a hard life, but at last--at last--it is good to
+hear of so happy an end to her troubles.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At this point an attack of coughing interrupted her. Ah, how terrible
+it was! The handkerchief she held to her lips was crimsoned. Erika did
+all that she could for her, supported her in her arms, and bade her
+take courage. When the invalid was more comfortable, she left her,
+promising to come again on the morrow.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;God bless you, Countess!&quot; the poor woman murmured, faintly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was late, and it had begun to grow dark. Before leaving the house
+Erika had a short interview with the woman who rented the lodgings, and
+deposited with her a sum of money, that the poor music-teacher might be
+supplied with every comfort possible. Then, with a friendly nod, she
+departed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her heart felt lighter than it had done for some time, and it was not
+until she had started on her homeward way that she noticed the
+gathering gloom.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was half inclined to summon a gondola, but decided that it was not
+worth the trouble; and, moreover, she detested the swampy odour of the
+lagoons. And just here the air was so sweet: a spring fragrance was
+wafted about her from the grassy deserted Campo.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What mysteries people are!&quot; the girl reflected, her thoughts
+reverting to her grandmother's comments upon the late elopement, with a
+lover, of the lovely young wife of an old German diplomat. &quot;This is
+love,--Countess Ada on the one hand, poor Sophy on the other,--the one
+criminal, the other ridiculous. Good heavens!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Around her breathed the sweet, drowsy air of spring; there was a
+distant sound of bells and of plashing water, and over all brooded
+something like a dim foreboding, an expectant yearning.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika suddenly awoke from her dreamy mood, to find that she had lost
+her way. She walked on to the nearest corner in hopes of finding
+it,--in vain! Not without a certain tremor, she resolved to go straight
+on: she could not but reach some familiar square or canal. She walked
+hurriedly, impatiently. The air was no longer fragrant, and she found
+herself in a narrow, poverty-stricken alley running between rows of
+tall, evil-looking, and ruinous houses, in which the windows showed
+like deep, hollow eyes. The gray mist was rising above the roofs, and
+the walls of the houses, as well as the stones underfoot, were slimy
+with moisture.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika had much ado to keep her footing, so slippery was the pathway. If
+she walked in the middle of the street she had to wade through mud and
+filth; and if she pressed near to the walls the green slime soiled her
+dress.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Darker and darker grew the night, when suddenly a rude noise broke the
+forlorn silence,--songs issuing from rough throats, mingled with the
+shrill, coarse laughter of women.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Poor Erika hastened her pace, but utter weariness so assailed her that
+she felt almost unable to stand upright. In an unlucky moment a drunken
+sailor staggered out of the wretched drinking-place whence the noise
+proceeded. He was a young, stalwart man, and before the girl could pass
+him he had stretched out his arms and barred her way.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Beside herself with terror, she screamed,--when, as if rising from the
+earth, a man stepped in front of her, seized the sailor by the collar,
+and flung him against the wall. She trembled in every limb with disgust
+and fear as she looked up at her rescuer, whose features she could
+barely distinguish, although she could see his eyes,--dark,
+compassionate eyes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Where had she already seen those eyes? Before she could recall where,
+he said, lifting his hat, &quot;You have evidently lost your way: will you
+tell me where you live, that I may guide you out of this labyrinth?&quot; He
+spoke in English, but with a foreign accent: apparently he took her for
+an Englishwoman.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His proposal was an unusual one; and this seemed to strike him, for
+before she could reply he added, &quot;Of course it is disagreeable to trust
+to a stranger's escort, but under the circumstances it is the only
+thing to do. I cannot leave you here without a protector: this is no
+place for a lady.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">So dismayed was she by this knowledge that she could find no courteous
+word of thanks, and all she said in reply was to mention the name of
+her hotel.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;To the left,&quot; he said, motioning in the given direction. His voice,
+too, seemed familiar.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They passed together through the net-work of narrow streets and over a
+high arched bridge upon which a red lantern was burning and beneath
+which the sluggish water flowed slowly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Of whom does he remind me?&quot; thought Erika. Suddenly her heart beat so
+as almost to deprive her of breath. Bayreuth--Lozoncyi!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And at the same moment she recalled also his fair companion.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Meanwhile, they had reached a large, airy square.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Piazza San Zacharie. I know where I am now,&quot; she said, very coldly, as
+she took leave of him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He stood still, evidently wounded by her tone, and looked after her
+with a frown.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Without thanking him, she hurried on. Suddenly she paused, unable to
+resist the impulse to look back. He was still standing looking after
+her. She half turned to retrace her steps and thank him, when
+indignation seemed to paralyze her. What had she to say to a man who
+without the least shame could appear in public with---- Without further
+hesitation she returned to the hotel.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She slept badly that night. Her teeth chattered with fear at the
+thought of her adventure. And then--then, in spite of herself, she was
+vexed that she had said no friendly word to Lozoncyi: he had deserved
+some such at her hands. What was his private life to her? She recalled
+the handsome half-starved lad whom she had fed beside the gurgling
+brook. She longed to see him again. Half asleep, she turned her head
+uneasily on her pillow. The plashing of the water beneath her window
+sounded like a low, trembling sigh, and the sigh became a song. Nearer
+and nearer it sounded, insinuatingly sweet,--a song of Tosti's then in
+fashion. She heard only the refrain:</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="t0" style="text-indent:-8px">
+&quot;Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie,<br>
+Toi, qui n'as pas d'amour?&quot;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="normal">She sprang out of bed and threw open the window. Along the Grand Canal,
+illuminated by gay little lanterns, glided a gondola whence the song
+proceeded.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She leaned forward, but almost before she was aware of it the gondola
+had passed out of sight: it was nothing more in the distance than a
+shadow with a little dash of colour, and the sweet melody only a sigh
+slowly absorbed by the rippling waves.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She still stood at the window when all was silent again. All gone! all
+silent! Where the gondola had passed there lay a broad moon-glade upon
+the black water, and mingling with the swampy odour of the lagoon Erika
+could perceive the breath of spring.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She closed the window, and no longer heard even the plash of the water,
+or aught save the beating of her own heart.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">The next morning after breakfast Erika stood again at her window,
+looking out upon the magnificence of the palaces bordering the Grand
+Canal, and upon the dark, sluggish water. She seemed to be looking for
+the spot where the gondola the previous night had passed through the
+silvery radiance of the moonlight. The burden of the plaintive song
+still rang in her ears, in her nerves, in her soul:</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="t0" style="text-indent:-8px">
+&quot;Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie,<br>
+Toi, qui n'as pas d'amour?&quot;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother entered, ready to go out, an opera-glass in her hand,
+and asked her, &quot;Erika, will you not come with me to the exhibition in
+the Circolo artistico? There is a picture there of which all Venice is
+talking,--a wonder of a picture, they say.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Whom is it by?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;By Lozoncyi.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah!&quot; Erika turned away from her grandmother, and gazed out of the
+window into the broad Southern sunlight, until black specks danced
+before her eyes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What an indignant exclamation!&quot; her grandmother said, with a laugh.
+&quot;Your 'Ah!' sounded as if Lozoncyi were your mortal enemy. Perhaps you
+resent his being in Bayreuth with--with a companion. You must not be so
+strict with an artist: the society which these gentlemen, in pursuance
+of their calling, are obliged to frequent, is apt to blunt their
+sensibilities in that direction. Besides, he was just from Paris: such
+things are usual there. We are rather more strict in our notions. It is
+all the same. For my part, it is a matter of entire indifference to me
+how this Herr Lozoncyi arranges his domestic affairs. Years ago I
+prophesied a brilliant future for him, when our best Berlin critics
+condemned his efforts as unripe fruit. Of course I feel flattered at
+having been right. The vanity of being in the right is the last to die
+in the human breast. At all events, he seems to have painted a really
+great picture, and I thought---- But if you do not want to come with
+me, you prejudiced young lady, I will go alone. Adieu, my child.&quot; She
+stroked the cheek of the young girl, who had now turned away from the
+window, and went towards the door.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But before she had reached it, Erika called after her: &quot;But,
+grandmother, do not be in such haste. I--I should like to take a little
+walk with you, and I do not care where we go.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Very well: I will wait.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Shortly afterwards grandmother and grand-daughter walked across the
+little square behind the hotel, decorated in honour of the spring with
+orange-trees and laurels in tubs, towards the Piazza San Stefano. The
+day was lovely, and the streets were filled with people. Erika wore a
+dark-green cloth walking-suit, that became her well. Although she gave
+but little thought to her dress, with her good taste was instinctive:
+she always looked like a picture, and to-day like an uncommonly
+handsome picture.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Everybody turns to look at you,&quot; her grandmother whispered to her;
+&quot;and I must confess that it is worth the trouble.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This sounded like old times. The compliment had no effect upon Erika,
+but the tenderness that prompted it did the girl good. She smiled
+affectionately, but shook her forefinger at the old lady.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What? I am to take care not to spoil you?&quot; the old Countess said, with
+a laugh. &quot;I'll answer for that. If flattered vanity could spoil, you
+would be quite ruined by this time. Good heavens! I would rather you
+were a little spoiled,--just a little,--and happy, instead of being as
+you are, an angel,--sometimes an insufferable one, but still an
+angel,--with no sunshine in your heart.&quot; She looked askance, almost
+timidly, at the young girl, as if to see if she were not a little
+merrier to-day than usual. No, Erika did not look merry: she looked
+touched, but not merry.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;If I only knew what you want!&quot; the grandmother sighed, half aloud.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika moved closer to her side. &quot;I want nothing. I have too much,&quot; she
+whispered. &quot;You spoil me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;How can I help it? I am seventy-two years old: how much time is left
+me to delight in you? It may be all over for me to-day or to-morrow,
+and then----&quot; But when she looked again at Erika the tears were rolling
+down the girl's cheeks. &quot;Foolish child!&quot; exclaimed the grandmother. &quot;In
+all probability I shall not die so very soon: you need not spoil your
+fine eyes with crying, beforehand; but one ought to be prepared for
+everything, and of course I should like to see you married to a good
+husband.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She had rested her hand on Erika's arm, and hitherto the young girl in
+a child-like caressing way had pressed it close to her side, but now
+she extricated herself from the old lady's clasp; her lips quivered.
+&quot;Whom shall I marry?&quot; she exclaimed, with bitter emphasis.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Then both were silent. The grandmother was conscious of the blunder she
+had committed, and was furious with herself; which nevertheless would
+not in the least prevent her from making another of the same kind
+whenever an opportunity offered.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika walked stiff and haughty beside her without looking at her again.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When they reached the Circolo, after a long walk, they wandered through
+the splendid, spacious rooms for some time without discovering the
+object of their expedition. The spring exhibition at the Circolo was
+sparsely attended: strangers had no time for modern art in Venice, and
+the natives preferred a walk in such fine weather. Consequently the
+pictures signed by famous modern names hung for the most part upon the
+walls merely for the satisfaction of their originators. Bezzy's
+landscapes the old Countess pronounced to be masterpieces, and she
+became so absorbed in a sirocco by that artist that she quite forgot
+the purpose for which she had come hither.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It looked almost as if Erika took more interest than her grandmother in
+Lozoncyi's picture. She looked about her in search of it. From the next
+room came the sound of voices, now suppressed, then loud in talk. Her
+heart began to beat fast, and she directed her steps thither.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A group of six or seven men were standing in front of a large picture
+which hung alone on one side of the room, probably because no other
+artist had ventured to provoke comparison with it. The men standing
+before it--Erika suspected, from their remarks, that they were all
+artists by profession--spoke of it in low tones, as of something
+sacred, which the picture was not,--far from it; but it was a
+magnificent revelation of genius, and as such was something divine.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">'Francesca da Rimini' was engraved upon the frame. The old subject
+was strangely treated. Trees in full leaf were cut short by the
+frame so that only their luxuriant foliage and blossom-laden boughs
+were visible, and above them against a background of dull, gloomy
+storm-clouds floated two forms closely intertwined.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Never had Erika seen two such figures living, as it were, upon canvas;
+never had she seen writhing despair so revealed in every limb and
+muscle. Her first sensation was one of almost angry repulsion for the
+artist.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What do you say to it?&quot; the old Countess, who had followed Erika,
+asked, rather loudly, as was her wont. &quot;A masterpiece, is it not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika turned away. She was very pale, and she trembled from head to
+foot.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It is wonderfully beautiful,&quot; she murmured, in a low voice, &quot;but it is
+unpleasant. I feel as if it were a sin to look at it.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">As they crossed the Piazza San Stefano on their way home, at the foot
+of Manin's statue stood a group of five street-singers, two men and
+three women, all over fifty, both men blind, one of the women one-eyed,
+another hump-backed, and the third so corpulent that she looked like a
+caricature.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">These five monsters, the women with guitars, the men with violins, were
+accompanying themselves in a love-song, their mouths wide open, and the
+drawling notes issuing thence echoed from one end to the other of the
+spacious Piazza. The burden of the ditty was,--</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="t0" style="text-indent:-8px">
+&quot;Tu m'hai bagnato il seno mio di lagrime,<br>
+T'amo d'immenso amor.&quot;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="normal">The old Countess, with a laugh and the easy grace of a great lady,
+tossed the singers a coin half-way across the Piazza. Erika frowned. A
+feverish indignation possessed her. Good heavens! did the whole world
+circle about one and the same thing? Must she hear it even from the
+lips of these wretched cripples? She bit her lip: from the distance
+came the drawling wail,--</p>
+<br>
+<p class="center" style="font-size:90%">
+&quot;T'amo d'immenso amor.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Erika, look there!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The words are spoken by old Countess Lenzdorff in the library
+of the monastery of San Lazaro, and as she speaks she plucks her
+grand-daughter's sleeve.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The monastery is the same in which Lord Byron, more than half a century
+ago, was taught by long-bearded monks; and the Lenzdorffs, taking
+advantage of the fine weather, had been rowed over to it on the
+afternoon of the day on which they had visited the exhibition at the
+Circolo.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The monk who acted as their cicerone had conducted them to the library
+to show them Lord Byron's signature and his portrait, a small,
+authentic likeness. In addition he showed them many likenesses of his
+lordship which were by no means authentic, but which represented him in
+various costumes and at various periods of his existence, and which it
+was hoped romantic tourists might be tempted to purchase as <i>souvenirs
+de Venise</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Two gentlemen are standing laughing and criticising one of these
+pictures, and it is to these gentlemen that the Countess directs her
+grand-daughter's attention. One of them is standing with his back
+turned to the ladies, but his faultlessly-fitting English overcoat, his
+gray gaiters, his way of balancing himself with legs slightly apart,
+the distinction and gray-haired worthlessness that characterize him,
+leave Erika in no doubt as to his identity. It is Count Hans
+Treurenberg, an old Austrian friend of her grandmother's. The other,
+whose profile is turned towards the ladies, is a man of middle height,
+delicately built, well dressed, although his clothes have not the
+English <i>cachet</i> that distinguishes Count Treurenberg's, and with a
+frank, attractive bearing and a clear-cut dark face. Taken all in all,
+he might be supposed to be a man of the world,--some young relative of
+the Count's,--were it not for his eyes, strange, gleaming eyes,
+which after a brief glance at the grandmother are riveted upon the
+grand-daughter. No mere man of the world ever had such eyes. Meanwhile,
+Count Treurenberg has turned round.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ladies, I kiss your hands!&quot; he exclaims. &quot;You too have employed this
+fine weather in an excursion: you could not do better.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old Countess was about to reply, when Treurenberg's companion
+whispered a few words to him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Permit me to present Herr von Lozoncyi,&quot; said the Count,--whereupon
+the old Countess, before Lozoncyi had quite finished his formal
+obeisance, called out, &quot;I am delighted to know you. I belong among your
+oldest admirers. Do not misunderstand me: I do not, of course, refer to
+my own age, but to that of my admiration.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I am immensely flattered, Frau Countess,&quot; Lozoncyi replied, in the
+gentle, agreeable voice of a Viennese of mixed descent and doubtful
+nationality. &quot;Might I ask when first I had the good fortune to arouse
+your interest?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;How long ago is it, Erika?--five or six years?&quot; asked the old lady.
+&quot;You will know.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Six years ago, I think, grandmother.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Six years ago, then,&quot; the Countess went on. &quot;It was in Berlin, where
+you were exhibiting two pictures, one before a curtain, the other
+behind a curtain. I saw both; and I have believed in your talent ever
+since,--which has not, however, prevented me from being surprised by
+your last picture in the Circolo artistico.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You are very kind.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;One thing I should like to know: do you fancy there are trees in full
+leaf in hell?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What?--in hell?&quot; asked the artist, lifting his eyebrows. &quot;So far as I
+can tell, I have never pictured hell to myself; although I have more
+than once felt as if I had been there.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why, then, did you paint Francesca da Rimini after that fashion?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Francesca da Rimini?&quot; Again he looked at her in surprise.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The picture in the Circolo,&quot; the old lady persisted. &quot;But&quot;--and her
+tone was much cooler--&quot;perhaps I am mistaken, and the picture is not
+yours?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No, no,&quot; he replied, laughing. &quot;The picture to which you refer is
+certainly mine, Countess, but my picture-dealer invented the title for
+it. I never for a moment intended to paint that most attractive of all
+sinning women.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What did your picture mean, then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;To tell you the truth, I do not know.&quot; He said it with an odd smile in
+which there was some annoyance. &quot;I want to paint a series of pictures
+under the title of 'Mes Cauchemars,'--' Evil Dreams,'--and the thing in
+the Circolo was to be number one. If I could have dared to challenge
+comparison with Botticelli,--which I could not,--I should perhaps have
+called the picture 'Spring.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">As he spoke, his eyes had continually strayed towards Erika: at last
+they rested upon her with so uncivilized a stare that she turned away,
+annoyed, and Count Treurenberg held up his hand as a screen, saying,
+with a laugh, &quot;Spare your eyes, my dear Lozoncyi: what sort of way is
+that to gaze upon the sun?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You are right, Count,&quot; the painter said, rather bluntly; then, turning
+again to the young girl, he said, in a very different tone, &quot;I am not
+recalling our meeting in the Calle San Giacomo. If I do not mistake,--I
+can hardly believe it, but if I do not,--our acquaintance dates from
+much farther back. Have you a step-father called Strachinsky?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Unfortunately, yes,&quot; her grandmother replied, dolefully.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Well, then,&quot; he said, eagerly, &quot;I----&quot; He made a sudden pause. &quot;How
+foolish I am! You must long ago have forgotten what I am remembering.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No, I have forgotten nothing,&quot; Erika replied, lifting her eyes to his
+with a strange expression of mingled pride and reproach. &quot;I recognized
+you long ago; but it was not for me to tell you so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Countess! Allow me to kiss your hand, in memory of the dear little
+fairy who brought me good fortune.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What's all this?&quot; Count Treurenberg asked, inquisitively, and the old
+Countess as curiously inquired, &quot;Where did you make each other's
+acquaintance?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika hesitates: a sudden shyness makes her uncertain how to begin the
+story. Lozoncyi comes to her aid. His narrative is a little masterpiece
+of pathos and humour. He tells everything; how the Baron--he describes
+him perfectly in a single phrase--sent him off with an alms,--two
+kreutzers,--his own indignation, his despair, his hunger, the sudden
+appearance of the little girl; he describes her sweet little face, her
+faded gown, her long thin legs in their red stockings, and the basket
+of food decorated with asters; he describes the landscape, the little
+brook creeping shyly beneath the huge bridge,--a bridge about as
+suitable, he declares, as the tomb of Cecilia Metella would be as a
+monument for a dead dog; he repeats the little fairy's every word, and
+tells how, finally, she slipped the five guilders into his pocket,
+assuring him that she knew how terrible it was to be without money.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old lady and Treurenberg laugh; Erika listens eagerly and with
+emotion. The story lacks something. Yes, in spite of its minute
+details, something is missing. Is he keeping it for the conclusion, or
+does he think it necessary to suppress this detail altogether? Erika is
+indignant at such discretion. When he has finished, she says, calmly,
+&quot;You have forgotten one trifling incident, Herr Lozoncyi: you set a
+price upon your picture of me----&quot; She pauses, and then, coolly
+surveying her listeners, she goes on, &quot;I had to promise Herr Lozoncyi
+to give him a kiss for my portrait.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And may I ask if you kept your word, Countess?&quot; asks Count
+Treurenberg, laughing.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes,&quot; Erika replies, curtly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Charming!&quot; exclaims Count Treurenberg. &quot;And, between ourselves, I
+would not have believed it of you, Countess! You were a lucky fellow,
+Lozoncyi.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika is visibly embarrassed, but Lozoncyi steps a little nearer to
+her, and says, with a very kindly smile, &quot;What a gloomy face! Ah,
+Countess, can you regret the alms bestowed upon a poor lad by an infant
+nine years old? If you only knew how often the memory of your childish
+kindness has strengthened and encouraged me, you would not grudge it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The matter could not have been adjusted with more amiable tact, and
+Erika begins to laugh, and confesses that she has been foolish,--a fact
+which her grandmother confirms gaily. The old lady is delighted with
+the little story: the part played therein by Strachinsky gives it an
+additional relish. She is charmed with Lozoncyi.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They leave the damp, musty library, and go out into the cloisters that
+encircle the garden of the monastery. The scent of roses is in the air,
+and from the monastery kitchen comes the odour of freshly-roasted
+coffee. Count Treurenberg is glad of the opportunity to cover his bald
+head with his English gray felt hat, and as he does so anathematizes
+the Western idea of courtesy which makes it necessary for a gentleman
+to catch cold in his head so frequently. He walks in front with the old
+Countess, and Erika and Lozoncyi follow. The two old people talk
+incessantly; the younger couple scarcely speak.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Lozoncyi is the first to break the silence. &quot;Strange, that chance
+should have brought us together again,&quot; he says.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She clears her throat and seems about to speak, but is mute.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You were saying, Countess----?&quot; he asks, smiling.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I said nothing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You were thinking, then----?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, I was thinking, in fact, that it is strange that you should have
+left it to chance to bring about our meeting.&quot; The words are amiable
+enough, but they sound cold and constrained as Erika utters them.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Do you imagine that I have made no attempt to find you again,
+Countess?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I imagine that if you had seriously desired to find me it would not
+have been difficult.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He does not speak for a moment, and then he begins afresh: &quot;You are
+right,--and you do me injustice. When I learned that my dear little
+poorly-clad princess had become a great lady, I did, it is true, make
+no attempt to approach her; but before then---- Do you care to hear of
+my unfortunate pilgrimage?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Most assuredly I do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Well, eight years after our childish interview I had my first couple
+of hundred marks in my pocket. I bought a new suit of clothes--yes,
+smile if yon choose,--a new suit, which I admired exceedingly--and
+journeyed to Bohemia. I found the village, the brook, and the
+bridge, and likewise the castle; but all had gone who had once lived
+there,--even the amiable Herr von Strachinsky,--and no one knew
+anything of my little princess. I was very sad,--too sad for a fellow
+of three-and-twenty.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He pauses.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And was that the end of your efforts?&quot; asks the old Countess, whose
+sharp ears have lost nothing of the story, and who now turns to the
+pair with a laugh. &quot;You showed no amount of persistence to boast of.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;When, overtaken by the rain, I took refuge in the parsonage of the
+nearest village,&quot; he continues, &quot;I made inquiries there for my little
+friend. The priest gave me more information than I had been able to
+procure elsewhere. He told me that one fine day some one had come from
+Berlin to carry little Rika away,--that she was now a very grand
+lady----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And then----?&quot; the old lady persists.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I sought no further: the bridge between my sphere in life and that of
+my princess was destroyed. I quietly returned to Munich. I was very
+unhappy: the goal to which I had looked forward seemed to have been
+suddenly snatched from me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oho!&quot; exclaims the old Countess, &quot;you can be sentimental too, then?
+You are truly many-sided.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;That was years ago. I have changed very much since then.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">After which Count Treurenberg contrives to interest the old lady in the
+latest piece of Venetian gossip.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You understand now why I did not appear before you, Countess Erika?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But Erika shook her head: &quot;I do not understand at all. I think you were
+excessively foolish to avoid me for such a reason.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Erika is quite right,&quot; the grandmother called back over her shoulder
+in the midst of one of Count Treurenberg's most interesting anecdotes.
+&quot;Your failing to seek us out only proves that you must have thought us
+a couple of geese; otherwise you would have been quite sure of a
+friendly reception.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No, it proves only that I had been hardly treated by fate, that I was
+a well-whipped young dog,&quot; said Lozoncyi. &quot;Now I have no doubt that I
+should have been graciously received by both of you; but it would not
+have amounted to much. You would soon have tired of me. A very young
+artist is sadly out of place in a drawing-room; I was like all the rest
+of the race.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;That I find hard to believe,&quot; the old Countess said, kindly, still
+over her shoulder; then, turning again to Count Treurenberg, &quot;Go on,
+Count. You were saying----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I shall say nothing more,&quot; Treurenberg exclaimed, provoked. &quot;I have
+had enough of this: at the most interesting part of my story you turn
+and listen to what Lozoncyi is saying to your grand-daughter. The fact
+is that when Lozoncyi is present no one else can claim a lady's
+attention.&quot; The words were spoken half in jest, half in irritation.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Count Treurenberg is skilled in rendering me obnoxious in society,&quot;
+Lozoncyi murmurs.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, I never pay any attention to him,&quot; the old Countess assures him.
+&quot;I should like to know what you did after you learned that Erika
+had----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Had become a grand lady?&quot; Lozoncyi interrupts her. &quot;Oh, I packed up my
+belongings and went to Rome.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And then?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There I had an attack of Roman fever,&quot; he says, slowly, and his face
+grows dark. He looks around for Erika, but she is no longer at his
+side: she has lingered behind, and has fallen into conversation with a
+tall, dignified monk. She now calls out to the rest, &quot;Has no one any
+desire to see the tree beneath which Lord Byron used to write poems?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They all follow her as the monk leads the way to the very shore of the
+island and there with pride points to a table beneath a tree, where he
+assures them Lord Byron used often to sit and write.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His hospitality culminates at last in regaling his guests with fragrant
+black coffee, after which he leaves them.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They sit and sip their coffee under the famous tree. Lozoncyi expresses
+a modest doubt as to the identity of the table. Count Treurenberg
+relates an anecdote, at which Erika frowns, and gazes up into the blue
+sky showing here and there among the branches of the old tree.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Suddenly an affected voice is heard to say, &quot;<i>Enfin le voilà</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They look up, and see two ladies: one is no other than Frau von
+Geroldstein, very affected, and looking about, as usual, for fine
+acquaintances; the other is very much dressed, rouged, and very pretty.
+Frau von Geroldstein is enthusiastically glad to see her Berlin
+friends, and presents her companion,--the Princess Gregoriewitsch.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old Countess, however, is not very amiably disposed towards the
+new-comers. &quot;Do not let us keep you from your friends,&quot; she says to the
+artist: &quot;it is late, and we must go. Adieu. I should be glad if you
+could find time to come and see us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Count Treurenberg conducts the grandmother and grand-daughter to their
+gondola. Lozoncyi remains with his two admirers.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Who was that queer Princess?&quot; Countess Anna asks of Count Treurenberg,
+in a rather depreciative tone, just before they reach their gondola.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, one of Lozoncyi's thousand adorers. She has a huge palace and
+entertains a great deal. A pretty woman, but terribly stupid. Lozoncyi
+is tied to a different apron-string every day.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">The <i>table-d'hôte</i> is long past: the Lenzdorffs are dining in a small
+island of light at one end of the large dining-hall.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They are unusually late to-night. After their return from the Armenian
+monastery both ladies have dressed for the evening, before coming to
+table. At the old Countess's entreaty, Erika has consented to go into
+society this evening,--that is, to the Countess Mühlberg, who has been
+legally separated from her husband for some time and is living very
+quietly at Venice, where she receives a few friends every Wednesday.
+The old Countess is unusually gay; Erika scarcely speaks.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The glass door leading from the dining-hall into the garden has been
+left open for their special benefit. The warm air brings in an odour of
+fresh earth, mossy stones, and the faintly impure breath of the
+lagoons, which haunts all the poetic beauty of Venice like an unclean
+spirit. The soft plash of the water against the walls of the old
+palaces, the creaking of the gondolas tied to their posts, a monotonous
+stroke of oars, the distant echo of a street song, are the mingled
+sounds that fall upon the ear.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When the meal is ended the old Countess calls for pen and ink, and
+writes a note at the table where they have just dined. Erika walks out
+into the garden. With head bare and a light wrap about her shoulders,
+she strolls along the gravel path, past the monthly roses that have
+scarcely ceased to bloom throughout the winter, past the taller
+rose-trees in which the life of spring is stirring. From time to time
+she turns her head to catch the distant melody more clearly, but it
+comes no nearer. Above her arches the sky, no longer pale as it had
+been to-day amid the boughs of the historic tree, but dark blue, and
+twinkling with countless stars.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She has walked several times up and down the garden as far as the
+breast-work that separates it from the Grand Canal. Now as she nears
+the dining-room she hears voices: her grandmother is no longer alone;
+beside the table at which she is writing stands Count Treurenberg. He
+is speaking: &quot;'Tis a pity! he really is a very clever fellow with men,
+but the women spoil him. Just now he is the plaything of all the women
+who think themselves art-critics in Venice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika pauses to listen. &quot;Indeed! Well, it does not surprise me,&quot; her
+grandmother rejoins, indifferently, and Treurenberg goes on: &quot;He is the
+very deuce of a fellow: with all his fine feeling, he combines just
+enough cynicism and honest contempt for women to make him irresistible
+to the other sex.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You are complimentary, Count!&quot; Erika calls into the dining-hall.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He looks up. She is standing in the door-way; the wrap has fallen back
+from her shoulders, revealing the dazzling whiteness of her neck and
+arms, her left hand rests against the door-post, and she is looking
+full at the speaker.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Old Treurenberg, who has just taken a seat beside the Countess, springs
+up, gazes admiringly at the girl, bows low, and says, &quot;Pray remember
+that any uncomplimentary remarks I may make in your presence with
+regard to the weaker sex have no reference to you. When I talk of your
+sex in general I never think of you: you are an exception.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;We have both known that for a long while: have we not, Erika?&quot; her
+grandmother says, laughing.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But what is the cause of all this splendour, Countess Erika?&quot; asks
+Treurenberg, changing the subject. &quot;It is the first time that I have
+had the pleasure of seeing you in full dress.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Erika is beginning to go out a little to please me,&quot; the old Countess
+explains. &quot;I told her that, thanks to her passion for retirement, it
+would shortly be reported that she was either out of her mind or
+suffering from a disappointment in love. As this does not seem to her
+desirable, she has consented to go with me to Constance Mühlberg.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I should have gone to Constance Mühlberg at all events, only I should
+not have chosen her reception-day for my visit,&quot; Erika declares, taking
+a seat beside her grandmother, leaning her white elbows upon the table,
+and resting her chin on her clasped hands.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Connoisseur in beauty that he is, the old Count cannot take his eyes
+off her. &quot;When a woman is so thoroughly formed for society as you are,
+Countess Erika, she has no right to retire from it,&quot; he declares.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She makes no reply, and her grandmother asks, &quot;Shall we see you at
+Countess Mühlberg's, Count?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Not to-night. I must go to-night to the Rambouillet of Venice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh! to the Neerwinden?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes. Why do you ladies never go there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;To speak frankly, I had no idea that one ought to go,&quot; the Countess
+says, laughing.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why not? Because of the Countess's reputation? Let me assure you that
+all ruins are the fashion in Venice. You are quite wrong to stay away
+from the Salon Neerwinden: it is an historical curiosity, and, to me,
+more interesting than the Doge's palace.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But even if I should go to the Neerwinden I could not take this child
+with me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why not? The Salon Neerwinden is by no means such a pest-house of
+infectious moral disease as you seem to think. And then nothing could
+harm the Countess Erika: her life is a charmed one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At this moment a thick-set, gray-bearded individual enters the
+dining-hall, very affected, and very anxious to induce his eye-glass
+to fit into the hollow of his right eye. He is a Viennese banker,
+Schmidt--he spells it Schmytt--von Werdenthal. Bowing with ease to the
+ladies, he approaches Treurenberg. &quot;Do I intrude, Hans?&quot; he asks.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You always intrude.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The banker smiles at the jest: awkward as he may be, he displays a
+certain agility in ignoring a rude remark. &quot;You know, Hans, we must go
+first to the Gregoriewitsch; and we shall be late.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Confound the fellow!&quot; murmurs the Count; nevertheless he rises to
+follow Schmytt, and kisses the fingertips of each lady in token of
+farewell. &quot;Countess Erika,&quot; he says, with a final glance of admiration,
+&quot;if I were but thirty years younger!--Ah, you think it would have been
+of no use,&quot; he adds, turning to the grandmother; &quot;but there's no
+knowing. If I am not mistaken, the Countess Erika is zealous in the
+conversion of sinners, and I should have been so easily converted in
+view of the reward. But do me the favour to leave a card upon the
+Neerwinden: you will not repent it. One is never so well entertained as
+at her evenings; and if you would like to see Lozoncyi in all his
+glory----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But, Hans, the Princess will be waiting,&quot; Schmytt interposes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I am coming.&quot; And Count Treurenberg vanishes. The old Countess looks
+after him with a smile.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I cannot help it, but I have a slight weakness for that old sinner,&quot;
+she says. &quot;He is so typical,--a genuine Austrian cavalier,--<i>fin de
+siècle</i>, witty without depth, good-natured with no heart, aristocrat to
+his finger-tips, without one single unprejudiced conviction. How you
+impressed him to-night! I do not wonder. Lozoncyi ought to see you now:
+what a splendid portrait he would make of you! H'm! do you know I
+really should like to go to a Neerwinden evening?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;That you may have the pleasure of seeing Herr von Lozoncyi in all his
+glory?&quot; asks Erika.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Curiosity carried the day. The Countess Lenzdorff left her card at the
+Palazzo Luzani, and as a consequence the Baroness Neerwinden called
+upon both ladies and left a written invitation for them which informed
+them that &quot;my dear friend Minona von Rattenfels will delight us by
+reading aloud her latest, and unpublished, work.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">To her grandmother's surprise, Erika seemed quite willing to go to this
+one of the Baroness Neerwinden's entertainments, and Constance Mühlberg
+accompanied them. The party was full of laughing expectation, much as
+if the pleasure in prospect had been a masquerade.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Expectation on this occasion did not much exceed reality: the old
+Countess and Constance Mühlberg were extremely entertained. And
+Erika----? Well, they arrived at a tolerably early hour, ten o'clock,
+and found the three immense rooms in which the Neerwinden was wont to
+receive almost empty.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The lady of the house, when they entered, was seated on a small divan,
+beneath a kind of canopy of antique stuffs in the remotest of these
+rooms. Her black eyes were still fine; her features were not ignoble,
+but were hard and unattractive.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She received the Countess Lenzdorff with effusive cordiality, referred
+to several youthful reminiscences which they possessed in common, and
+was quite gracious to both the younger ladies. After several
+commonplace remarks, she dashed boldly into a discourse upon the final
+destiny of the earth and the adjacent stars.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She had just informed her guests that she was privately engaged upon
+the improvement of the electric light, and should soon have completed a
+system of universal religion, when a sudden influx of guests caused her
+to stop in the middle of a sentence, leaving her hearers in doubt as to
+whether the catechism of the new faith was to be printed in Volapük or
+in French, in which latter language most of the Baroness's intellectual
+efforts were given to the world.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika was obliged to leave her place beside the hostess and to mingle
+in the crowd that now rapidly filled the three reception-rooms.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She found very few acquaintances, and made the rather annoying
+discovery that, with the exception of a couple of flat-chested English
+girls, she was the only young girl present. If Count Treurenberg had
+not made his appearance to play cicerone, she must have utterly failed
+to understand what was going on around her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The masculine element was the more strongly represented, but the
+feminine contingent was undoubtedly the more aristocratic. It consisted
+chiefly of very beautiful and distinguished women of rank who almost
+without exception had by some fatality rendered their reception at
+court impossible. Most of them were divorced, although upon what
+grounds was not clear.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The strictly orthodox Venetian and Austrian families avoided these
+entertainments, not so much upon moral grounds as because it was
+embarrassing to meet <i>déclassées</i> of their own rank, and because,
+besides, they believed this salon to be a hotbed of the rankest
+radicalism, both in morals and in politics.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In this they were not altogether wrong. There was nothing here of the
+Kapilavastu system of which the old Countess was wont to complain in
+Berlin; no, every imaginable topic was discussed, and after the most
+heterogeneous fashion. Consequently the salon was in its way an amusing
+one, its tiresome side being the determination on the part of the
+hostess not to allow her guests to amuse themselves, but always to
+offer them a <i>plat de résistance</i> in some shape or other.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">On this evening this <i>plat</i> was Fräulein Minona von Rattenfels; and in
+the midst of Count Treurenberg's most amusing witticisms the guests
+were all bidden to assemble for the reading in the largest of the three
+rooms.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Here she sat, with her manuscript already open, and the conventional
+glass of water on a spindle-legged table beside her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was about fifty years old, large-boned, stout, and very florid,
+dressed in a red gown shot with black, which gave her the appearance of
+a half-boiled lobster, and with strings of false coin around her neck
+and in her hair.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Before the performance began, the electric lights were turned off, and
+the only illumination proceeded from two wax candles with pink shades
+on the table beside Minona. The literary essay was preceded by a
+musical prologue rendered by the pianist G----, who happened to be in
+Venice at the time.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He played a paraphrase of Siegmund's and Sieglinda's love-duet,
+gradually gliding into the motive of Isolde's death, all of which
+naturally increased the receptive capacity of the audience for the
+coming treat. The last tone died away. Minona von Rattenfels cleared
+her throat.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Tombs!&quot; She hurled the word, as it were, in a very deep voice into the
+midst of her audience. This was the pleasing title of her latest
+collection of love-songs.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It consisted of two parts, 'Love-Life' and 'Love-Death.' In the first
+part there was a great deal said about Dawn and Dew-drops, and in the
+second part quite as much about Worms and Withered Flowers, while in
+both there was such an amount of ardent passion that one could not but
+be grateful to the Baroness for her Bayreuth fashion of darkening the
+auditorium, thus veiling the blushes of certain sensitive ladies, as
+well as the sneering looks of others.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Of course Minona's delivery was highly dramatic. She screamed until her
+voice failed her, she rolled her eyes until she fairly squinted, and
+Count Treurenberg offered to wager an entire set of her works that one
+of her eyes was glass.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In most of her verses the lover was cold, hard, or faithless, but now
+and then she revelled in an 'oasis in the desert of life.' Then she
+became unutterably grotesque, the only distinguishable word in a
+languishing murmur being &quot;L--o--ve!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Suddenly in the midst of this extraordinary performance was heard the
+clicking of a couple of steel knitting needles, and shortly afterwards
+the reading came to an end.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Again the room was flooded with light. In the silence that reigned the
+clicking needles made the only sound. Erika looked to see whence the
+noise proceeded, and perceived an elderly lady with gray hair brushed
+smoothly over her temples, and a shrewd--almost masculine--face,
+sitting very erect, and dressed in a charming old-fashioned gown. Her
+brows were lifted, and her face showed unmistakably her decided
+disapproval of the performance. In the midst of the heated atmosphere
+she produced the impression of a stainless block of ice.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Who is that?&quot; Erika asked the Countess Mühlberg, who sat beside her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Fräulein Agatha von Horn. Shall I present you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika assented, and the Countess led her to the lady in question, who,
+still knitting, was seated on a sofa with three young, very shy
+artists, and overshadowed by a tall fan-palm.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Countess presented Erika. The artists rose, and the two ladies took
+their seats on the sofa beside Fräulein von Horn.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Fräulein sighed, and conversation began.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;If I am not mistaken, you are a dear friend of the gifted lady whom we
+have to thank this evening for so much pleasure,&quot; said Constance
+Mühlberg.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;We travel together, because it is cheaper,&quot; Fräulein von Horn replied,
+calmly, &quot;but; as with certain married couples, we have nothing in
+common save our means of living.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Indeed?&quot; said Constance. &quot;I am glad to hear it; for in that case we
+can express our sentiments freely with regard to the poetess.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Quite freely.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Just then Count Treurenberg joined the group, and informed the ladies
+that he had been congratulating Minona upon her magnificent success.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What did you say to her?&quot; the truth-loving Agatha asked, almost
+angrily.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'In you I hail our modern Sappho.' That is what I told her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And she replied----?&quot; asked Constance Mühlberg.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Count fanned himself with his opera-hat with a languishing air, and
+lisped, &quot;'<i>Ah, oui, Sappho; c'est bien Sappho, toujours la même
+histoire</i>, after more than two thousand years.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Poor Minona! and to think that she cudgels it all out of her
+imagination!&quot; Fräulein Agatha remarked, ironically. &quot;She has no more
+personal experience than--well, than I.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'Sh!--not so loud,&quot; Constance whispered, laughing. &quot;She never would
+forgive you for betraying her thus.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I have known her from a child,&quot; Fräulein von Horn continued,
+composedly. &quot;She once exchanged love-letters with her brother's tutor,
+and since then she has always played the game with a dummy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The dry way in which she imparted this piece of information was
+irresistibly comical, but in the midst of the laughter which it
+provoked a loud voice was heard declaiming at the other end of
+the room, where, in the midst of a circle of listeners, stood a
+black-bearded individual with a Mephistophelian cast of countenance,
+holding forth upon some subject.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Who is that?&quot; asked Countess Mühlberg.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I do not know the fellow,&quot; said the Count. &quot;Not in my line.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;A writer from Vienna,&quot; Fräulein von Horn explained. &quot;He was invited
+here, that he might write an article upon Minona.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What is he talking about?&quot; asked the Count.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Countess Mühlberg, who had been stretching her delicate neck to listen,
+replied, &quot;About love.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Indeed!&quot; exclaimed Count Treurenberg, springing up from his seat: &quot;I
+must hear what the fellow has to say.&quot; And, followed shortly afterwards
+by Constance Mühlberg, he joined the circle about the black-bearded
+seer.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika remained sitting with Fräulein Agatha on the sofa beneath the
+palm. They could hear the seer's drawling voice as he announced very
+distinctly, &quot;Love is the instinctive desire of an individual for union
+with a certain individual of the opposite sex.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Fräulein von Horn meditatively smoothed her gray hair with one of her
+long knitting-needles, and said, carelessly, &quot;I know that definition:
+it is Max Norden's.&quot; Whereupon she left her seat beside Erika to devote
+herself to the three artists, her <i>protégés</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika was left entirely alone under the palm, in a state of angry
+discontent. Never before, wherever she had been, had she been so
+little regarded. She was of no more importance here than Fräulein
+Agatha,--hardly of as much. For the first time it occurred to her that
+under certain circumstances it was quite inconvenient to be unmarried.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At the same time she was conscious of a great disappointment: she
+had not come hither to study the Baroness Neerwinden's eccentricities,
+or to listen to Minona von Rattenfels's love-plaints: she had
+come---- What, in fact, had she come for?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">From the other end of the room came the seer's voice: &quot;The only
+strictly moral union is founded upon elective affinity.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Very true!&quot; exclaimed Frau von Neerwinden.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A short pause followed. The servants handed about refreshments.
+Rosenberg, the black-bearded seer, stood with his left elbow propped
+upon the back of his friend Minona's chair; in his right he held his
+opera-hat.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A French <i>littérateur</i>, who had understood enough of the whole
+performance to be jealous of his German colleague, began to proclaim
+his view of love: &quot;<i>L'amour est une illusion, qui--que</i>----&quot; There he
+stuck fast.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Then somebody whom Erika did not know exclaimed, &quot;Where is Lozoncyi? He
+knows more of the subject than we do; he ought to be able to help us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I think his knowledge is practical rather than theoretical,&quot; said
+Count Treurenberg.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Not long afterwards a few guests took leave, as it was growing late.
+The circle was smaller, and Erika discovered Lozoncyi seated on a
+lounge between two ladies, Frau von Geroldstein and the Princess
+Gregoriewitsch. The Princess was a beauty in her way, tall, stout, very
+<i>décolletée</i>, and with long, languishing eyes. Lozoncyi was leaning
+towards her, and whispering in her ear.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika rose with a sensation of disgust and walked out upon a balcony,
+where she had scarcely cast a glance upon the veiled magnificence of
+the opposite palaces when Lozoncyi stood beside her. &quot;Good-evening,
+Countess. I had no idea that you were here; I discovered you only this
+moment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In her irritated mood she did not offer him her hand. &quot;You are
+astonished that my grandmother should have brought me here,&quot; she said,
+with a shrug.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But, to her surprise, she perceived that nothing of the kind had
+occurred to him: his sense of what was going on about him was evidently
+blunted.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why?&quot; he asked. &quot;Because--because of the antecedents of the hostess?
+It is long since people have troubled themselves about those, and it is
+the brightest salon in Venice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There has certainly been nothing lacking in the way of animation
+to-night,&quot; Erika observed, coldly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was leaning with both hands on the balustrade of the balcony, and
+she spoke to him over her shoulder. He cared little for what she said,
+but her beauty intoxicated him. Always strongly influenced by his
+surroundings, the least noble part of his nature had the upper hand
+with him to-night.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Rosenberg has taken great pains to entertain his audience,&quot; he
+remarked, carelessly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And his efforts have assuredly been crowned with success,&quot; Erika
+replied, contemptuously. Then, with a shade more of scorn in her voice,
+she asked, &quot;Is there always as much--as much talk of love here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It is frequently discussed,&quot; he replied. &quot;And why not? It is the most
+important thing in the world.&quot; Then, with his admiring artist-stare, he
+added, in a lower tone, &quot;As you will discover for yourself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She frowned, turned away, and re-entered the room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He stayed outside, suddenly conscious of his want of tact, but inclined
+to lay the fault of it at her door. &quot;'Tis a pity she is so whimsical a
+creature,&quot; he muttered between his teeth; &quot;and so gloriously beautiful;
+a great pity!&quot; Nevertheless he was vexed with himself, and was firmly
+resolved, if chance ever gave him another interview with her, to make
+better use of his opportunity.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Shortly afterwards Countess Lenzdorff, with Erika and Constance
+Mühlberg, took her leave. She was in a very good humour, and exchanged
+all sorts of witticisms with Constance with regard to their evening.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And how did you enjoy yourself?&quot; she asked Erika, when, after leaving
+Constance at home, the two were alone in the gondola on their way to
+the 'Britannia.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I?&quot; asked Erika, with a contemptuous depression of the corners of her
+mouth. &quot;How could I enjoy myself in an assemblage where there was
+nothing talked of but love?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother laughed heartily: &quot;Yes, it was rather a silly way to
+pass the time, I confess. I cannot conceive why they waste so many
+words upon what is perfectly plain to any one with eyes. They grope
+about, and no one explains in the least the nature of love.&quot; She threw
+back her head, and, without for an instant losing the slightly mocking
+smile which was so characteristic of her beautiful old face, she said,
+&quot;Love is an irritation of the fancy, produced by certain natural
+conditions, which expresses itself, so long as it lasts, in the
+exclusive glorification of one single individual, and robs the human
+being who is its victim of all power of discernment. All things
+considered, those people are very lucky who, when the torch of passion
+is extinguished, can find anything save humiliation in the memory of
+their love.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old Countess was privately very proud of her definition, and looked
+round at Erika with an air of self-satisfaction at having clothed what
+was so self-evident, so cheerful a view, in such uncommonly appropriate
+words. But Erika's face had assumed a dark, pained expression. Her
+grandmother's words had aroused in her the old anguish,--anguish for
+her mother. It was not to be denied that in some cases her
+grandmother's view was the true one. Was it true always? No! Something
+in the girl's nature rebelled against such a thought. No! a thousand
+times no!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;But the love of which you speak, grandmother, is only sham love,&quot; she
+said, in a husky, trembling voice. &quot;There is surely another kind,--a
+genuine, sacred, ennobling love!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There may be,&quot; said her grandmother. &quot;The pity is that one never knows
+the true from the false until it is past.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika said no more.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The air was mild; the scent of roses was wafted across the sluggish
+water of the lagoon; there was a faint sound of distant music. But an
+icy chill crept over Erika, and in her heart there was a strange,
+aching, yearning pain.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Three weeks had passed since Minona von Rattenfels had so effectively
+given vent to her languishing love-plaints.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A striking change was evident in Erika. She was much more cheerful, or,
+at least, more accessible; she no longer withdrew from the world in
+morbid misanthropy, but went into society whenever her grandmother
+requested her to do so. Wherever she went she was fêted and admired.
+Since her first season in Berlin she had never received so much homage.
+It seemed to give her pleasure, and, what was still more remarkable,
+she seemed to exert herself somewhat--a very little--to obtain it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Wherever she went she met Lozoncyi,--Lozoncyi, who scarcely took his
+eyes off her, but who made no attempt to approach her in any way that
+could attract notice. His bearing towards her was not only exemplary,
+but touching. Always at hand to render her any little service,--to
+procure her an ice, to relieve her of an empty teacup, to find her
+missing fan or gloves,--he immediately retired to give place to her
+other admirers. Among these Prince Helmy Nimbsch was foremost: the
+entire international society of Venice were daily expecting the
+announcement of a betrothal, and one afternoon, at a lawn-tennis party
+at Lady Stairs's, he had given Erika unmistakable proofs of his
+intentions. She was a little startled, and, while she was endeavouring
+to lead the conversation with him away from the perilously sentimental
+tone it had assumed, her eyes accidentally encountered Lozoncyi's.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Shortly afterwards she managed to get rid of the Prince; and as, after
+a last game of lawn-tennis, she was retiring from the field, her cheeks
+flushed, her eyes sparkling from the exercise, Lozoncyi came up to her
+to relieve her of her racket. &quot;You see how right the poor painter was,
+not to venture to approach his little fairy,&quot; he murmured. The words,
+his tone, aroused her sympathy and compassion, but before she could
+reply he had vanished. He did not come near her again that afternoon,
+but she could not help perceiving that his looks sought herself and
+Prince Nimbsch alternately, at first inquiringly, and afterwards with
+an expression of relief.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Dinner has been over for some time. The lamps are gleaming red along
+the Grand Canal, and their broken reflections quiver in long streaks
+upon the waters of the lagoon. The little drawing-room is but dimly
+lighted, and Erika is seated at the piano, playing bits of 'Parsifal,'
+her fingers gliding into the motive of sinful, worldly pleasure.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old Countess enters, and, after wandering aimlessly about the room
+for a moment, goes, after her fashion, directly to the point. She
+pauses beside Erika, and observes, &quot;Prince Nimbsch is courting you.
+People are talking about it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Nonsense!&quot; Erika rejoins, running her fingers over the keys. &quot;He is
+only amusing himself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;H'm! he seems to me to be very much in earnest,&quot; murmurs the old lady;
+&quot;and there is no denying that it would be a brilliant match.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika drops her hands in her lap. &quot;Grandmother!&quot; she exclaims, half
+laughing, &quot;what are you thinking of? He is a mere boy!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;A boy? He is full four years older than you; and I need not remind you
+that you are no child. At all events, you must consider well----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Before I enter into another engagement,&quot; Erika interrupts her. &quot;I
+promise you I will; nay, more than that, I promise you solemnly that I
+will not engage myself to Prince Nimbsch.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In fact, I must confess that I do not think him your equal.&quot; There is
+a certain relief in the old lady's tone, although she adds, with some
+hesitation, &quot;But the position is tempting, very tempting.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah, grandmother!&quot; Erika exclaims, with reproach in her tone, as,
+rising, she puts her arm around the old Countess's shoulder and kisses
+her gray head, &quot;do you know me so little?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother returns her caress with emotion, murmuring the while,
+as if talking to herself, &quot;As if you knew yourself, my poor, dear
+child!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I know myself so far,&quot; Erika declares, &quot;as to be sure that after my
+first unfortunate mistake I am cured of all worldly ambition.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, that was quite another thing!&quot; her grandmother sighs. &quot;Your
+marriage with Lord Langley would have been positively unnatural; but
+Prince Helmy Nimbsch is a fine, gallant young fellow.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It all amounts to the same thing: old or young, he is a man whom I do
+not love, and never could love.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old lady shakes her head impatiently: &quot;Are you beginning upon that?
+Love? I thought you had more sense. Love!--love! Heaven preserve you
+from that disease! The only sound foundations for a happy marriage are
+unbounded esteem and warm sympathy: anything more is an evil.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika is silent, and the old Countess continues: &quot;No respectable woman
+should indulge in passion. Passion is an intoxication, and nausea is
+sure to follow upon intoxication. Therefore a respectable woman, who
+can at the most indulge but once in such intoxication, condemns
+herself, after a short period of bliss, to nausea for the rest of her
+life. Only the unprincipled woman who cures her nausea by a fresh
+passion can permit herself such indulgence. It is all nonsense for one
+of us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">During this long speech the Countess has seated herself in an arm-chair
+with a volume of Taine's 'Les Origines de la France' open in her lap,
+and to lend emphasis to her words she taps the book from time to time
+with a large Japanese paper-knife.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika stands near her, leaning upon the piano, tall and graceful in her
+white gown. &quot;And what am I to infer from your preachment? That I must
+marry Helmy Nimbsch, even without love?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Helmy Nimbsch? Who is talking of him?&quot; The old lady almost starts from
+her chair.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I thought you were, grandmother,&quot; Erika says, with a mischievous
+smile. &quot;If I am not mistaken, he was the subject of our conversation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Nonsense! Helmy Nimbsch! <i>Ce n'est pas serieux!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Of whom, then, are you talking?&quot; Erika asks, looking her grandmother
+full in the face.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, of no one: I was talking in general,&quot; her grandmother replies,
+with some irritation, adding, still more petulantly, after a pause, &quot;If
+you have unbounded esteem and warm sympathy for young Nimbsch, why,
+marry him, by all means.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Instead of replying, Erika begins to arrange the sheets of music on the
+piano.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A long pause ensues. From below come the murmur of voices, the ringing
+of bells, and the moving of trunks,--in short, all the bustle
+consequent upon the arrival of fresh guests at a large hotel. Countess
+Lenzdorff takes the opportunity to complain of so much noise, and to
+declare, &quot;In fact, I am quite tired of this wandering about from place
+to place.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What, grandmother? Why, you were so delighted here! Only yesterday you
+told me how 'refreshing' you considered your Venetian life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, yes; but it has lasted too long for me. While you were playing
+lawn-tennis this afternoon with Constance Mühlberg, I went to see
+Hedwig Norbin. She arrived yesterday, and is at the 'Europe;' but she
+is only stopping for a day or so on her way home. 'Tis a pity.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And she gave you such an alluring description of Berlin that you are
+anxious to fold your tent and fly back to Bellevue Street now, in the
+midst of this wondrous Southern spring?&quot; Erika asks, coldly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, spring is lovely everywhere!--lovelier in Berlin than in Venice:
+there is nothing more beautiful than the Thiergarten in May. And then I
+find there all my old habits, my old friends.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I have no friends in Berlin,&quot; says Erika, with a strange emphasis,
+&quot;and that is why I beg you to stay away from Berlin for a while longer.
+Next autumn you may do with me what you please. Have a little patience
+with me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Patience! patience!&quot; The old Countess taps her book more energetically
+than ever.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">After a while Erika begins: &quot;Did Frau von Norbin tell you anything
+about Dorothea von Sydow? How is her position regarded by society?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;How?&quot; her grandmother exclaims. &quot;How should society regard the
+critical position of a woman who has never shown the slightest
+consideration for any one, never conferred a benefit upon any one,
+scarcely even treated any one with courtesy, but lived only for her own
+frivolous gratification? Society acknowledges a woman in her position
+only when it would lose something by dropping her. Who would lose
+anything if Dorothea were stricken from its list? A couple of young
+men, perhaps; and they would be at liberty to make love to her outside
+of the ranks of society. The world has turned its back upon her: Hedwig
+tells me that she is positively shunned.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And how does she accommodate herself to her destiny?&quot; asks Erika.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;As poorly as possible. One would suppose that she would have left
+Berlin. For my part, I never imagined that she cared so much for her
+social position; but she appears to be clutching it in a kind of
+panic.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;How unpleasant for--for the dead man's brother!&quot; says Erika. Several
+months have passed since she has spoken Goswyn's name: it would seem as
+if her lips refused to utter it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;For Goswyn!&quot; her grandmother exclaims, in a tone of sincere distress.
+&quot;Terrible! They say he is altered almost beyond recognition. I did not
+know he was so devoted to Otto. But, to be sure, the circumstances
+attendant upon his death were frightful. Goswyn always found fault with
+me, but, after all, since his mother's death I have stood nearest to
+him in this world. I know he would be glad to pour out his heart to
+me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika draws a long breath; her large clear eyes flash. &quot;Ah!&quot;
+she exclaims, &quot;this, then, is your reason for wishing to go to
+Berlin,--that you may console Herr Goswyn von Sydow? I always knew that
+he was dear to you: I learn now for the first time that he is dearer to
+you than I am!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, Erika!--dearer than you!&quot; The old lady rises and strokes the
+girl's arm tenderly. &quot;I am often sorry that I cannot love you both
+together!&quot; she adds, half timidly, in an undertone.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But this time Erika repulses almost angrily the caress usually so dear
+to her. &quot;I cannot understand you!&quot; she says: &quot;it is a positive mania of
+yours. You are always reproaching me for not having married Goswyn, or
+hinting that I ought to marry him,--a man who has not wasted a thought
+upon me for years!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, Erika! how can you talk so? Remember Bayreuth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What if I do remember Bayreuth? Yes, he still thought of me then; that
+is, he remembered the young girl with whom he had ridden in the
+Thiergarten, and he brought her memory with him to Bayreuth; but he
+discovered it did not fit with what he found there: that was the end of
+it all!&quot; Erika silently paces the room to and fro once or twice, then,
+pausing before her grandmother, she continues: &quot;It stings me whenever
+you speak of Goswyn and lose yourself in the contemplation of his
+measureless magnanimity. Magnanimity! Yes, but it is a cold, sterile,
+arrogant magnanimity! He is a thoroughly just man, but he is a man who
+never forgives a weakness, because none ever beset him,--none, at
+least, of which he is conscious. He---- Oh, yes----,&quot;--the girl's voice
+grows hoarse, she catches her breath and goes on with increasing
+volubility,--&quot;I have no doubt that he would spring into the water at
+any moment to save the life, at the risk of his own, of any worthless
+wretch, but as soon as he brought him to land he would turn his back
+upon him and march away with his head proudly erect, without even
+casting a look upon the man he had rescued, let alone giving him a kind
+word. Witness his behaviour towards me. I refer to it expressly that we
+may correct once for all your painful and humiliating misapprehension.
+He did, as you know, do me a service in Bayreuth which I could not have
+expected of any one else. Granted. But he has never forgiven me for
+being betrothed for six or eight weeks to Lord Langley. Good heavens!
+it was a mistake of mine, a stupidity, the result of vanity and
+ambition on my part. But it was nothing more; and yet it was enough to
+cause--to cause Herr von Sydow to banish me from grace forever. This is
+your wonderful Goswyn. It is a matter of perfect indifference to me: I
+take not the slightest interest in him, thank God! If I had been
+interested in him I might have fretted myself nearly to death; but, as
+it is, I am merely vexed that I should have overrated him,--that is
+all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother listened in amazement. She had never before seen Erika
+so excited, had never imagined that her voice was capable of such
+intonations. At times it was the voice of a stubborn, angry child, and
+anon that of a proud, passionate woman.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why, Erika!&quot; she exclaimed when the girl paused, &quot;this is all
+nonsense,--cleverly-invented nonsense, the worst of all kinds. There is
+not one word of truth in it. I know that he adores you just as he
+always did.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You have a lively imagination,&quot; Erika said, sarcastically. &quot;It is
+remarkable that Goswyn has had nothing to say about his adoration all
+this time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My dear child,&quot; replied her grandmother, &quot;that is quite another thing.
+In certain respects Goswyn is petty: I have always told you so. His
+poverty and your wealth have always been of too much consequence in his
+eyes. It is a folly which may have cost him the happiness of his life.
+Say what you will, I am convinced that his poverty alone has prevented
+him from renewing his suit.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Indeed!&quot; said Erika, tossing her head disdainfully. &quot;Well, his poverty
+is at an end!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, Erika, with your wonderful sensibility you ought to understand
+that a man like Goswyn cannot bring himself all in a moment to profit
+by his brother's death,--a death, too, so terrible in its attendant
+circumstances.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika was silent for a minute; her lips quivered; then she said, in a
+low tone, &quot;True, grandmother; it would be odious of him to renew his
+suit instantly; but, you see, if such a misfortune as has befallen him
+had happened to me, I should long to carry my pain to those who were
+nearest my heart. You are ready to return to Berlin for his sake. If
+all that you fancy were true, he would have come to Venice: he could
+easily have obtained a leave. And now we have done with this subject
+once for all. Fortunately, I do not care for him in the least,--not in
+the least. I tell you all this only that you may not request me to ride
+posthaste with you to Berlin, that the world there, already so
+predisposed in my favour, may say, 'She is running after Goswyn von
+Sydow, now that he has inherited the family estates.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The grandmother laid her hands on Erika's shoulders, then drew the
+proud young head towards her, and kissed her on the forehead. At
+that moment Lüdecke, the indispensable, entered and presented a
+visiting-card.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Paul von Lozoncyi,&quot; Countess Lenzdorff read from the card, and then
+dropped it upon the salver again. &quot;Are you in the mood to receive
+strangers?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes. Why not?&quot; asked Erika.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Shortly afterwards Lozoncyi entered Erika's pretty little boudoir, now
+illuminated by a couple of shaded lamps.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika received him most amiably. The old Countess, on the other hand,
+was at first rather formal in her manner towards him. She was not
+accustomed to have young men delay so long in taking advantage of an
+invitation extended by herself to visit her. But before Lozoncyi had
+been five minutes in the room her displeasure melted like snow in
+sunshine.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Without the slightest attempt to excuse his dilatoriness, the artist
+was at pains to impress his hostesses with his delight in having at
+last found the way to them. &quot;How charming!&quot; he said, looking around the
+room and rubbing his slender hands, after his characteristic fashion.
+&quot;One never would dream that this was a hotel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;This is my grand-daughter's sanctum,&quot; said the old Countess. &quot;My own
+reception-room is several shades barer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Indeed? Ah, I know it does not become me, the first time I am
+permitted to enjoy this privilege, to stare about at your treasures
+like the private agent of some dealer in antiquities, but we artists
+delight in the pride of the eye. It is remarkable how well you have
+suited the frame to the picture. Look, your Excellency.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He drew the old lady's attention to the picture formed at that moment
+by her grand-daughter, who was sitting in a negligent attitude in a
+high-backed antique chair, the gilt leather covering of which made a
+charming background for her auburn hair.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It is enchanting, the white figure against the golden gleam of the
+leather, and with that vase of jonquils beside it. If one could only
+perpetuate it!&quot; He sighed.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You will embarrass the child,&quot; the grandmother admonished him,
+although in her heart she was delighted. &quot;Instead of turning the
+Countess Erika's head, tell us why you have been so long finding your
+way hither.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He raised his eyes, looked her full in the face, and then dropped them
+again, as he said, in a low tone, &quot;Rather ask me why I have come at
+all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No, I ask you expressly why you did not come before,&quot; the old lady
+persisted, laughing.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why?&quot; He hesitated a moment, and then replied, calmly, &quot;Because I have
+no wish to be the last among the Countess Erika's adorers to drag her
+triumphal car. Now you know. Such plain questions provoke plain
+answers.&quot; He looked at the old lady as he spoke, to see if he had gone
+too far. No, he was one of those favoured individuals to whom thrice as
+much is forgiven as to other men. Something in the intonation of his
+gentle, cordial voice, his frank yet melancholy glance, and especially
+his smile, his charming insinuating smile, instantly prepossessed
+people in his favour. It was the same smile with which as a lad of
+seventeen he had beguiled little Erika's tender heart, the merry,
+careless smile which he must have inherited from an amiable,
+light-hearted mother.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old lady only laughed at his confession, and then asked, mockingly,
+&quot;And now you are content to be the very last, etc., etc.?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He shook his head: &quot;Now it has occurred to me that perhaps I can offer
+the Countess Erika a small pleasure which none other among her adorers
+can give her, and I come to ask if she will give me leave to do so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika was silent. Countess Lenzdorff said, &quot;Herr von Lozoncyi, you
+speak in riddles.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Lozoncyi turned from one to the other of the ladies with a look
+calculated to go directly to their hearts, and then, addressing the
+younger one, said, &quot;You perhaps remember that I am in your debt,
+Countess Erika?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes; I once lent you five guilders.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Five guilders,&quot; he repeated. &quot;It seems a trifle; but then it was much
+for me. Without those five guilders I should probably never have been
+able to reach my aunt Illona in Munich, and I might have starved in a
+ditch. You see that I owe you much; and in consideration of this fact I
+have come to ask if you will allow me to paint your portrait.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika gazed at him blankly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;For five guilders?&quot; exclaimed the old Countess, with comical emphasis.
+Every one knew how difficult it was to persuade Lozoncyi to paint a
+portrait, and what a fabulous price he asked when induced to do so.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I entreat you not to refuse me, Countess Erika,&quot; he begged, with
+clasped hands.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I advise you to accept the offer,&quot; said her grandmother: &quot;it will
+hardly be made a second time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You shall not be subjected to the slightest inconvenience,&quot; he went on
+to Erika, &quot;except that of being bored for a few hours. I know that you
+do not, as a rule, like my pictures, and therefore I promise you that I
+will burn this one if it does not please you, even though I should
+consider it a masterpiece. But should I succeed in pleasing you, the
+picture may serve to remind you sometimes of a poor fellow who----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The sentence was cut short by the entrance of several visitors, and
+much talk and laughter ensued.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Lozoncyi stayed until all the rest had gone.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;When shall I have the first sitting?&quot; he asked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Whenever you please,&quot; Erika made reply.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;To-morrow?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;To-morrow? No; to-morrow will not do; but the day after to-morrow, in
+the forenoon, if you like.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His eyes sparkled. &quot;About eleven?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She assented.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;There goes another man whose head you have turned, Erika,&quot; remarked
+the old Countess, as the door closed behind the artist. She laughed as
+she said it. Good heavens! what did it matter?</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">At the appointed time Lüdecke carried down to the gondola the
+portmanteau containing the gown in which Lozoncyi had seen Erika at
+Frau von Neerwinden's, and in which he had wished to immortalize her.
+The two ladies were not accompanied even by a maid, Erika declaring
+that she needed no help in arranging her toilette for the portrait.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The sky was cloudless, the air warm but not oppressive. The gondoliers
+rowed merrily and quickly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Lozoncyi's studio was back of the Rialto, on one of the narrower
+water-ways to the left of the Grand Canal. In about a quarter of an
+hour the gondola stopped before a light-green door with an iron lion's
+head in the centre of it. One of the gondoliers knocked with the ring
+depending from the lion's mouth.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Lozoncyi himself opened the door. He wore a faded linen blouse, and
+appeared greatly elated. &quot;To the very last moment I was afraid of an
+excuse, and here you are, only a quarter of an hour late!&quot; he cried, in
+a tone of cordial welcome; then, taking the portmanteau from the
+attendant gondolier, he called loudly, &quot;Lucrezia! Lucrezia!&quot; &quot;You must
+excuse me, ladies,&quot; he said: &quot;my house does not boast electric bells.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">From a passage at the head of the stone staircase there appeared an old
+Venetian woman, with large earrings in her ears, and thick waving gray
+hair brushed back from her temples and coiled in a knot at the back of
+her head, the antique style of which suited admirably her regular
+classic features. She smiled a welcome to the ladies, thereby
+displaying a double row of dazzling white teeth, while Lozoncyi in
+fluent Italian ordered her to take the portmanteau to the dressing-room
+and unpack it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Along the narrow passage leading directly through the house from the
+water, they walked into the garden, a tangle of luxuriant growth. The
+bushes were already clothed in tender green, and here and there through
+the young leaves could be seen a spray of white hawthorn.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, how charming!&quot; exclaimed Erika.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Is it not?&quot; said the painter. &quot;I came here for the sake of the garden.
+A spot of earth is so precious in this watery Venice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Do not forget your Lucrezia: her beauty exceeds that of your garden,&quot;
+the old Countess remarked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My old factotum? Yes, she has a fine face, magnificent features. I
+cannot endure anything ugly about me. But did you notice how short and
+stout she is?&quot; He asked the question with so genuine an air of
+annoyance that the old Countess could not help laughing.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What of that? Is it a crime in your eyes?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No,&quot; he said, thoughtfully, &quot;but it makes her useless for artistic
+purposes. I tried to pose her the other day,--in vain. She might do for
+Juliet's nurse, or for a modern fortune-teller, but that is not my
+line. I find plenty of handsome faces among these Venetians, and fine
+shoulders, too, but nothing more. Their bodies are too long, their
+legs too short; there are no sweeping lines, no grace of movement. And
+when one finds a model whose limbs are long enough, she is like a
+stork. I have a deal of trouble in this respect. When I was painting
+'Spring,'--the picture that Countess Erika does not like,--I was in
+despair because I could find no model for my female figure. Then one
+day on the Rialto I found a person, no longer young, rouged, but
+magnificently formed,--as tall as Countess Erika, only not----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He broke off and grew very red. A moment afterwards, however, he had
+forgotten his embarrassment in a new inspiration. At the door of the
+studio Erika lifted her arm to pluck a spray of wistaria.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Stay just as you are, for one instant, Countess!&quot; he cried, and,
+rushing into his studio, he returned instantly with a sketch-book and a
+basket-chair. The latter he placed in the shade for the old Countess,
+and then began to sketch rapidly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Only look at that curve!&quot; he exclaimed to the grandmother. &quot;It is
+music! And the line of the hips!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His manner of unceasingly dwelling upon the beauty or ugliness of the
+human body, the exact analysis which he was perpetually making of its
+structure, in connection with his profession, was at times offensive.
+But neither of the ladies took exception to it, Erika partly from
+inexperience and partly from flattered vanity, the old Countess because
+her sensitiveness in this respect had become dulled of late, and also
+because Lozoncyi expressed himself in so naïve a fashion that he seemed
+at the worst to be merely guilty of a breach of good taste. One had to
+know him very intimately to discover what a profound impression upon
+his inmost nature this perpetual study of the human figure had
+produced.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;How thoroughly you understand how to dress yourself!&quot; he exclaimed,
+continuing to look fixedly at the girl, who wore a gown of some white
+woollen stuff, with a large straw hat trimmed with heavy old Venetian
+lace.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I have half a mind to paint you thus, instead of in evening dress,&quot; he
+murmured. &quot;But no; your portrait should be in full dress. Only, be
+generous; we will begin the portrait to-morrow, give me an hour for
+myself to-day: I want to make a water-colour sketch of you. Does it
+tire you too much to stretch your arm out so far?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;A woman does not grow tired when she is conscious of being admired,&quot;
+the old Countess declared; &quot;but the situation is less entertaining for
+me. Have you not some book to give me?&quot;</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika grew weary at last, in spite of the admiration lavished upon her
+by Lozoncyi while he sketched. The painter improvised a lunch for his
+guests beneath a mulberry-tree, upon a little rickety table. It was
+excellently prepared and delicately served, and he enjoyed seeing the
+ladies do ample justice to it. Lucrezia had just served the coffee, and
+was standing with a smiling face and arms akimbo, listening to the old
+Countess's praise of her skill in cookery, when there came a knock at
+the door.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Confound it!&quot; muttered Lozoncyi, &quot;not a visitor, I trust.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was no visitor, but a letter brought by Lozoncyi's gondolier, a
+handsome dark-skinned lad in a sailor dress, with a red scarf about his
+waist. Involuntarily Erika glanced at the letter. The address was in a
+feminine hand; the post-mark was Paris.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Lozoncyi gave an impatient shrug at sight of the handwriting; then,
+crushing the letter in his hand, he slipped it unopened into his
+pocket. &quot;Will you not look into my workshop?&quot; he asked the ladies.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I was just about to ask you to show us your studio,&quot; replied the old
+Countess. &quot;I am curious with regard to your 'Bad Dreams.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes,&quot;--he shivered,--&quot;'bad dreams,'--that is the word!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The atelier, which they entered from the garden by a glass door, was an
+unusually high and spacious apartment, but very plainly furnished, and
+in dusty confusion,--the workshop of a very nervous artist, who can
+endure no 'clearing up,' who cannot do without the rubbish of his art.
+Erika's gaze was instantly attracted by a remarkable and horrible
+picture.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A single figure in a close, clinging garment of undecided hue, the head
+thrust forward, the arms stretched out, the whole form expressing
+yearning, torturing desire, was groping its way towards a swamp
+above which hovered a will-o'-the-wisp. Above in the dark heavens
+gleamed the pure light of the stars. It was all a marvel of tone and
+expression,--the sad harmony of colour, the star-lit sky, the dreary
+swamp, and above all the figure, its every feature, every fingertip,
+every fold even of its garment, expressing desire.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What did you mean it to represent?&quot; asked the old Countess.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Can you not guess?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">No, she could not guess; but Erika instantly exclaimed, &quot;Blind Love!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He looked at her more curiously than he had done hitherto, and then
+asked, &quot;How did you know?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I see how the figure is creeping towards the will-o'-the-wisp, not
+heeding the stars sparkling above it. Look how it is sinking into the
+swamp, grandmother. It is horrible!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Blind Love,&quot; her grandmother repeated, thoughtfully. The subject did
+not appeal to her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes,&quot; said Lozoncyi, &quot;blind love,--the misery of debasing passion.&quot;
+With a bitter smile he added, &quot;Well, the only comfort is that one can
+sometimes attain to the will-o'-the-wisp, though he can never reach the
+stars, however he may gaze up at them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No,&quot; Erika exclaimed, indignantly, &quot;that is no comfort. Rather--a
+thousand times rather--reach up in vain for the stars, and expand and
+grow in longing for the unattainable, than stoop to a happiness to be
+found only in a swamp!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He made an inclination towards her, and said, half aloud, &quot;What you say
+is very beautiful; but you do not understand.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Well, you certainly have turned that poor fellow's head,&quot; Countess
+Lenzdorff remarked, leaning back comfortably among the cushions of the
+gondola as she and Erika were being rowed home. &quot;It will do him no
+harm: on the contrary, it is good for such young artists, too apt to be
+self-indulgent, to reach after the unattainable; it enlarges their
+minds.&quot; Then after a while she went on: &quot;I wonder whom the letter that
+so provoked him was from. Perhaps from that blonde who was with him at
+Bayreuth.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika did not reply; she looked down at a spray of wistaria he had
+plucked for her as she took leave of him. Suddenly she started: a large
+black caterpillar crept out from among the fragrant blossoms. With a
+little cry of disgust she flung the spray into the water.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">At the same time Lozoncyi was standing in his studio, looking at the
+water-colour sketch he had made of Erika.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;A glorious creature,&quot; he muttered to himself; &quot;glorious! I do not
+remember ever to have seen anything more beautiful, and, with all her
+distinction, and that pallor too, thoroughly healthy, fully developed,
+nothing maimed or deformed about her. She must be at least twenty-four.
+How is it that she is not married? Some unhappy love-affair? Hardly.
+She seems entirely fancy free, as if she had never in her life cared
+for a lover. How proudly she carries her head! Her kind is entirely
+unknown to me. Well, there are always women enough to do the dirty work
+of life; some there must be to guard the Holy Grail.&quot; He turned to the
+door of the studio that led out into the garden. A light vapour was
+rising from the earth, enveloping the blossoms in mist. He smiled
+strangely and not very pleasantly. &quot;The spring cares not a whit for the
+Holy Grail. It goes on its way; it goes on its way.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">At first she had been repelled by him; then he had flattered her
+vanity; by and by he interested her, but from the very beginning he had
+excited her imagination as no other man had ever done. And this in
+spite of the fact that his views of life, which he scarcely concealed,
+aroused within her painful indignation. She was quite aware that there
+were dark recesses in his soul which she might not explore, and that,
+courteous and faultless as was his behaviour towards women like her
+grandmother and herself, he respected them as curious specimens of the
+sex, interesting, because not often encountered. Upon all this she
+pondered, sick at heart, as she turned her head to and fro upon her
+pillow, so many nights, seeking the refreshment of sleep.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The outcome of it was a strange, pathetic, foolishly ambitious project.
+She set herself the task of converting him to nobler views of life.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">How many unfortunates have been ruined in their zeal for conversion!</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">That Erika should unconsciously play with fire was not astonishing, but
+that her grandmother should look on in smiling indifference while her
+grand-daughter was thus occupied was amazing.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">There are learned fanatics who in their determination to establish some
+theory of their own lavish all their powers in an effort to elaborate
+it, shutting their eyes to any light which may steal in upon them,
+while thus engaged, from an opposite quarter.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">At first the portrait progressed with great rapidity; but now weeks had
+gone by, and it seemed as if Lozoncyi were unable to finish it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was life-size, a three-fourths figure, and, in order not to fatigue
+Erika, she was taken sitting in an antique chair, her lap heaped with
+pale-lilac wistaria blossoms. There was no straining for effect, not a
+trace of conventionality.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Take the position that you find most comfortable,&quot; he had instructed
+his beautiful model. &quot;You can take none that will not be lovely.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The long spring days glided slowly by. When the two ladies first
+went to Lozoncyi's studio the gray stone of the garden wall was easily
+seen behind the vines and bushes; now the green alone showed
+everywhere,--the roses were in bloom, and the hawthorn had nearly
+faded.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The studio, too, was changed. When they first came, it had been
+absolutely bare of all decoration; now when they came, which was three
+or four times a week, it was filled with the loveliest flowers.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When they left he heaped up all of these that had not been touched by
+the heat in their gondola, which sometimes returned alone to the Hotel
+Britannia, laden with the flowers, while Lozoncyi escorted his guests
+to their home by some picturesque roundabout way.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was a great pleasure to walk with him. No one knew as he did how to
+call attention to some artistic effect, some bit of colour that might
+have easily escaped one less sensitive to picturesque detail.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Good heavens!&quot; said the old Countess, &quot;I have been through these
+alleys a hundred times, but you make me feel as if I never had been
+here before. You have a special gift for teaching one the beauty of
+life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Indeed? Have I?&quot; he murmured. &quot;It is a gift, then, for teaching what I
+cannot learn myself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">By degrees Erika came to see with his eyes, and sometimes more quickly
+than he was wont to do. She was especially pleased when she could first
+call his attention to some artistic effect that had escaped him, and he
+always exaggerated the value of these discoveries of hers, assuring her
+that he had never seen a woman with so keen a sense of the beautiful,
+and rallying her upon her artistic skill. Once when the old Countess
+asked what they were talking about, Lozoncyi replied, &quot;The Countess
+Erika and I are teaching each other to find life beautiful.&quot; And once
+he turned to Erika and said, sadly, &quot;It is a pity that it must all come
+to an end so soon.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">All the sentences abruptly broken off which just touched the brink of a
+declaration of love, but were never really such, Erika naturally
+interpreted in one way: &quot;He loves me, but dares not venture to hope for
+a return of his affection: he is convinced that I am too far above
+him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At first she was proud of having inspired a man so rare, so gifted, so
+flattered, with so profound a sentiment; then----</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;To what can this lead?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">For the hundredth time Lozoncyi asked himself this question.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;To what can this lead?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He was standing in his studio before Erika's unfinished
+portrait--unfinished!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It must be finished at the next sitting. For the last ten days I have
+simply put off its completion from one sitting to the next, and all
+because I cannot tell how I can endure seeing her no more. And, yet, to
+what can it all lead?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He was very pale, and the moisture stood upon his forehead. He would
+have turned away from the portrait, but was drawn towards it as by a
+spell. &quot;A glorious creature!&quot; he murmured; &quot;and not only beautiful, but
+absolutely unique. It raises a man's moral standard to be with such a
+creature. H'm! before I knew her I was not aware that I had a moral
+standard.&quot; He laughed bitterly, and continued to gaze at the picture.
+&quot;She is beautiful!&quot; he muttered between his teeth. &quot;It is folly for a
+being like her to be so beautiful,--a waste,--a contradiction of
+nature!&quot; He stamped his foot, vexed that any but the purest thoughts
+should intrude upon his admiration of Erika. &quot;A strange creature! What
+eyes!--so clear, so deep, so penetrating!&quot; He could think of nothing
+save of her; his nerves thrilled with passion for her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Strive as he might, his artist imagination could not force itself from
+the contemplation of her beauty.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He loved her; he had known that for some time. But hitherto his love
+for her had been a tender, noble sentiment, something of which he had
+not supposed himself capable, something that exalted him in his own
+estimation. He had been refreshed, revived, by her presence, by
+intercourse with her. But that was past.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The charm of love is the dream that precedes it,&quot; he murmured. The
+dream was over: what now?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Then an insane idea occurred to him: &quot;She is unlike all others: there
+is a magnanimous, exaggerated strain in her composition, which exalts
+her above all pettiness. If she loved me, could she ever have been
+induced to marry me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He shivered. &quot;No! no! it is worse than folly to imagine it. In spite of
+all her enthusiasm, in spite of her immense power of compassion, she is
+too much the Countess to ever dream of such a possibility.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His lips were dry; an iron hand seemed clutching his throat. He turned
+his back to the picture and went out into the garden. The skies were
+covered with gray clouds: the flowers drooped; there was a distant
+mutter of thunder.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yet if it could be!&quot; he murmured.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika was sitting by the window in her boudoir. Although outside the
+night had not yet fallen upon the earth, it was too dark to read. Her
+window looked out upon the hotel-garden,--which at this season of the
+year was like one huge bed of roses intersected by a narrow gravel
+path. The sweet breath of the roses was wafted in at the window, but
+with it there mingled always the sickening odour of the lagoon.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A couple of distant clocks were striking the hour, and the water was
+lapping the feet of the old palaces.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Lost in thought the girl sat there. The mission in life for which she
+had so yearned was revealed to her in the noblest, most attractive
+form.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She could not doubt that Lozoncyi loved her. Mistrustful as she usually
+was concerning the sentiments she was wont to arouse, there could be no
+uncertainty in this case.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The future lay before her bright and alluring. How could she have
+despaired in this wonderful life of ours? She seemed to have always
+known that she was foreordained for some special service.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Why had he never yet made a direct confession of his sentiments? Her
+pride replied to this question, &quot;He dare not venture.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was for her to take one step to meet him. Reserved as she was, the
+mere thought of so doing sent the blood to her cheeks, but she took
+herself sternly to task, admonishing herself that cowardice on her part
+would be paltry in the extreme.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It would surely be possible to allow him to read her heart, without any
+indelicate frankness on her part.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Thus far her thoughts had led her, when Marianne brought her a card:
+&quot;Herr von Lozoncyi.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Did you tell him I was at home?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No; I said I would see. When her Excellency is away I never say
+anything decided,&quot; replied the maid.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old Countess had gone out a little while before, to pay a short
+visit in the neighbourhood; Lüdecke had accompanied her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika hesitated a moment, then turned up the electric light and told
+Marianne to show in the visitor. Immediately afterwards he entered, and
+she arose to receive him. She was startled as she looked at his face,
+it was so pale and wan.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Are you ill?&quot; she exclaimed; &quot;or have you come to tell us of some
+misfortune that has befallen you?&quot; The sympathy expressed in her tone
+agitated him still further.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Neither is the case,&quot; he replied, trying to assume an easy air. &quot;I
+came only to----&quot; There he paused. Why had he come? The thought that
+she might entertain a warmer sentiment for him--a thought that had
+occurred to him to-day for the first time--would not be banished. He
+had dragged the sweet, racking uncertainty about with him for an hour
+through the loneliest streets of Venice, without being able to rid
+himself of it. He would see her,--would have certainty; and then----</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Ah, he could not gain that certainty: he could only long for her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He had invented some explanation of his visit, but he could not
+remember it; instead he said, &quot;You are very kind to receive me in
+Countess Lenzdorff's absence, and I will show my appreciation of your
+kindness by making my visit a short one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;On the contrary,&quot; she rejoined, &quot;I hope you will spend the evening
+with us. My grandmother will be here in a few minutes, and will be very
+glad to find you here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">How soft and sweet her voice was! Could it be--could it be----?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His agitation became almost intolerable. He knew that he ought not to
+stay, but he could not bring himself to leave.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The evening minstrels of Venice were beginning their rounds, and in the
+distance they sang &quot;<i>Io son felice--t'attendo in ciel!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Bring your present expression to the studio tomorrow!&quot; Lozoncyi said,
+hoarsely: &quot;I will transfer it to the canvas as well as I can, in memory
+of the noblest creature I have ever met. You are coming to-morrow?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Certainly. The portrait is almost finished, is it not?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes; I think to-morrow will be the last sitting; and then----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;And then----?&quot; she repeated.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Then it will all be over!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">There was a pause. He turned his head aside. Suddenly a low sweet
+voice, that went directly to his heart, said, softly, &quot;Then you will
+wish to know nothing more of me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He started as if from an electric shock; the room swam before his eyes,
+when----the door opened, the Countess Mühlberg appeared, and Lozoncyi
+arose to take leave, thanking Heaven for this unexpected interruption.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Will you not wait until my grandmother returns?&quot; Erika asked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Unfortunately, it is impossible.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Adieu, then. To-morrow at eleven,&quot; she called after him. He made no
+reply.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">It lightened and thundered all through the night, but scarcely a drop
+of rain fell; the air the next morning was as sultry as it had been on
+the previous day.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">When Erika, with her grandmother, entered Lozoncyi's garden punctually
+at eleven o'clock, everything there looked withered and drooping.
+Lozoncyi himself was pale; his motions had lost their wonted
+elasticity, and his face was grave. When the old Countess asked him if
+he were ill, he ascribed his condition to the sirocco.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika noticed that there were no fresh flowers in the studio: he had
+taken no pains to decorate it for his guests, and she was conscious of
+a foreboding of misfortune.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I must subject you to some fatigue to-day, I fear, that the picture
+may at last be finished,&quot; he said, speaking very quickly. &quot;You must
+have patience this last time. I should not like to give you a picture
+that was not as good as I knew how to make it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You have already bestowed too much of your valuable time upon the
+Countess Erika,&quot; the old Countess said, kindly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Indeed? do you think so?&quot; he murmured, with a bitterness he had never
+displayed before. &quot;Do you think we artists should not be allowed to
+devote so much time to enjoyment? 'Tis true,&quot; he added, in an
+undertone, &quot;that we have to pay for it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika looked at him in startled wonder: his words were perfectly
+incomprehensible to her, but the expression of his pale face was one of
+such anguish that her compassion, always too easily aroused, increased
+momentarily.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">As usual, she repaired to the adjoining room to change her dress with
+Lucrezia's assistance. When she returned to the studio Lozoncyi was
+standing with his back to the chimney-piece, his hands in the pockets
+of his jacket, while her grandmother, sitting opposite him in her
+favourite chair, was asking him, &quot;What is the matter with you,
+Lozoncyi? Have you lost money in the stock market?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He shook his head. &quot;No,&quot; he said, trying to answer the question in the
+same jesting tone as that in which it had been asked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Then what is wrong? Confide in me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He cleared his throat. &quot;In fact, I----&quot; he began.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Then, perceiving Erika, &quot;Ah, ready so soon?&quot; he cried. &quot;Let us go to
+work.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She could not find the pose immediately: he was obliged to move her
+right arm. His hand was as hot as if burning with fever, and he had
+scarcely touched the girl's arm with it when he withdrew it hastily.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He went to the easel, gazed long and with half-closed eyes at his
+model, then turned and began to paint.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Usually there was a constant flow of conversation between Erika and
+himself. To-day he spoke not a word; perfect silence reigned in the
+studio; the turning of the leaves of the novel which the old Countess
+was reading and the twittering of the birds in the garden outside, were
+audible; one could even hear now and then the sweep of the brush upon
+the canvas.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Thus an hour passed. Then, stepping back a few paces from the picture,
+he fixed his eyes upon Erika, added a few touches with his brush, and
+looked from her to the portrait.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Look at it yourself,&quot; he said, with a hard emphasis on each syllable.
+&quot;So far as I can finish it, it is done. I cannot improve it!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Both ladies went and stood before it. &quot;I do not know whether it is
+like,&quot; said Erika, &quot;but it certainly is a masterpiece.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It is magnificent!&quot; exclaimed her grandmother. &quot;You have flattered the
+child, and have done it most delicately,--<i>en homme d'esprit</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Flattered!&quot; he cried. &quot;Hardly! I have tried to produce the expression
+which not every one can see in the face. That is the only merit of my
+poor performance: otherwise it is a daub. I have never seemed to myself
+so poor a painter as when at work upon this picture.&quot; As he spoke he
+tossed the entire sheaf of brushes which he held in his hand into the
+chimney place.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What are you about?&quot; exclaimed the old Countess. &quot;You are in a very
+odd mood to-day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, the brushes were worn out,&quot; he replied. &quot;I could not have painted
+another picture with them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The blood mounted to Erika's cheek with gratification. She understood
+him. His agitation and sorrow did not disquiet her now, so convinced
+was she that it was in her power to dispel them by a single word.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You must leave the picture with me for a time. When it is dry I will
+varnish it and send it to you: I must ask you, however, to what
+address?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I hope we shall still continue to see you,&quot; the old Countess replied.
+&quot;I assure you that I entertain a sincere friendship for you. The visits
+to your studio, although my part in them has been a secondary one, have
+come to be a pleasant habit, which I shall find it hard to discontinue.
+We shall always be glad to welcome you wherever we are.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika, meanwhile, had approached the painter. &quot;I do not know how to
+thank you,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I have done nothing for which thanks are due,&quot; he rejoined. &quot;The
+thanks should come from me. All I ask of you is to bestow a thought now
+and then upon the poor painter who has enjoyed the sight of you for so
+long. No, there is one thing more. You will allow me to make a copy of
+the picture for myself?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The grandmother interposed: &quot;Go change your dress, Erika.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And Lozoncyi asked, &quot;Will you take your portmanteau with you, or shall
+I send it to you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika went into the next room. Hurriedly, impatiently, she took off the
+white gown and put on her street dress. &quot;Stuff everything into the
+portmanteau,&quot; she ordered Lucrezia, slipping a gold coin into the
+servant's hand.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was in a strange mood: she felt her heart throb up in her throat.
+&quot;Shall I have one moment in which to speak to him alone?&quot; she asked
+herself.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ready? You have been quick,&quot; her grandmother said when she re-entered
+the studio. &quot;Have you summoned our gondola, Lozoncyi?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, Countess. I wonder it is not here. Meanwhile, I must cut the
+roses in my garden for you. I cannot tell for whom they will bloom when
+you come no longer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He went out into the garden. For one moment Erika hesitated; then she
+followed him. The skies were one uniform gray; every branch and blossom
+drooped wearily. The roses which Lozoncyi tried to cut for Erika fell
+to pieces beneath his touch, strewing the earth with pink and white
+petals.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Lozoncyi did not look around, but cut unmercifully, with a large pair
+of garden scissors. Before he knew it, Erika stood beside him. &quot;I may
+be overbold,&quot; she half whispered, lightly touching his arm, &quot;but I
+cannot help feeling that I have a right to know your troubles. Is
+anything distressing you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He looked at her and tried to smile. &quot;To say farewell distresses me,
+Countess, as you must be aware.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was overpowered by timidity, but her compassion gave her courage.
+She collected herself: they must understand each other. &quot;If to say
+farewell really distresses you, I--I cannot see why it should be said,&quot;
+she whispered. The tears stood in her eyes, and he----? He was ashy
+pale, and the roses dropped from his hands.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At this moment the bell rang loudly, and a woman's voice asked, in
+French with a strong Prussian accent, &quot;Does the artist, Paul Lozoncyi,
+live here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika was startled. Where had she heard that voice before? Out into the
+drooping garden came a tall, well-formed woman, with regular features,
+fair, slightly rouged, every fold of her dress, every curl of her fair
+hair,--yes, even the perfume which breathed about her,--betraying her
+cult of physical perfection. A scarlet veil was drawn tightly about her
+face: otherwise her dress was simple and becoming.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika recognized her instantly, and guessed the truth. For a moment the
+garden swam before her eyes: she was afraid she should fall. Meanwhile,
+the new-comer laid a very shapely and well-gloved hand upon the
+artist's arm, and cried, &quot;<i>Une surprise--hein, mon bébé! Tu ne t'y
+attendais pas--dis?</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No,&quot; he replied, sharply.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She frowned, and, challenging Erika with a look, she said, &quot;Have the
+kindness to introduce me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He cleared his throat, and then, sharp and hard as the blow of an axe,
+the words fell from his lips, &quot;My wife.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika had recovered her self-possession. She had advanced sufficiently
+in knowledge of the world since Bayreuth to know that no one, not even
+Frau Lozoncyi, could expect her to be cordial. She contented herself
+with acknowledging Lozoncyi's introduction by a slight inclination.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Meanwhile, the old Countess appeared from the studio to see what was
+going on. She took no pains to conceal her astonishment, and when
+Lozoncyi presented his wife her inclination was, if possible, colder
+and haughtier than Erika's had been, as she scanned the stranger
+through her eye-glass. Lozoncyi's servant announced the gondola.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika offered her hand to Lozoncyi and had the courage to smile.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old lady also held out her hand to him, but did not smile. Her
+manner was very cool as she said, &quot;Thank you for all the kindness you
+have shown us. I had hoped you would dine with us to-night; but you
+will not wish this first day to leave--to leave Frau von Lozoncyi.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The gondola pushed off. The water gurgled beneath the first stroke of
+the oar, and the wood creaked slightly. For an instant the artist stood
+upon his threshold, looking after Erika; then he went into the house,
+and the light-green door which she knew so well closed behind him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">How did she feel? She had no time to think of that. All her strength
+was expended in concealing her agitation. She arranged her dress, and
+remarked that the water was unusually muddy. In fact, it had an opaque
+greenish hue. The old Countess did not notice it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I never suspected that he was married!&quot; she exclaimed. &quot;He should have
+told us. A man has no right to conceal such a fact.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And Erika replied, with an air of easy indifference that surprised even
+herself, &quot;I suppose, grandmother, he did not imagine that the
+circumstance could possess the slightest interest for us.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">In addition to many trying and strange characteristics possessed by
+Erika, Providence had bestowed upon her one which at this time stood
+her in stead. Upon any severe agitating experience a few hours of cool,
+hard self-consciousness were sure to ensue,--hours in which she was
+perfectly able to appear in the world with dry eyes, and not even the
+keenest observer could perceive any change in her, save that her laugh
+was perhaps more frequent and more silvery.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This condition of mind was far from being an agreeable one: moreover,
+the reaction afterwards was terrible: nevertheless, thanks to this
+moral paralysis, Erika was able in critical moments to preserve
+appearances.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The day on which, as she supposed, her happiness, her faith, the entire
+purpose of her life, lay in ruins about her, was occupied with social
+duties of every description. She performed them all,--an afternoon tea,
+with lawn-tennis, a dinner, and at last a supper with music at the
+Austrian Consul's.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And even when the old Countess on their way home from the Consul's
+proposed that they should look in at Frau von Neerwinden's, upon whom
+they had not called since the memorable evening when Minona read, Erika
+declared herself quite willing to do so. Perhaps this was because she
+had a secret hope of meeting Lozoncyi there; for she longed to see him,
+to show him how entirely he had been mistaken if he had supposed----</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Ah! what pretexts we invent to deceive ourselves as to the cowardly
+impulses of our desires!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But he was not at Frau von Neerwinden's, where the old Countess found
+herself so well entertained, however, that she passed an hour,
+discussing the latest Venetian scandal, in which Erika took no
+interest. She strolled away from the group of elderly guests and
+through the open glass doors leading out upon a balcony above the
+water, where she seemed quite forgotten by those within the apartment.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Beneath her on the dark surface of the lagoon the gondolas were
+crowding from all quarters around a bark whence came music and song.
+They glided past over the black water, a broad stream of humanity
+attracted as by a magnetic needle, lured by a voice. Nearer and nearer
+came the song, until it swept past beneath Erika's balcony:</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="t0" style="text-indent:-8px">
+&quot;Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie,<br>
+Toi, qui n'as pas d'amour?&quot;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="continue">And above her glimmered the stars, myriads of worlds, sparkling, and
+shining down disdainfully upon wretched humanity writhing and striving
+in its efforts to attain paltry ends, so vastly important in its own
+estimation.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika lay awake all night long, oppressed by a terrible burden,--not
+grief for a happiness of which she had dreamed and which had proved to
+be impossible, but something infinitely harder to be borne by a person
+of her temperament, the sense of disgrace.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">So long as she had been firmly convinced that he loved her, far from
+resenting the unconventional expression of his admiration, she had
+taken pleasure in it. But now the whole matter bore another aspect in
+her eyes. She remembered with painful distinctness the superficial,
+frivolous theories of life which he had advanced upon their first
+acquaintance. Love! yes, he might perhaps have experienced what he
+designated thus, but at the thought her cheeks burned. She had pleased
+him, as hundreds before her had done, and in the full consciousness of
+the ties of marriage by which he was bound he had allowed himself to
+make love to her as he would have done to any common flirt. When at
+last, in entire faith in the sincerity--yes, in the sacredness--of his
+feeling for her, she had generously laid bare her heart before him, he
+had been simply terrified by the revelation.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;He is probably laughing at me now,&quot; she said to herself, trembling in
+every limb. Then, with infinite bitterness, she added, &quot;No; he is
+probably reproaching himself, and wondering at my folly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was enough to drive her insane. She buried her burning face in her
+pillow, and groaned aloud.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She shed not a tear throughout the night, and she appeared punctually
+as usual at the breakfast-table, but in the midst of the pleasant
+little meal, which was always taken in her grandmother's boudoir, she
+was overcome by an intense weariness; she longed to flee to some dark
+corner where no one could find her and there let the tears flow freely.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The meal was, however, unusually prolonged. The old Countess, who had
+quite forgotten her vexation at Lozoncyi's concealment of his marriage,
+and who had been vastly entertained the previous evening at Frau von
+Neerwinden's, was in an excellent humour, and was full of conversation,
+in which she showed herself both amusing and witty.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika forced herself to laugh and to seem gay, when, just as she felt
+unable to endure the situation for another moment, Lüdecke appeared
+with a note for her. It had come, he informed her, the day before,
+shortly after the ladies had gone out to dinner, and he begged to be
+forgiven for having forgotten to deliver it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Old donkey!&quot; the Countess Lenzdorff murmured. Erika opened the
+note with trembling hands. It came from Fräulein Horst, the poor
+music-teacher. She wrote that she had been worse for a couple of days,
+and had made up her mind to go home. With pathetic gratitude and
+sincere admiration she desired to take leave of Erika thus in writing,
+since her weak condition would not allow her to call upon her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Really distressed, and a little ashamed of having of late somewhat
+neglected the poor creature, Erika had a gondola called, and went
+immediately to the Pension Weber. When she asked in the hall of the
+establishment for Fräulein Horst, the dismay painted on every face at
+once revealed to her the truth: the poor music-teacher had passed away.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She asked to be taken to the room where the dead woman lay; and as
+Attilio, the hotel waiter, conducted her thither, he told how there had
+been for a long time no hope of the invalid's recovery; the day before
+yesterday the last symptom had appeared,--a restless longing for
+change,--for travel; her departure had been fixed for this evening;
+they had all hoped so that she would get off; but she had died here:
+they had found her dead in bed this very morning, her candle burnt down
+into the socket, and her open book on her bed. Oh, yes, it was very sad
+to die so, away from home, and it was very unpleasant for the
+establishment. Eccellenza had no idea of the injury it was to the
+Pension! The Signor Baron in the first story had declared that he would
+not spend another night there.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">As Attilio finished, he unlocked the room where the body lay, and
+ushered in Erika. She motioned to him to leave her alone.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The room was darkened. Erika drew aside the curtains a little. There
+was a crucifix among the medicine-bottles on the table beside the bed,
+and a book, open apparently at the place where the dead woman had been
+last reading. It was a German translation of 'Romeo and Juliet:' it
+was open at the balcony scene, 'It is the nightingale, and not the
+lark----'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika kneeled down at the bedside, buried her face in the coverlet, and
+wept bitterly. When Attilio came to remind her gently not to stay long,
+she arose and followed him with bowed head from the room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">As she was going down the stairs, she heard a harsh grating voice
+with a slight Polish accent call, &quot;Sophy, Sophy, are you ready?&quot;
+and then from the end of the corridor two figures appeared, one a
+short, thick-set woman heavily laden with a bundle of shawls, a
+travelling-bag, and several umbrellas, and looking up at a man who
+walked beside her, his hands in the pockets of his plaid jacket, his
+eye-glass in his eye, allowing himself with much condescension to be
+adored. They were Strachinsky and his second wife.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;II signore Barone,&quot; murmured Attilio.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Strachinsky glanced towards Erika: he frowned and looked away. She was
+glad that he did so, for in her dejected condition she could hardly
+have brought herself to speak to the couple. Her whole soul was filled
+with a desire to creep away to some quiet spot where she might find
+relief in tears.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She sent away her gondola, and hurried through the narrow streets to
+the Piazza San Zacharie. There she took refuge in the church of the
+same name.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was empty: not even a tourist was present to gaze upon the beauty of
+the famous Gianbellini.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She crouched down in the darkest corner upon the hard stones, and
+there, leaning her head upon the rush seat of a church chair, she wept
+more uncontrollably than she had done beside the corpse of the poor
+music-teacher. All at once she felt that she was no longer alone. She
+looked up. Beside her stood Lozoncyi.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She arose, doing what she could to summon her pride to her aid. &quot;What
+strange chance brings you here?&quot; she asked him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No chance whatever,&quot; he replied. &quot;I saw you enter the church, and I
+followed you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah!&quot; By a supreme effort she forced herself to assume an indifferent
+tone. &quot;I have just been to the Pension Weber to take leave of my poor
+music-teacher. I found her dead. You may imagine----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He shook his head: &quot;And you would have me believe that the tears you
+have just shed are for that poor creature? It is hardly worth the
+trouble. Countess Erika, I have followed you to speak with you
+undisturbed for the last time, to thank you, and to entreat your
+forgiveness. Be frank with me, as I shall be with you. Let us have the
+consolation of knowing that, when we parted, the heart of each was laid
+bare to the other: it will be but poor comfort, after all.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He uttered the words with so decided a casting aside of all disguise
+that Erika's pride availed her nothing. In vain did she seek for words
+in which to reply. She looked in his face, and was startled to see it
+so wan and haggard.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You see,&quot; he said, perceiving her dismay, &quot;that in this case your
+wounded pride may be entirely satisfied; you can easily dispense with
+it. Compared with the torture I have endured since the day before
+yesterday evening, your pain is mere child's play. Oh, I pray you,&quot;--he
+spoke in somewhat of his old impatient tone, the tone of a man whose
+wishes are usually complied with gladly,--&quot;sit down for a moment: this
+is our last opportunity for speaking with each other. I owe you an
+explanation. You have a right to ask me how I came to conceal from you
+that I was married. To that I can only reply that I never speak of my
+marriage. I am not proud of my wife; I never take her into society with
+me; few of the friends whom I have here are aware that I am married,
+although I do not intentionally make a secret of it. I frequently
+travel alone, and last autumn the relations between my wife and myself,
+from causes unnecessary to relate, became of so strained a nature that
+we agreed to separate for a time. I avoided, when I could, even the
+thought of her. In spite of all this, I ought not to have refrained
+from acquainting you with my circumstances; nor should I have done so
+if I had dreamed---- You shrink, but we have agreed that for once in
+our lives, entirely casting aside pretence, we will tell each other the
+truth. In this case there is nothing in it that can offend your pride.
+I had conceived an enthusiasm for you when you were a very little girl.
+Shall I say that I loved you from the first moment that I saw you? No!
+you excited my curiosity, my wonder; I could not help thinking of you.
+A veritable angel with wings would not have been more wonderful to me
+than such a being as yourself. I did not wish to believe in you. At
+times I called you too high-strung, at times I said to myself that
+yours was simply a cold nature. You know how I avoided you,--avoided
+you when I could not take my eyes off you; and then--then--you have no
+idea of how my heart beat when I went to you to beg to be allowed to
+paint your portrait. From that time all speculation with regard to you
+was at an end: I blissfully and gratefully accepted the miracle
+revealed to me; nay, I ceased to regard you as a miracle; you were for
+me the key to a pure, noble life, of which I had hitherto never
+dreamed. And I began to long for this life: the disgust I had hitherto
+felt for the whole world I now felt for myself; and then all was over
+with me. I had no longer any thought save of you; my whole soul was
+filled with eager anticipation of the short time I could pass with you;
+when you were gone I used to sit for hours in my studio, recalling in
+memory your every look and word. The budding freshness of your being,
+which needed only a little sunshine to blossom forth gloriously, your
+profound capacity for enthusiasm, the wealth of affection concealed
+beneath a coldness of manner, and withal the proud, unsullied purity of
+your heart, mind, and soul--oh, God! how lovely it all was! But you
+were so far removed from me; a universe separated us. Never, no, never
+for one moment did I dream of your bestowing one thought of love upon
+me. Then, when, conscious that the joy which had come to be my life was
+so soon to end, I went to you in most melancholy mood, the day before
+yesterday evening, your look, the tone of your voice, set my brain on
+fire. I left you and wandered about the streets like one possessed.
+When at last I went home, I shut myself up in the studio and began to
+dream. I pictured what my life might have been had I been free to clasp
+in my arms the bliss that might have been mine. I seemed to feel your
+presence, so pure, so holy, and yet so tender and loving. The life at
+which I had always sneered--a home-life--seemed to me the only one
+worth living, if lived with you. I dreamed it in every detail; I
+thought how my art could be ennobled and purified through you,--my art,
+which until now had been little more than the cry of a tortured soul.
+My former life lay far behind me, like some foul swamp from which you
+had rescued me. How I adored you! how tenderly and truly I reverenced
+you! Then on a sudden I awoke to the consciousness of how impossible it
+all was. I crept out into the garden, where in the early dawn all
+looked pale and fading like my dying dream. I forced myself to think:
+it pained me so to think!--but I forced myself to do so, to draw
+conclusions. Whichever way my thoughts turned, they led to despair,--to
+separation from you. I could not resist the conviction that it was my
+duty to end all intercourse with you as quickly as possible. What next
+occurred you know yourself. But you never can dream of what I endured
+from the time when you entered my studio yesterday morning until the
+moment when you followed me into the garden and there among the roses
+held out your hands to me, your eyes filled with light, everything
+about you so chaste, so grave, so tender; no, that agony you never can
+imagine! Not to be able to fall at your feet, to take you in my arms
+and say, 'My heaven, my queen, my every thought, my life, my art, shall
+all be one prayer of gratitude to you!' To live a joyless life when joy
+is all unknown is nothing,--a matter of course. But when an angel opens
+wide the gates of Paradise for one, and one must say, 'No, I dare not!'
+it is horrible! one cannot believe it possible to survive it!&quot; He
+ceased.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika had listened to him with bowed head. Every word that he had
+uttered had been balm to her wounded pride, and at the same time had
+excited that which was most easily stirred within her, the tenderest,
+warmest emotion of her heart,--her compassion. She had, it is true, a
+vague consciousness that it was not right that she should listen to
+such words from a married man, but she stifled it with the excuse that
+it was their last interview.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His eyes sought hers: apparently he expected her to speak; but her lips
+refused to frame a sentence, although there was a question which she
+longed to ask.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He leaned towards her. &quot;There is something you would fain ask,&quot; he
+whispered. &quot;Tell me what it is.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I--I&quot;--at last she managed to say,--&quot;I cannot comprehend what induced
+you to marry that woman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He shrugged his shoulders: &quot;No, nor can I, now, myself. How can I make
+you understand that in the world in' which I lived there were no women
+who inspired me with respect? it was made up of my fellow-students, and
+of women in no wise superior to the one of whom we are speaking. I was
+convinced that all her sex were either like her, or were harsh old
+maids, like my aunt Illona. Ten years older than I, she controlled my
+thoughts and my actions; I could not do without her, and at last I
+married her for fear lest some one of my fellow-students should take
+her from me.&quot; He paused.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika drew her breath painfully.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Shortly afterwards came fame,&quot; he began anew, &quot;suddenly,--over-night,
+as it were,--and all doors were flung wide for me. I do not want to
+represent myself to you as a better man than I am: I do not deny that
+all went smoothly in the beginning. I did not suffer from the burden
+with which I had laden my life. Dozens of my fellows lived just
+as I did. She relieved me of every petty care, she removed every
+obstacle from my path, she undertook all my transactions with the
+picture-dealers, she was everything that I was not,--practical,
+cautious, energetic. I went into society without her,--she was content
+that it should be so,--and I enjoyed in intercourse with other women
+that charm which was lacking in my home. I felt no disgust then at my
+own want of all true perception. The fashionable circles which I
+frequented were in no wise in advance, so far as a lofty standard of
+morality was concerned, of those in which I had lived hitherto. Whence
+does a young artist nowadays derive his knowledge of so-called refined
+society? From a few exaggerated women who befriend him half the time
+because they are wearying for a new toy. We poor fellows have but
+little opportunity to sound the depths of a true, pure womanly nature,
+least of all in the beginning of our career. It never occurred to
+me to think what my life might have been under other influences,
+until---- Oh, Erika, Erika, why did you so transform me? Why did you
+drag me from the mire which was my element, to leave me to perish?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She put both hands to her temples. &quot;What can I do?&quot; she murmured,
+hoarsely. &quot;What can I do?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">There she stood, pale and still, trembling with sympathy and
+compassion, needing help and helpless, more beautiful than ever, with
+cheeks flushed and eyes bright with fever.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">On a sudden the cannon from San Giorgio announced the hour of noon, and
+instantly all the bells in Venice began to swing their brazen tongues.
+Erika awaked as from a dream. &quot;I must go,&quot; she said. &quot;My grandmother is
+expecting me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;This is farewell forever,&quot; he murmured.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He bowed his head and turned away. She could not endure the sight of
+his agony. Approaching him, and laying her hand upon his arm, she
+began, &quot;Do you really believe that you owe no duty to your wife?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;None!&quot; He could not understand why she should ask the question.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Then--then----&quot; she stammered, &quot;why not obtain a divorce?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He gazed at her for an instant. &quot;And you could then consent to be my
+wife? You, the beautiful, idolized Countess Erika Lenzdorff, the wife
+of a poor, divorced artist?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes,&quot; she replied, firmly. Then, offering him her hand, and once more
+lifting to his her clear, pure eyes, she left the church. In an
+inspired frenzy of self-sacrifice, as it were, she crossed the Piazza,
+where the grass grew between the uneven stones of the pavement, and
+above which the gray clouds were floating.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was as if borne aloft by an inspiration that elevated her whole
+being. Suddenly she became aware of a discord in her sensations. On her
+ear there fell, sung to the tinkling accompaniment of a guitar,--the
+words,--</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<p class="t0" style="text-indent:-7px">
+&quot;Tu m'hai bagnato il seno mio di lagrime,<br>
+T'amo d'immenso amor.&quot;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="normal">Looking up, she perceived the same repulsive musicians that had so
+shocked her awhile ago on the Piazza San Stefano.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She hastened her steps; but the sound long pursued her, 'T'amo
+d'immenso amor!' until it died away with a last 'amor.'</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She frowned. She was indignant, that the wondrous, sacred word should
+be thus profaned.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">There was no brightness in the future to which Erika looked forward. Of
+this she was fully aware. They must go forth into the world, he and
+she, with none to wish them God-speed, none to bless them. And yet the
+melancholy which shrouded their love made it doubly dear to her. The
+craving for suffering which for some time past had thrilled her excited
+nerves now stirred within her. Had she not been seeking it lately
+everywhere,--in poetry, in music, in art?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She passed the day in this state of enthusiastic exaltation. At
+night she slept better than she had for long, but shortly after she
+awaked she was assailed by a distracting, feverish agitation. No
+arrangement had been made as to how she should get the intelligence
+from Lozoncyi with regard to his wife's consent to a divorce. Would he
+bring the information himself? would he send her a note? Ten o'clock
+struck,--half-past ten,--eleven,--and no message came. Her hands, her
+lips, her brow, burned with fever; she drew her breath with difficulty.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">About eleven o'clock the old Countess went to take her forenoon walk.
+She had been gone but a short time when Lüdecke announced Herr von
+Lozoncyi.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika had him shown up, and the first glance which she cast at his face
+told her that for him there was no possibility of a release.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Without a word she held out her hand to him. His hand was icy cold and
+trembled in her clasp; he looked pale and wretched,--the picture of
+misery.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Possessed absolutely by the pity that had filled her soul, she saw in
+his face only torturing despair at not being able to rid his life of
+what so degraded it. What could she do for him now? What sacrifice
+could she make?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Sit down,&quot; she said, awkwardly, after a pause.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It is not worth while,&quot; he rejoined, in the dull tone of a man crushed
+to the earth beneath a heavy burden. &quot;I have been waiting for an hour
+to see you alone, that I might tell you that which must be told. I have
+spoken with--my wife. She will not consent to a divorce, and without
+her consent no divorce is possible. She has never given me any legal
+cause for a separation,--no, never, strange as it may seem in a woman
+of her class. Yesterday evening I spoke to her, and there was a
+terrible scene; and now,&quot;--his voice grew fainter,--&quot;now all is over.&quot;
+He laid his hand upon the back of a chair, as if to support himself,
+and paused for a moment, then resumed: &quot;I ought to have written to
+you,--it would have been far better,--far,--but I could not deny myself
+one more sight of you. Farewell. Now all is over.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She stood as if rooted to the spot, pale, mute, searching feverishly
+for some consolation for him. What more could she offer him? There was
+a gulf as of death between them. She sought some path that would lead
+across it,--in vain. She felt faint and giddy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Farewell,&quot; he murmured. &quot;Thanks--thanks for all--the joy--for all the
+sorrow---- Good God! how dear it has been!&quot; His voice broke; he turned
+away, holding out to her, for the last time, a slender, trembling hand.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Why at sight of that hand did memory recall so vividly the half-starved
+artist lad after whom as a tiny girl she had run to relieve his misery?
+And now she could do nothing for him,--nothing! Really nothing?
+Suddenly it flashed upon her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She had but to hold out her arms, to forget herself, and his anguish
+would be transformed to bliss. Compassion grew within her and took
+possession of her like insanity; her soul was shaken as by an
+earthquake; what had been above was now beneath, and from the chaos one
+thought emerged, at first formless as a dream, then waxing clearer,
+until it took shape as a command, gradually obtaining absolute
+mastership of her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She raised her head, proud, resolved. &quot;Have you the courage to break
+with all your present life, and to begin a new one with me?&quot; she asked.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;A new life?&quot; he murmured, and, vaguely, uncertainly, as if unable to
+trust his senses and fearing to lend words to what was monstrous and
+impossible, he added, &quot;With you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He recoiled a step, and looked her full in the face, speechless,
+breathless.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A burning blush rose to her cheeks. &quot;You have not the courage,&quot; she
+said, sternly. &quot;Well, then----&quot; With an imperious gesture she turned
+away.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But he detained her. &quot;Not the courage?&quot; he cried, seizing her hand and
+carrying it to his lips. &quot;Offer a cup of pure water to a man perishing
+of thirst, and ask him if he has the courage to drink! The question is
+not of me, but of you. Have you the faintest idea of the meaning of
+what you have said?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She shook her head: &quot;I have learned to look life in the face; I know
+what I am doing. I know what the consequences of my act will be; I know
+that I resign all intercourse with my fellow-beings, saving only with
+yourself; that my only refuge on earth will be at your side; I know
+that I shall be a lost creature in the eyes of the world; and yet, if I
+may cherish the conviction that thereby I can redeem your shattered
+existence, that I can purify and ennoble your life, I am ready.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her voice, always soft and full of that quality which goes straight to
+the heart, was veiled and vibrating; her hands were clasped upon her
+breast, her head was proudly erect, and her eyes seemed larger than
+usual from the ecstasy that shone in them. She was supernaturally
+lovely, and never had the chaste purity peculiar to her beauty
+been more distinctly stamped upon her face than at this moment when
+she--she, Erika Lenzdorff--was voluntarily proposing to follow a
+married man through the world as his mistress.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Erika!&quot; There was boundless exultation in his voice; he took one step
+towards her to clasp her in his arms and to press the first kiss upon
+her lips. But she repulsed him, overcome, it seemed, by sudden distress
+and dread, and when he repeated, in a tone of dismay and reproach,
+&quot;Erika!&quot; she passed her hand across her brow, and murmured, &quot;My entire
+life belongs to you. Do not grudge me a few hours of reflection and
+preparation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He smiled at her reserve, and contented himself with pressing his lips
+tenderly again and again upon her hand, as he said, caressingly,
+&quot;Preparation? Oh, my darling, my darling! Meet me to-night at the
+railway-station at ten, and we will start for Florence. Leave all the
+rest to me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;To-night it would be impossible,&quot; she said: &quot;it is our reception
+evening. I could not leave without giving rise to a search for me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Then to-morrow?&quot; he persisted, speaking very quickly in his beguiling,
+irresistible voice. Everything about him betrayed the feverish
+insistence of a man who suddenly gives free rein to a passion which he
+has hitherto with difficulty held in check.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;To-morrow,&quot; she repeated, anxiously,--&quot;to-morrow----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Do not delay, Erika, if you are really resolved.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;To-morrow be it, then!&quot; The words came syllable by syllable from her
+lips in a kind of dull staccato.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Erika!&quot; His eyes shone, his whole being seemed transfigured.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes,&quot; she went on, &quot;Constance Mühlberg has arranged an excursion to
+Chioggia to-morrow in a steamer she has chartered. My grandmother is to
+chaperon the party. At the last moment I will refuse to accompany her,
+and I shall then be free. When shall I come?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They decided upon taking the train leaving between eight and nine in
+the evening for Vienna. Then other necessary details were arranged, a
+process unutterably distasteful to Erika, to whom it seemed like making
+the business arrangements for a funeral. She suffered intensely in thus
+descending to blank, prosaic reality from the visionary heights to
+which she had soared.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At last everything had been discussed: there was nothing more to be
+said. A great dread then stole over her: she grew very silent.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I cannot believe in my bliss,&quot; he murmured. &quot;You stand there in your
+white robes so chaste and grave, with that holy light in your eyes,
+more like a martyr awaiting death than a loving woman ready to break
+through all barriers to----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">There was something in this description of the situation that offended
+her,--offended her so deeply that with what was almost harshness she
+interrupted him, saying, &quot;And now, I pray you, go!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He looked at her in some dismay. She cast down her eyes, and with
+flaming cheeks stammered, &quot;My grandmother will return in a few moments:
+I should not like to see you in her presence.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You are right,&quot; he said, changing colour. &quot;Your grandmother has always
+been so kind to me, and now----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah, go!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;May I not come to see you at some time during the day to-morrow?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In the evening, then,--at eight?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She looked him full in the face, stern resolve in her eyes. &quot;I shall be
+punctual,&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;To-morrow at eight,&quot; he whispered.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;To-morrow at eight,&quot; she repeated.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A minute afterwards he stood alone in the sunlit space behind the
+hotel.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He rubbed his eyes, seeming to waken slowly from a lovely and most
+improbable dream.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">At first he felt only exhilaration, the joy of a near approach to a
+long-desired but unhoped-for goal.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;To-morrow at eight,&quot; he whispered to himself several times. Then on a
+sudden the keen edge of his delight was blunted; his joy seemed to slip
+through his fingers; he could not retain it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He recalled the entire scene through which he had just passed. He saw
+the girl's expression of face, he heard the sound of her voice. It was
+all lovely, exquisitely lovely, but, after all, there was something
+inharmonious, unnatural in it. This very girl who had of her own free
+impulse proposed to fly with him had never, during their long
+consultation, been impelled to utter one word of affection for him, and
+he himself was conscious that he could not have demanded it of her. She
+had been gentle, enthusiastic, self-sacrificing,--yes, self-sacrificing
+even to fanaticism. Self-sacrificing! he repeated the word to himself
+in an undertone: it had seized hold of his imagination as portraying
+precisely her attitude and bearing. Self-sacrificing,--yes, but not the
+slightest evidence had she given him of warm, passionate affection. He
+frowned, as he walked on thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;How does she picture to herself the future, I wonder?&quot; Distinctly in
+his memory rang her words, &quot;I know that I resign all intercourse with
+my fellow-beings, saving with yourself; that my only refuge on earth
+will be at your side; I know that I shall be a lost creature in the
+eyes of the world; and yet, if I can only cherish the conviction that I
+can thereby redeem your shattered existence, that I can purify and
+ennoble your life, I am ready.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">How ravishing she had been whilst uttering these words! and beautiful,
+pathetic words they were; but----</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He shivered, in spite of the Venetian May sunshine. Some chord of
+overwrought feeling suddenly snapped; a stifling sensation of
+ungrateful and almost angry rebellion against an undeserved happiness
+assailed him. How could this be? He was paralyzed by a cowardly dread.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He was ashamed of this revulsion of feeling, and struggled against it
+with angry self-contempt, but he could not shake it off. He had a vague
+consciousness that he must always be thus shamed in Erika's presence.
+To avoid being so he should have to incite himself to a degree of
+high-souled enthusiasm which was unnatural and inconvenient. &quot;Purify
+and ennoble his life!&quot; What did that mean? &quot;Purify? ennoble?&quot;</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">When by a long and roundabout way he at last reached his home on foot,
+and walked through the stone-paved, whitewashed corridor, looking
+absently before him, he perceived sitting beneath a mulberry-tree, the
+lower boughs of which were covered with the blossoms of a climbing
+rose, an attractive female figure, whose golden hair gleamed in the
+sunlight. She was sitting in a basket chair, and was engaged upon a
+piece of delicate crochet-work. She wore a gown of some white woollen
+stuff, very simply made, and confined at the waist by a belt of russet
+leather; the sleeves, which were rather short, left exposed not only
+the wrists, but part of a plump arm, white and smooth as polished
+marble, and the finely-formed throat rose as white and polished from
+the turn-down sailor collar, beneath which a dark-blue cravat was
+loosely knotted. How deft and skilful, as she worked, was every
+movement of her rather large but faultlessly-shaped hands!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was somewhat stout, but there was a certain charm in that. The
+broad full shoulders gave an impression of vigour that nothing could
+subdue. Lozoncyi could not but admire them. He was amazed. Yesterday
+there had been shrieks and screams, torn clothes and broken furniture,
+while to-day, after a scene that would have made any other woman ill,
+there was not a trace of fatigue, no dark shade beneath the steel-blue
+eyes, not a wrinkle about the rather large mouth. What a fund of
+inexhaustible vitality the woman possessed! what triumphant, healthy
+vigour! Not a sign of nervousness, of useless agitation; no breath of
+exaggeration.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Ah, she had her good side,--there was no denying it. He sighed, and,
+hearing himself sigh, was startled by the turn his thoughts were
+taking. Was it possible that after a forced companionship of scarcely
+two days--a companionship of which, when he could not avoid it, he had
+taken advantage to hurl in the woman's face his hatred and contempt for
+her--old habits were asserting their rights?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She went on crocheting. The sunlight crept down from among the climbing
+roses and glittered upon her crochet-needle. At last it shone in her
+eyes: she moved her chair to avoid the dazzling glare, and, looking up,
+saw him. Instead of the dark looks she had given him yesterday, she
+smiled slowly, blinking her strange cat-like eyes in the sunshine, and
+by her smile disclosing a row of pearly teeth. He passed her sullenly,
+as if she had taken an unjustifiable liberty with him, and went into
+the studio, wishing to persuade himself that he had a horror of her,
+that she repelled him. He hoped to feel that disgust for her with which
+the thought of her had inspired him since love for Erika had filled his
+heart; but he did not feel the disgust.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">He lingered for less time than usual before Erika's portrait, which
+occupied a large easel in the most conspicuous place in the studio, and
+went to his writing-table. Several business letters awaited him there;
+he opened them with an impatient sigh. They were for the most part
+requests for answers to letters received by him weeks previously. Since
+he had been in Venice his business correspondence--in fact, his
+business affairs generally--had fallen into terrible disorder.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He opened the latest letter: it contained columns of figures. It was
+the account from his picture-dealer. He snapped his fingers, and,
+sitting down, tried to comprehend it. In vain! The figures danced
+before his eyes. Involuntarily he looked up. Through the glass door of
+the studio a pair of greenish eyes were gazing at him with an
+expression of good-humoured raillery. His heart began to beat fast.
+Formerly she had conducted his entire correspondence for him,--with
+what perfect regularity and skill! Before she had taken up the trade of
+model in consequence of a love-affair with an artist, she had been a
+<i>dame de comptoir</i>; she was as skilled in accounts as a bank-clerk. He
+needed but to speak the word, and she would reduce all these provoking
+affairs to perfect order; but he would ask no favour of her. Then she
+opened the studio door, and, entering softly, laid a warm strong hand
+upon his shoulder. He tried to persuade himself that he disliked the
+touch of this hand. But he did not dislike it: it had a soothing effect
+upon his excited nerves. Nevertheless he forced himself to shake it
+off.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The woman laughed, a low, gentle laugh,--the laugh of a cynic. She
+lighted a cigarette and handed it to him, saying, &quot;<i>Pauvre bébé</i>, try
+to rest instead of settling those accounts: I will do it all for you in
+the twinkling of an eye, while it would take you until next week.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">This time she did not lay her hand upon his shoulder, but stroked his
+head gently. &quot;<i>Voyons, Séraphine!</i>&quot; he said, crossly, shaking her off.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She laughed again, good-humouredly, carelessly, with unconscious
+cynicism. Before three minutes had passed, she was seated in his stead
+at the writing-table, and he, with the cigarette which she had offered
+him between his lips, was standing lost in thought before Erika's
+portrait.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">How long he had been standing thus he could not have told, when he
+heard a deep voice beside him say, &quot;<i>C'est rudement fort, tu sais.
+Sapristi!</i> Shall you exhibit it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I have not made up my mind,&quot; he replied, absently, and then he was
+vexed with himself for answering her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;She is pretty, there's no denying it,&quot; Seraphine confessed. &quot;I am
+really sorry to have interfered with your amusement, but nothing could
+have come of it. If I am not mistaken, you had gone as far as was
+possible. She is one of those who give nothing for nothing, and who
+never invest their capital except in good securities. I am sorry I
+cannot resign these securities to her; <i>je suis bon garçon, moi</i>, but,
+<i>mon Dieu, lorsqu'il y a un homme dans la question--sapristi, chaque
+femme pour elle!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Here Lucrezia opened the door, and announced that lunch was served in
+the garden. Lozoncyi had firmly resolved never again to sit down to a
+meal with this woman. But, before he could say so, she began, &quot;It would
+be well if you could give them something to talk of again in Paris.
+When did you leave in the autumn? In October? You have no idea what a
+relief your departure was to the artists there. You ought to see the
+crazy carnival of colour held in this year's Salon! Bouchard exhibited
+a nymph with a faun, quite in your style, only yours is flesh and his
+is putty,--a poor thing; but the critics exalted it, and gave it a
+<i>médaille d'honneur</i>. You had begun to make the artists very
+uncomfortable: they are praising up mere daubers, to belittle you,
+doing what they can to knock away the floor from under you. But you
+need only show yourself to recover your ground. Becard told me lately
+that he had got hold of quite a new way of looking at things: his
+picture in the Salon----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Talking thus, she had gone slowly towards the door; now she was
+outside. Unconsciously he had followed her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What has Becard in the Salon?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;A woman on a balcony, after dinner, between two different lights,--on
+one side candle-light, and on the other moonlight; half of her is
+sulphur-yellow, the other half sea-green; <i>c'est d'un dróle!</i>&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I saw the sketch for that monstrosity in his atelier,&quot; cried Lozoncyi,
+excited. &quot;Did they accept it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She had taken her seat at the tempting table, upon which smoked a
+golden omelette; she did not answer instantly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Did they accept it?&quot; Lozoncyi repeated.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Accept it----! Why, my dear, they laud him to the skies: they hail him
+as <i>le Messie</i>!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Lozoncyi had now seated himself opposite her. He brought his fist down
+upon the table. &quot;Confound it!&quot; he muttered between his teeth.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You are wrong to be vexed,&quot; she said: &quot;he is a good fellow, and your
+friend. He told me awhile ago with reference to his success, 'It is
+envy of Lozoncyi that is now standing me in stead.' Let me give you
+some omelette: it is growing cold.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He allowed her to fill his plate.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Two hours later he was pacing his atelier to and fro in gloomy mood.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He had enjoyed his breakfast, and had been entertained by his wife's
+chatter. With infinite skill she lured his fancy back to the old,
+careless, good-humoured Bohemian life in Paris. He questioned her with
+increasing curiosity as to the works of his fellows there, and she told
+him stories,--highly spiced but very amusing stories; she peeled his
+orange for him, and when the sun began to shine full upon the table at
+which they were sitting they drank their coffee in the studio. A
+sensation of intense comfort stole over him; but in the midst of it he
+was conscious of physical uneasiness. She looked at him, and
+disappeared with a laugh, returning with a pair of easy slippers. It
+was warm; his boots were tight; he took them off and slipped his feet
+into the easy shoes she had brought him. He felt as if relieved for the
+first time for a long while of a certain restraint. He yawned and
+stretched himself. Suddenly he shivered.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The question suggested itself, Could he ever allow himself such license
+in Erika's presence?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He started up. The momentarily-restored harmony between himself and his
+wife was interrupted. In the sudden change of mood to which in the
+course of years she had become accustomed, he repulsed her,--actually
+turned her out of the room, rudely, angrily.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Again his every pulse throbbed. He felt as if he should go mad. His
+revulsion of feeling with regard to Erika clothed itself in a new
+dress. It was odious, unprincipled, criminal, to take advantage of the
+enthusiasm of this inexperienced young creature, to drag her down to
+probable--nay, to certain--misery. He went to his writing-table; he
+would write to her that for her sake he withdrew from their agreement.
+But scarcely had he written the first word when a wave of passion swept
+over his soul, benumbing his energies: he knew that he was as powerless
+to renounce her as he was to carry out any other resolve. What did he
+really want? He sprang up, crushed in his hand the sheet of paper which
+his pen had scarcely touched, and threw it away. Once again he stood
+before the portrait.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At last, with bowed head, he went into the next room. Erika had left
+there by accident one or two articles belonging to her,--a lace
+handkerchief, a glove. He pressed them to his lips.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXV.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Erika! Erika!&quot; old Countess Lenzdorff calls in a joyful voice across
+the garden of the Hôtel Britannia. &quot;Erika!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old lady is sitting by the breast-work bordering on the Canal
+Grande. Erika is coming out of a side-door of the hotel. Her
+grandmother had sent her upstairs for her parasol. How strange the girl
+looks, with cheeks so white and lips so feverishly red! But that is a
+secondary matter: what must strike every one who looks at her to-day is
+the transfigured light in her eyes,--a light shining as through tears.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Come quickly!&quot; her grandmother calls. &quot;I have a surprise for you.&quot; But
+Erika does not come quickly: she walks slowly through the blooming
+garden to her grandmother, who has an open letter in her hand.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The little garden is basking in the sunshine; the heavens are
+cloudless; the lagoon looks as if it were sprinkled with diamonds, as
+the black gondolas glide past, the sinewy brown throats of the
+gondoliers shining like bronze. In the fragrant garden can be heard,
+now loud, now faint, the sound of gay voices on the water mingled with
+the constant lapping of the waves and the jangle of church-bells.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;From whom does this letter come?&quot; her grandmother asks Erika, with a
+smile.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I--I cannot imagine,&quot; the girl murmurs. Her pale cheeks grow paler,
+and a fixed look comes into her shining eyes.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Indeed? From whom should a letter come which I am so glad to receive?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika starts.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;From Goswyn!&quot; says her grandmother. &quot;But what a face is that!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Am I to be as glad as you are because Goswyn at last condescends to
+take some notice of the kind sympathy you have shown him?&quot; says Erika.
+But the old hard intonation of her voice is gone: it sounds weary and
+dull.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Never mind!&quot; her grandmother rejoins, triumphantly. &quot;First read the
+letter, and then tell me if you still have the faintest disposition to
+be vexed with him. Whether you have any regard for him or not, the
+letter will please you. He asks, among other things, whether we shall
+be in Venice next week, and if he may come to us here.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika holds the letter in her hands, but when she fixes her eyes upon
+it the bold distinct characters swim before them. She looks away into
+the dazzling sunlight above the lagoon.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Among the black gondolas with white lanterns she now perceives Prince
+Helmy in his yellow cutter, which usually lies at anchor in front of
+the Hôtel Britannia. Espying the two ladies, the Prince clambers up to
+them over one or two gondolas, and asks, &quot;Can you ladies not be induced
+to intrust yourselves to me? It would be far pleasanter to go to
+Chioggia in my cutter than in the steamer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It certainly would,&quot; the old Countess replies, with more amiability
+than she is wont to display towards Prince Helmy. &quot;But,&quot; she adds,
+&quot;unfortunately I cannot have that pleasure. I have promised to act as
+chaperon to Constance Mühlberg's party, and I cannot disappoint her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I'm sorry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At this moment a merry old voice cries, &quot;Your obedient servant,
+ladies!&quot; It is Count Treurenberg, dressed in a light summer suit, all
+ready for the excursion to Chioggia. &quot;You are going to Chioggia too?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;We are.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;'Tis a pity you cannot go with us.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I have just been telling them,&quot; observes Prince Helmy.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Do you know whether Lozoncyi is to be of the party?&quot; asks Treurenberg.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I have no idea,&quot; Countess Lenzdorff replies, rather coldly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What do you think of the wife who has made her appearance so suddenly?
+Something of a surprise, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;A surprise which does not interest me much,&quot; the Countess replies,
+haughtily.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Of course not. But there are some of our Venetian beauties who could
+hardly say as much. 'Tis odd that the fellow should have been so
+close-mouthed concerning his 'indissoluble tie.' I saw him once in
+Paris with the individual in question, but I never dreamed that that
+yellow-haired dame had any legitimate claim upon him. Probably a
+youthful folly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;A millstone that he has hung about his neck,&quot; Prince Helmy says,
+feelingly,--&quot;a burden that will weigh him down to the earth. I am very
+sorry for him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;H'm!&quot; Count Treurenberg drawls, &quot;my pity is not so easily excited.
+Such women make an artist's life very comfortable; and she certainly
+has interfered but little with him hitherto.&quot; He rubs his hands with a
+significant glance.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Are you ready, Count?&quot; Prince Helmy asks, after the pause that follows
+Treurenberg's words.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The Count is ready, and takes leave of the ladies. Shortly afterwards
+they see him in the cutter with the Prince, who is helping his two
+sailors to hoist the tiny sail. The gentlemen wave a respectful
+farewell to the Lenzdorffs; the cutter glides off, at first slowly from
+among the gondolas, then more and more swiftly, skimming the water like
+a bird in the direction of the line of foam which marks the boundary of
+the open sea.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It is a trifle which has made the weight upon Erika's heart heavier in
+the last minute. She has said to herself that never again after
+to-morrow will a man accord her the respectful courtesy just shown her
+by the two gentlemen in the cutter.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her attack of cowardice is a short one, however. Immediately afterwards
+she feels the joy of a fanatic who delights in suffering one pang more
+for his convictions.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I cannot see why we have not been called to lunch,&quot; Countess Lenzdorff
+remarks, consulting her watch; then, observing Erika, she is startled
+by the girl's looks. &quot;What is the matter with you?&quot; she asks, and when
+the girl's only answer is a rapid change of colour, the thought occurs
+to her for the first time, &quot;Is it possible that she cares for
+Lozoncyi?--my proud Erika?&quot; She observes her grand-daughter narrowly,
+and an ugly suspicion invades her heart. &quot;What reply shall I make to
+Goswyn?&quot; she thinks. &quot;Good heavens! I had no idea! Perhaps it is only
+fancy. But if---- It would be my fault. And people call me shrewd! Poor
+child!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Meanwhile, Fritz announces that lunch is served.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My child, you are eating nothing,&quot; the old Countess says anxiously to
+her grand-daughter, who is doing her best to swallow a morsel of food.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I am not very well,&quot; Erika replies, in a faint, weary voice. How often
+those tones will ring through the old Countess's soul! &quot;I have a slight
+headache,&quot; and she puts her hand to her head; &quot;I feel as if a storm
+were coming; but there is not a cloud in the sky.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;So, there is not a cloud to be seen. The sunshine is so powerful in
+the dining-hall that the shades have to be drawn down, thus diffusing a
+gray twilight through the room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Let us go to our rooms,&quot; says the old Countess, with a sigh of
+discouragement. They go, and Erika seems to be making ready for the
+proposed expedition. But when her grandmother, fully arrayed, enters
+the girl's room half an hour afterwards, she finds her in a long white
+dressing-gown with loosened hair, leaning back in an easy-chair.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My child, my child! what is the matter with you?&quot; the old lady
+exclaims, in terror.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Nothing,&quot; the girl replies, without lifting her downcast eyes. &quot;A
+headache. You can see I meant to go, but I cannot: you must go without
+me. Give all kinds of affectionate messages to Constance, and tell her
+how sorry I am.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My dear child, I cannot go with those people if you are not well,&quot; the
+old lady says, beginning to take off her gloves. &quot;No human being could
+expect me to do that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika is trembling violently. &quot;But, grandmother,&quot; she replies, &quot;it is
+only a headache. You can do me no good by staying at home, and you know
+I cannot bear to make a disturbance.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, yes,&quot; says the grandmother. &quot;But lie down, at least, my darling.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You could not disappoint Constance Mühlberg: you know she depends upon
+you, she needs your support,&quot; Erika goes on, persuasively.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, that is true,&quot; the Countess admits.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She notices that Erika has hastily brushed away tears from her eyes,
+and the suspicion which had assailed her below in the garden is
+strengthened. Perhaps it would be better to leave the girl in peace for
+a while, she says to herself.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Meanwhile, Marianne appears, to say that the Countess Mühlberg is
+awaiting the ladies below in her gondola.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Go, grandmother dear,&quot; Erika says, faintly; &quot;go!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yes, I will go; but first let me see you lie down, my child.&quot; She
+conducts Erika to the bed. &quot;How you tremble! You can hardly stand.&quot; She
+arranges her long dressing-gown, strokes the girl's cheek, and kisses
+her forehead. She has reached the door, when she hears a low voice
+behind her say, &quot;Grandmother!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She turns. Erika is half sitting up in bed, looking after her. &quot;What is
+it, my child?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Nothing, only I was thinking just now that I have not treated you as I
+ought, sometimes lately. Forgive me, grandmother!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old lady clasps the trembling girl in her arms. &quot;Little goose!&quot;
+she says. &quot;As if that were of any consequence, my darling! Only go
+quietly to sleep, that I may find you well when I return. Where is my
+pocket-handkerchief? Oh, there is Goswyn's letter: when you are a
+little better you can read it. You need not be afraid that I shall try
+to persuade you; that time has gone by; but I think the letter ought to
+please you. At all events, it is something to have inspired so
+thoroughly excellent a man with so deep and true an affection; and you
+will see, too, that you have been unjust to him. Good-bye, my darling,
+good-bye.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">For the last time Erika presses the delicate old hand to her lips. The
+Countess has gone. Erika is alone. She has locked her door, and is
+sitting on her bed with Goswyn's letter open on her lap. Her tears are
+falling thick and fast upon it. It reads as follows:</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;<span class="sc">My very dear old Friend</span>,--</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Shall you be in Venice next week, and may I come to you there? I do
+not want you to tell me if I have any chance: I shall come at all
+events, unless Countess Erika is actually betrothed. This is plain
+speaking, is it not?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Have you known, or have you not known, that through all these years
+since my rejection by the Countess Erika not a day has passed for me
+that has not been filled with thoughts of her? In any case my conduct
+must have seemed inexplicable to you: probably you have thought me
+ridiculously sensitive. It is true, ridiculous sensitiveness, as I now
+see, has been the true cause of my foolish, unjustifiable behaviour,
+but it has not been the sensitiveness of a rejected suitor. God forbid!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I should never have been provoked by the Countess Erika's rejection of
+me,--no, never,--even if it had not been conveyed in so bewitching a
+way that one ought to have kneeled down and adored her for it. There
+was another reason for my sensitiveness. A certain person, whose name
+there is no need to mention, hinted that I was in pursuit of Countess
+Erika's money. From that moment my peace of mind was at an end. I could
+not go near her again, because, to speak plainly, I was conscious that
+I was not a suitable match for her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You think this petty. I think it is petty myself,--so petty that I
+despise myself, and simply ask, am I any more worthy of so glorious a
+creature, now that I have a few more marks a year to spend?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I dread being punished for my obstinate stupidity. Perhaps there was
+no possibility of my winning her heart, but it was worth a trial, and
+she has a right to reproach me for never in all these years making that
+trial. Inconceivable as my long delay must appear to you, I am sure you
+can understand why I have not thus appealed to you lately, so soon
+after the terrible misfortune that has befallen me.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It was too horrible!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;In addition to my sincere sorrow for my brother's death, I am
+tormented by the sensation that I never sufficiently prized the
+nobility of character which his last moments revealed. To turn so
+terrible a catastrophe to my advantage would have been to me
+impossible. I could not have done it, even although I had not been so
+crushed by the manner of his death that all desire, all love of life,
+has for some weeks seemed dead within me.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Yesterday I met Frau von Norbin, who has lately returned from her
+Italian tour. She informed me that Prince Nimbsch is paying devoted
+attention to Countess Erika, although at present with small
+encouragement.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Jealousy has roused me from my lethargy. And now I ask you once more,
+may I come to Venice? Unless something unforeseen should occur, I could
+obtain a leave without much trouble. Again I repeat, I do not ask you
+what chance I have,--I know that I have none at present,--but I only
+ask you, may I come?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Impatiently awaiting your answer, I am faithfully yours,</p>
+
+<p class="right">&quot;<span class="sc">G. v. Sydow</span>.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">She read the letter to the last word, her tears flowing faster and
+faster. Then she threw herself on the bed, and buried her face among
+the pillows. A yearning desire assailed her heart, and thrilled through
+her every nerve, calling aloud, &quot;Turn back! turn back!&quot; But it was too
+late; she would not turn back. She was entirely possessed by the
+illusion that she was about to do something grand and elevating.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A low knock at the door recalled her to herself. It was Marianne, who,
+instructed by the old Countess, came to see if she would not have a cup
+of tea.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;By and by, Marianne,&quot; she called, without opening the door. &quot;I want
+nothing at present. I am better.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Marianne left, and Erika looked at her watch. Four o'clock! It was time
+to begin her final preparations.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She gathered together all her trinkets,--an unusually large and
+valuable collection for a girl. She had been fond of jewelry, and her
+grandmother had denied her nothing. Without one longing thought of
+them, she selected all that were of special value, running through her
+fingers five strings of beautiful pearls, and calculating as she did so
+their probable worth. These she added to the heap, and then wrapped all
+together in a package, upon which she wrote &quot;For the Poor.&quot; Then she
+sat down at her writing-table and explained her last wishes, arranging
+everything as one would who contemplated suicide. Not one of her
+numerous <i>protégées</i> did she forget, commending them all to her
+grandmother's care.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">After everything in this respect that was necessary, or at least that
+she considered necessary, was arranged, she reflected that she must
+write a farewell to her grandmother.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was a terribly hard task, but after she had begun her letter there
+seemed to be no end to it. She covered three sheets, and there were yet
+many loving things to say. Now first she comprehended all that her
+grandmother had been to her of late years. She forgot how often the old
+Countess's philosophy had grated upon her, how often she had rebelled
+against it. How hard it was to leave her! But retreat was not to be
+thought of.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">And she wrote on.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At last she concluded with, &quot;Every one else will point the finger of
+scorn at me; you will bewail my course, but you will not call it evil,
+only foolish. Poor, dear grandmother! And you will mourn over the
+misery which I have voluntarily brought upon myself. It is terrible
+that I cannot fulfil the mission in life which lies so clearly before
+me without giving you pain. But I cannot help it! One thing consoles
+me. I know how large-minded you are: you will have to choose between
+the world and me, and you will be strong enough to resign the world and
+to turn to me, and then nothing will be wanting to me in my new life,
+let people slander me as they will!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Three times did Erika fold up the letter, and three times did she open
+it again to add something to it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At last it was finished. She put with it into the envelope the draft of
+her wishes as to the disposal of the effects she left behind her, and
+then asked herself where she should put the letter so that her
+grandmother might find it instantly upon her return. At first she took
+it to the Countess's room, but then, reflecting that the old lady would
+come at once to her bedside to see how she was, she laid it, with eyes
+streaming with tears, upon the table beside her bed. &quot;Poor
+grandmother!&quot; She kissed the letter tenderly as she left it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Now everything was finished: she had only to dress herself. But she was
+not content. Once more she sat down at her writing-table and wrote.
+This time the words came slowly and with difficulty from her pen, as if
+each one were torn singly from her bleeding heart.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;<span class="sc">My dear, faithful Friend</span>,&quot;--she began,--&quot;Do not come to Venice. When
+this letter reaches you I shall have vanished from the world in which
+you live. I could not endure to have you hear from strangers of the
+step I am about to take, and so I write to you myself. Yes, when you
+read this letter I shall have broken with all that has constituted my
+life hitherto, and shall have fled with--with a married man. How
+grieved you will be when you read this! My whole soul cries out with
+pain as I think of it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You will not understand it. 'Erika Lenzdorff fled with a married man!'
+It sounds incredible, does it not?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;You know that I am not light-minded, nor corrupt, and so you will
+believe me when I tell you that the reasons which have induced me to
+take so terrible a step are unanswerable in my mind.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I can redeem the life of a noble and gifted man. His moral nature is
+deteriorating, he suffers frightfully, and I cannot avoid the
+conviction that without me he must go to destruction.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;He hoped to be able to procure a divorce from his wife. It was
+impossible. Without hesitation I resolved of my own accord to follow
+him. In the midst of the agony which it has cost me to break with all
+my former associations, I am sustained by a sense of right.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;It is grand and beautiful to suffer for a noble and highly-gifted
+fellow-being,--beautiful to be able to say, 'Providence has chosen me
+to shed light into his darkened soul.' I do not waste a thought upon
+what I resign in thus fulfilling my mission, but the consciousness of
+the pain I shall cause my dear grandmother and you weighs me to the
+earth. She will forgive me, and you, my poor friend, you will forget
+me. I would gladly find consolation in this conviction; but no, it does
+not comfort me. Of all that I must give up with my old life, your
+friendship is what I shall lack most painfully.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Goswyn! for God's sake do not judge me falsely and harshly! What I do,
+I do in the absolute conviction that it is right. If this conviction
+should ever fail me, then---- But I cannot harbour that idea!--it would
+be too terrible. I cannot be mistaken!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I have a fearful attack of cowardice as I write to you, and a sudden
+dread takes possession of me. Am I equal to the task I have undertaken?
+Will he always be content to live apart from the world with me alone?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I am prepared for that also. If his feeling for me should wane, my
+task will be done, he will need me no longer. Then I will vanish from
+his life, and from life itself, like a poor taper that is extinguished
+when the sun rises. I shall have the courage to extinguish it; it will
+be a trifle in comparison with what I am now doing. Oh, God! how hard
+it is! Goswyn, adieu! One thing more, and this I tell you because this
+is my farewell to you. Whether it will console you, or add one more
+pang to your sorrow, I cannot tell, but I am constrained to lay bare my
+heart before you: these are as it were the words of a dying woman. If
+last autumn you had said one kind word to me, I should now have been
+your wife, and you should not have repented it! All that is over. Fate
+had another destiny in store for me.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Once more, farewell!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Forgive me for causing you pain, and sometimes think of your poor
+friend,</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Erika Lenzdorff.&quot;</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Now all was done. She put on her travelling-dress, a plain dark suit in
+which she was wont to pay visits to the poor.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She looked at the clock--seven! One half-hour more, and she must go;
+and she could not go without something to lend her physical strength.
+She rang for a cup of tea, swallowed it hastily, and for the last time
+walked through the four rooms occupied by her grandmother and herself.
+Then she took her travelling-bag, which she had packed with a few
+necessaries, put on her straw hat, and went.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was half-past seven: the servants were at their evening meal. No one
+noticed her departure at so unusual an hour. How often she had been
+seen leaving the hotel in the same dress to visit her poor people!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She walked for some distance, and dropped her letter to Goswyn into the
+nearest post-box, feeling as she did so that she was casting her whole
+life thus far into a dark gulf whence it could never be recovered. Then
+she hired a gondola, an open one,--she could find no other,--and it
+pushed off with her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was very weary; with her eyes fixed on vacancy, she leaned back
+among the black cushions.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The tragic wretchedness of the situation no longer impressed her. She
+only felt that she was about to undertake a journey. If it were but
+over! Sssh--sssh--the strokes of the oars sounded monotonously in her
+ears: the gondola glided rapidly over the water.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The garish daylight had faded; the spring twilight, with its
+incomparably poetic charm, was casting its transparent veil over
+Venice. The gondola glided on.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika's battle was fought. She leaned back, pale and still, with
+gleaming eyes. The sound of the church-bells droned in her ears. Dulled
+to all that lay behind her, she was conscious of nothing save of the
+enthusiasm of a young hero ready to brave death for a sacred cause.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Around her was the breath of the waning spring, and beneath her was the
+sobbing of the waves.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">It was later by about an hour and a half. The old Countess, who had
+felt it her duty to be present at the fête, had not thought herself
+obliged to remain until its close. She was very uneasy about Erika, and
+had gratefully accepted Prince Nimbsch's offer to take her home in his
+cutter, leaving Constance Mühlberg and her guests, with the Hungarian
+band that had been telegraphed for from Vienna for their amusement, to
+return to Venice in the steamer.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">With the velocity of a skimming swallow the little vessel shot through
+the water. Prince Nimbsch, leaving the management of the sail entirely
+to his sailors, leaned back beside the old lady among his very new
+velvet cushions, and made good-humoured, although futile, efforts to
+entertain her. She was absent: her thoughts were occupied with Erika's
+altered appearance.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Poor child!&quot; she thought, &quot;I was foolish. It was my fault; but how
+could I suspect it? She seemed so strong, so unsusceptible. It is the
+same folly, the same disease that attacks us all once in a lifetime. I
+had it myself: I can hardly remember it now. It hurts,--it hurts very
+much. But she has a strong character and a clear head. I am very sorry;
+I might have prevented it, if I had only known. My poor, proud Erika!
+What shall I write to Goswyn? Of course that he must come. I think she
+will be glad to see him: this cannot go very deep; but I am very
+sorry.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Venice lay before them, gray and shadowy, a reflection of the pale
+summer sky, whence the sun had long disappeared, and where the stars
+were not yet visible.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">They reached the hotel, and the old Countess looked up at Erika's
+windows. &quot;She is not in her boudoir,&quot; she said to herself. &quot;Perhaps she
+is asleep.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Tell Countess Erika how stupid the <i>fête</i> was, thanks to her absence,&quot;
+the young Austrian said as he took his leave, &quot;and how we all
+anathematized that headache for depriving us of her society. I shall
+call to-morrow, and hope to find her quite well again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He kissed the old lady's hand, and she hurried upstairs to her rooms.
+She softly entered Erika's apartments. The boudoir was dark, as she had
+seen from below. She gently opened the door of the bedroom; that was
+dark also. Had the poor child gone to bed? She approached the bed very
+softly, not to disturb her, and stooped above it. There was no one
+there.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A foreboding of something terrible instantly took possession of her.
+For a moment she lost her head: she grew dizzy, and would have screamed
+and alarmed the house, but her voice died in her throat. Suddenly
+something fluttered down from the table upon which she leaned to
+support herself. She stooped to pick it up: it was a letter. She turned
+on the electric light and read it through. After the first few lines,
+half blind with grief, she would have tossed it aside,--what could it
+contain that she did not now know?--but at last she read it through,
+read every word to the very end, feeding her pain with each tender,
+loving expression of the unhappy, mistaken girl.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Not for one moment did she blame Erika for what had happened: she
+blamed herself alone. She accused herself of plunging Erika into
+wretchedness, as years before she had done with her daughter-in-law.
+She had required of both of them that they should accede to her
+materialistic views. She had never allowed them to entertain any
+idealistic conception of life. She had never understood that such
+idealism was a necessity of their existence, and that if deprived of it
+in one shape they would take refuge in some exaggeration which
+might shield them from a life of coldly-calculating egotism. Her
+daughter-in-law's unhappiness had not affected her much; her
+grand-daughter's misery would blot the sun from her sky.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She was so clear-sighted: ah, why was she so, when she could see
+nothing but what agonized her?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">For a creature like Erika it was as impossible to disregard the
+dictates of morality as it would be to breathe in the moon with lungs
+constructed for the atmosphere of the earth.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">There were women capable of braving the opinions of the world and of
+quietly going on their way, women for whom the pillory was converted
+into a pedestal as soon as they stood in it. But Erika was not one of
+these. Before the stars in their courses had twice appeared in the
+heavens she would writhe in misery. She had none of that self-exalting
+quality which must veil the moral lack of which she would surely be
+made conscious. Yes, she would then find no other name for the
+sacrifice she had made to the wretch who had been willing to receive it
+at her hands than the one which the world has given to it for centuries
+when it has been made to men by worthless women, inspired by no lofty
+desire. In her own eyes she would be a fallen woman.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The moisture stood upon the old Countess's forehead. &quot;My Erika! my
+proud, glorious Erika!&quot; she murmured. She knew that the peril of a
+woman's fall must be measured by the moral height from which she falls.
+And Erika had fallen from a very lofty height. Her life was ruined.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Once more she opened Erika's letter and read the line, &quot;You will have
+to choose between the world and me.&quot; Choose! As if there could be any
+question of choice. Of course she was ready to open her arms to her and
+do for her what she alone could; but what could she do?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Suddenly a picture arose in her memory,--a terrible picture.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the waiting-room of a railway-station she had once seen among some
+emigrants a poor woman with a child, a boy about six or seven years
+old. His face was frightfully disfigured by scars. All the passers-by
+stared at him, and some nudged one another and whispered together. The
+child first grew scarlet, then very restless, and finally burst into a
+passion of tears; whereupon the mother sat down upon a bench and hid
+the poor face in her lap.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A quarter of an hour later, when the Countess passed the same spot the
+woman was still there with the child's face in her lap. She sat stiffly
+erect, glaring at the unfeeling crowd whose cruel curiosity had so hurt
+the boy, and with her rough hand she gently stroked his short light
+hair. The sight had made a profound impression upon the Countess. &quot;She
+cannot sit there always, concealing in her lap her child's deformity,&quot;
+she said to herself: &quot;sooner or later she must again expose the poor
+creature to the gaze of the crowd.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">What now recalled this poor, powerless mother to her mind?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She could do no more for Erika than hide her head in her lap from the
+contemptuous curiosity of the world. So entirely did this thought take
+possession of her imagination that she seemed to feel the warm weight
+of the poor humiliated head upon her knee; she raised her hand to
+stroke it, when with a start she awoke to consciousness. &quot;Ah, even that
+will be denied me,&quot; she thought. &quot;As soon as Erika comes to herself,
+she will cast away her life. Yes, all is over,--all,--all!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Marianne came into the room. She waved her away without a word. She
+never thought of inventing a reason to the maid for Erika's absence.
+She sat there mute and motionless, looking into the future. A vast
+misfortune seemed to have engulfed the world, and she alone was left to
+suffer, she alone was to blame.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">Lozoncyi had gone to the station. He had delayed until the latest
+minute, intimidated by the difficulties of his undertaking, swayed by
+intense agitation. At last, passion for Erika had gained the mastery,
+although it had shrunk to very small dimensions. All the poetry had
+faded out of it. The lofty conception of life and its duties which had
+lately raised him above himself had vanished like a fit of intoxication
+of which nothing is left save a torturing thirst. Will she come? he had
+asked himself, with quivering nerves, as he sprang from the gondola,
+and, after purchasing the tickets, looked around him anxiously.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He had in fact expected that she would be there before him: he was
+disappointed at not finding her. He went out upon the steps leading
+from the railway-station to the Canal, and looked abroad over the
+shining green water. As each gondola approached he said to himself,
+&quot;Here she comes.&quot; But no; she did not come.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The first bell rang. He went on the platform, his pulses throbbing
+feverishly. While he had been sure that she would come he had been
+comparatively calm; now his longing for her knew no bounds. He eagerly
+scanned every woman whom he saw in the distance.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Fortunately, he saw no one whom he knew: the train was not very full.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The second bell rang; the passengers hurried into their several
+compartments, porters ran to and fro with travelling-bags and trunks,
+farewells were waved from the windows of the train. The third bell
+rang, and the train steamed noisily out of the station. She had not
+come.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">His disappointment was largely mingled with anger, and was so intense
+that it amounted to physical nervous pain. &quot;At the last moment her
+courage has failed her,&quot; he told himself. But then her pale beautiful
+face, lit up with enthusiasm, arose before his mind's eye, and in the
+midst of his frenzy of passion he was conscious of the yearning
+tenderness which had been a chief element in his feeling for her. &quot;No,&quot;
+he said to himself, &quot;even if her courage has failed her, she is not one
+to break her word. She must have been prevented at the last moment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A burning desire for certainty in the matter mastered him. He went to
+the Hôtel Britannia, under the pretext of calling upon the Lenzdorffs.
+He was told that her Excellency had gone out early in the afternoon and
+had not yet returned. He hesitated for a moment, and then, in a tone
+the indifference of which surprised himself, he asked if he could see
+the Countess Erika, as he had a message for her. The porter, a
+presuming fellow who meddled in everybody's affairs, informed him that
+the young Countess had just gone out, but would probably return
+shortly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Why do you think so?&quot; asked Lozoncyi.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Because she was not in evening dress. She went out in a street suit,
+and carried a leather bag in her hand: that always means 'charity' with
+the young Countess. I know the bag: I have often carried it for her to
+the gondola. This time she walked, and carried it herself. She is a
+little----&quot; he touched his forehead with his forefinger, &quot;but a good
+lady: she is always giving.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Lozoncyi stayed no longer. He got into his gondola again, uncertain
+what to do. What could have kept her? After some reflection, he went
+again to the railway-station. &quot;She has been detained by some
+acquaintance; she will be here for the next train,&quot; he thought. He
+waited until the next train left,--in vain. Then a fierce anger against
+her arose within him and transcended all bounds. He forgot that he
+himself had delayed for a moment. He could not find words bitter enough
+to express his contempt for her. He never should have taken such a step
+of his own accord: he had simply acquiesced in the inevitable. She had
+carried him away by her enthusiasm, which had levelled all barriers
+between them, and now--now her cowardice had left him in the lurch. It
+was hardly worth while to devise so fine a drama, when it was never to
+be played out! How stupid he had been ever to believe that it could
+possibly be played out! he ought to have known that at the last moment
+the censor would prohibit it. In the midst of his anger he experienced
+a sensation of dull indifference. What did anything matter? everything
+of importance in his life was at an end: what became of the rest he did
+not care. He had been lured on by a Fata Morgana; he laughed at the
+thought that he had taken it for reality,--a dull, joyless laugh,--and
+then--he could not spend the night at the station--he resolved to go
+home.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was about ten o'clock when he passed through the green door of his
+house and along the narrow corridor into the garden. The moon was high
+in the sky, and the trees and bushes cast pitchy shadows upon the
+bluish light lying upon the grass and gravel paths. The air was warm;
+rose-leaves lay scattered everywhere; Spring was laying aside her
+garments, and there was a dull weariness in the atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Lozoncyi, with bowed head, walked towards the atelier, where was the
+portrait. On a sudden he heard a light foot-fall behind him. He turned,
+and stood as if rooted to the earth.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Erika!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She came towards him lovely as an angel. Her head was bare, and her
+golden hair gleamed in the moonlight.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Erika!&quot; he exclaimed, hoarsely, without advancing a step towards her.
+He took her for an illusion conjured up by his fancy. But as she drew
+near he felt the reality of her young life beside him. &quot;Then it is
+really you?&quot; he murmured. &quot;I thought it a phantom to deceive me. Why
+are you here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No wonder you ask,&quot; she said, and her voice expressed unutterable
+compassion. &quot;I come to bid you farewell.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Farewell!&quot; he gasped. &quot;Then I was right to doubt you. And yet how
+bitterly I have reproached myself because----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Because----?&quot; she asked, sadly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Because I ventured to suppose you had lost courage. What could I
+think? I waited for you at the station from one train to the next: you
+did not come. Then I told myself that you had simply treated me to a
+farce. But I cannot believe that now: as I look into your dear face I
+can find there no cowardice, nothing paltry. You have been detained
+against your will, and you are here yourself to tell me so. It is noble
+of you, Erika! my Erika!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He drew closer to her, and extended his arms towards her: she evaded
+them.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;All is over between us,&quot; she said, wearily. &quot;It cannot be.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She saw him turn ashy pale in the moonlight.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Over? It cannot be? Erika! What does this mean? Have you robbed me of
+all self-control only to desert me thus at the last moment? I cannot
+believe it of you, Erika!&quot; There was passionate entreaty in his voice.
+Again he stretched out his arms towards her: gently, but firmly, she
+repulsed him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Do not touch me,&quot; she begged. &quot;I can scarcely stand. Something
+horrible has happened; I must tell you of it as quickly as possible,
+but I cannot stand upright.&quot; She grasped the bough of the mulberry-tree
+around which the climbing roses were wreathed, and as she did so the
+bough shook, and a cloud of white rose-leaves fluttered to the ground.
+All about her was fading! How sultry the night was!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She sat down on the bench beneath the mulberry, above her the moonlit
+sky with its hosts of stars, at her feet the fading garment of the
+spring.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Then she began her story: &quot;I was on my way to the station. I should
+have been punctual: perhaps I should have been there before you. I was
+convinced that I was doing right, and so long as that was so I could
+not delay. The way to the station leads past this house. My gondola had
+not yet reached the bridge that spans this canal when I heard a loud
+splash in the water. A woman had thrown herself from the bridge. You
+can imagine my horror. In an instant the suspicion darted into my mind
+that it might be your wife. I implored my gondolier to save her, and he
+plunged into the water just in time. It was indeed your wife, whom I
+could not but feel I had thus hunted to death. She lay in the bottom of
+the gondola, covered with sea-weed and slime--oh, horrible! I brought
+her home. We carried her up-stairs, with Lucrezia's help, and then
+recalled her to life. That was comparatively easy; but scarcely had she
+opened her eyes when she was seized with frightful spasms of the chest,
+and I feared she would die.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Lozoncyi had listened breathlessly; now he nodded slowly. &quot;I know she
+suffers from such attacks frequently,&quot; he said, bitterly, &quot;but they are
+not dangerous: they are usually the result of a fit of fury.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;That I did not know,&quot; Erika murmured, in the same weary, self-accusing
+voice,--the voice of a criminal arraigning herself. &quot;Her condition made
+a terrible impression upon me. We put her to bed, and I stayed with her
+while Lucrezia went for a physician. She returned without him, but the
+unfortunate woman seemed better and calmer, and I was about to leave
+her, when I heard your step in the corridor. I came hither to take
+leave of you. Forgive me, and farewell!&quot; She had risen from the bench,
+and held out her hand to him; her eyes were full of tears.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He did not take her hand. &quot;And for this you would desert me?&quot; he
+exclaimed, angrily. &quot;You have given me no reason,--not the slightest.
+That devil up-stairs has simply played you a trick,--nothing more. Can
+you not see it? She knew what we were about to do, and watched for you:
+she had not the least idea of taking her own life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I do not know,&quot; replied Erika, passing her hand across her brow: &quot;it
+may be that she meant only to prevent me from arriving in time at the
+station. But it was frightful: the canal is very deep there; she would
+surely have been drowned; and how could I have lived after witnessing
+her death? No! as I sat beside her bed a veil seemed to fall from my
+eyes,--a veil which had blinded me to what I was doing. I saw that,
+with the best will in the world, I could do only harm. I was ready to
+give my life for you,--I am always ready for that,--but I must not
+sacrifice the lives of others who stand in close relation to you and to
+me; I cannot!--I cannot! I ought not to have robbed you of your peace,
+to have taken from you the power of self-renunciation; I acknowledge
+it. If you could but know how bitterly I reproach myself, how fearful
+it is for me to see you suffer! My poor friend, I entreat your
+forgiveness from my very soul!&quot; She took his hand and humbly touched it
+with her lips.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The night grew more sultry and oppressive. A bewildering fragrance
+exhaled from the earth, from the plants, from the faded blossoms on the
+ground, and from the fresh buds opening to life. The moonlight fell
+full upon the statue of a dancing faun beneath an acacia-tree, and upon
+the scattered rose-leaves around it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Hitherto Lozoncyi had stood still, with bowed head. But at the touch of
+her lips upon his hand he looked up. His veins ran fire.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Farewell!&quot; she murmured, gently.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He repeated &quot;Farewell!&quot; and then suddenly added, &quot;Will you not take one
+more look at the studio before you go?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She found nothing unusual in this request. He led the way; she followed
+him, her whole being filled with compassion: she would have been nailed
+to the cross to relieve his pain,--the pain for which she was to blame.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The moonlight flooded the studio, lending an unreal appearance to the
+room, and in the magic light stood forth the figure of 'Blind Love,'
+athirst to reach its goal, staggering in the mire.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">From the garden breathed a benumbing odour, and from the far distance
+floated towards the pair, like a yearning sigh, the song of the
+Venetian night-minstrels.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika looked about her sadly. &quot;It was fair!&quot; she murmured. &quot;I thank you
+for it all. Adieu!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She held out both her hands to him; she had wellnigh offered him her
+lips, in the desperation of her compassion.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He took her hands in his and bent over them. &quot;It is, perhaps, better
+so,&quot; he said, and his voice had never been so tremulous and yet so
+tenderly beguiling. &quot;The sacrifice you would have made for me was too
+great: I ought not to have accepted it at your hands. And you are
+right, we must spare those who are near to us; it must be. But for
+God's sake do not desert me quite! do not consign me to utter misery!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She looked at him with eyes of wonder. She could not comprehend. What
+was there left for her to do for him?--what?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He kissed her hands alternately: she did not notice how he drew her
+towards him until she felt his hot breath upon her cheek. Then he said,
+softly, very softly, &quot;You must return to your grandmother tonight, I
+know; you cannot devote your life to me; but--oh, Erika! our existence
+is made up of moments--grant me a moment's bliss now and then! you will
+not be the poorer, and I--I shall be richer than a king! The world
+shall never know; no shadow shall fall upon you, be sure----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At last she understood. She tore her hands from his grasp; a hoarse
+sobbing cry escaped her lips, and without a word she turned and fled
+past the faun gleaming in the moonlight, past the fading blossoms,
+across the garden, through the long cold corridor, without once taking
+breath until the green door with the lion's head had closed behind her.
+A despairing cry pursued her: &quot;Erika! Erika!&quot; It was the voice of the
+man who had been suddenly aroused to the consciousness of what he had
+done.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But she never heeded it: she had a horror of him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">For a moment she stood uncertain on the border of the canal. Her
+gondolier had departed, having judged it best to be rid as soon as
+possible of his wet clothes. It was late, and she was alone.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Around her was the ghostly moonlight, before her the dark lapping
+water. She was not afraid: what was there to fear? But, with the world
+in ruins as it were about her, what should she do? What, except return
+to the Hôtel Britannia?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She threaded her way through the zigzag narrow streets, across bridges
+and along the shores of the canals, her eyes bent on the ground. It
+never occurred to her that any one whom she knew could meet her
+wandering thus late at night with uncovered head; for she had left her
+hat in the sick woman's room. All through these last terrible hours she
+had had no thought for her reputation. She walked on and on. Suddenly
+there fell upon her ear,--</p>
+
+<p class="normal">
+&quot;Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie,
+Toi, qui n'as pas d'amour?
+Comment vis-tu----&quot;</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">As she crossed a narrow canal by a small bridge, the singers' gondola
+came directly towards her. She saw it close at hand. The soprano was a
+faded, hollow-cheeked woman, the men were quite ragged.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Was that the phantom that had lured her on all through the spring?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The guttering candles in the gondola were burned almost into the
+sockets. One of the paper lanterns took fire. The boat glided beneath
+the bridge. When it emerged on the other side the lights were
+extinguished, the singers silent. The gondola floated drearily on, a
+black formless spot in the moonlight.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Shortly afterwards Erika found a gondola in which she reached the
+hotel.</p>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">In consequence of the arrival of a large number of fresh guests, the
+hotel was brilliantly lighted, all the doors were open, and Erika went
+up the staircase to her room without attracting special notice.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Perhaps,&quot; she thought, &quot;my grandmother has not yet returned: I may be
+able to recover my letter before she has read it.&quot; She went instantly
+to her bedroom. Light issued from the chink of the door: she was too
+late. She opened the door. There, beside her bed, sat her grandmother
+in an arm-chair, erect and stiff, her eyes looking unnaturally large in
+her ashy-pale face, where the last few hours had graven deeper furrows
+than had been made by all the other experiences of her seventy years.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A strange cry escaped the old Countess's lips when she perceived the
+wan, sad apparition in the door-way. Half rising from her seat, her
+hands grasping the arms of the chair, she gazed at the girl as if she
+had been a corpse newly risen from the tomb. Trembling in every limb,
+&quot;Erika!&quot; she stammered. She tried to walk towards her grandchild, and
+could not. Erika's strength barely sufficed to carry her to the
+bedside, where she sank at her grandmother's feet and laid her head in
+her lap.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Neither could speak for a while. The old lady only stroked the girl's
+hair with her delicate hand, which grew warmer every minute. The girl
+sobbed. After some minutes the grandmother bent over her and murmured,
+&quot;Erika, tell me how you have been rescued at the eleventh hour. Where
+have you been?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika lifted her head, and in a faint voice told all that had occurred
+until the moment when she had gone down into the garden to take leave
+of Lozoncyi. There she hesitated.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother listened breathlessly, and in an instant the girl began
+afresh: &quot;I had forgotten myself. I would have done more for him than
+was ever done for man before; I would have borne him aloft to the
+stars. And he--the way was too hard; he had no heart for it; he would
+have dragged me down into the mire from which I would fain have rescued
+him. And when at last I understood, I fled----&quot; A fit of convulsive
+sobbing interrupted her: she could not go on.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother understood it all. She said not a word, only gently
+stroked the poor head in her lap. After a while she persuaded Erika to
+lie down, helped her to undress, and smoothed the pillow in which the
+poor child hid her tear-stained face.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She sat at the bedside until the dull weariness sure to follow upon
+intense nervous agitation produced its effect and the girl slept. The
+grandmother still sat there, motionless, until far into the morning.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">About nine o'clock Marianne softly opened the door of the room. Erika
+awoke. She had forgotten everything,--when her glance fell upon a small
+black travelling-bag in the maid's hand.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Please, your Excellency, a gondolier has just brought this bag,&quot;
+Marianne explained. &quot;He says the Countess Erika left it in the gondola
+yesterday after the accident,--after the fright, I mean: he told me all
+about it. Poor Countess Erika! what a terrible thing for her! But it
+was fortunate, too, because she was able to save the poor woman. The
+gondolier has come for the hundred lire which the Countess promised him
+for getting the woman out of the water.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old Countess drew a deep breath. Everything was turning out more
+favourably for Erika than she had dared to hope. The adventure, which
+would of course be discussed freely by all the hotel servants, would
+explain Erika's long absence and strange return.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Is the Countess Erika ill?&quot; asked the faithful Marianne, with an
+anxious glance at the young girl, whose cheeks were flushed with fever.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Only suffering from the effects of agitation,&quot; said Countess
+Lenzdorff, who had meanwhile brought the money and given it to the
+maid.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No wonder! Poor Countess Erika!&quot; the servant murmured as she withdrew.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Weary and wretched, Erika again closed her eyes. When she opened them
+she saw her grandmother at the writing-table, her head resting on her
+hand, and a blank sheet of paper before her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;To whom are you writing, grandmother?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I want to write to Goswyn,&quot; the old Countess replied, in a low tone.
+&quot;I must answer his letter; and--I am not sure----&quot; She hesitated.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Upon Erika's mind flashed the remembrance of the letter she had written
+the previous day to Goswyn. She had forgotten it.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Of course I must tell him not to come,&quot; said her grandmother.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika sighed. Must she give her grandmother that pain too? At last she
+managed to say, in a voice that was scarce audible, &quot;He will not come:
+he----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Startled by a terrible suspicion, her grandmother looked at her in
+dismay. Erika's face was turned away from her.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Well?&quot; asked the old Countess.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I wrote to him yesterday,&quot; poor Erika stammered, &quot;telling him what I
+was about to do. I thought he must hear of it sooner or later, and I
+wished that he should hear it in a way that would give him least pain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Oh, Erika! Erika!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">But Erika lay still, her head turned away from her grandmother. After a
+while she said, almost in a whisper, &quot;Grandmother, please write to him
+that&quot;--she buried her face in the pillow--&quot;that---- Oh, grandmother,
+tell him--that--he need not despise me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother made no reply. For a while absolute silence reigned in
+the room. Then Erika suddenly heard a low sob. She looked round. The
+Countess had covered her face with her hands, and was weeping.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It was the first time since Erika had known her that she had seen her
+shed tears.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVII.</h2>
+<br>
+
+<p class="normal">No trace of spring can be seen. The garden of the Hôtel Britannia
+is a sunburned desert, where the rose-bushes show withered leaves
+and not a single bud. The breath of the yellowish-gray lagoons is
+stifling. All is limp and faded,--both vegetation and human beings. The
+hotels are emptying: the season here is over, and the season for the
+watering-places not yet begun. Moreover, there is in Venice an epidemic
+of typhus fever.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Scarcely half a dozen people assemble every evening at the
+<i>table-d'hôte</i> of the Hôtel Britannia, and the small table appropriated
+to the Lenzdorffs in the far corner of the dining-hall is deserted.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Nevertheless the Lenzdorffs have not left the hotel; but Erika is ill,
+stricken down by malarial fever, and the old Countess does not leave
+her bedside.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The attack was sudden,--sudden so far as could be seen by those in
+daily intercourse with her, but pronounced very gradual by the
+physician, who maintained that the disease had long been latent in the
+girl's system.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the afternoon of the day after that upon which Erika had, as by a
+miracle, escaped the most terrible peril of her life, she had, by her
+grandmother's desire, donned a charming gown and had gone with the old
+Countess to pay a round of farewell visits. She had gone patiently in
+the gondola from one palazzo to another, and with a pale, calm face had
+answered question after question as to the terrible catastrophe which
+her timely presence had been the means of preventing.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">There were various versions concerning the reasons for Frau Lozoncyi's
+attempt at suicide: thanks to the jealousy of Lozoncyi's numerous
+feminine adorers, none of these versions approached even distantly the
+truth, for none of his adorers would have admitted that the artist had
+ever bestowed a serious thought upon Erika.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In the evening she had dressed for dinner, and then, overcome by
+fatigue, she had lain down upon her bed to rest for a quarter of an
+hour. She did not rise from it for weeks.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Now the disease has left her. The physician has not only allowed but
+advised her to leave her bed. Every forenoon at eleven o'clock Marianne
+and the old Countess dress her,--ah, how tenderly and carefully!--and
+then, leaning heavily upon her grandmother's arm, she walks slowly
+about the room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">It is nearly six o'clock. The intense heat has somewhat abated, and
+Erika is sitting in the most comfortable arm-chair to be had in the
+hotel, her head resting upon a pillow, her hands in her lap. And what
+hands they are!--so slender, so white and helpless! To please her
+grandmother, she has swallowed a few spoonfuls of soup,--without the
+slightest desire to eat,--as if it had been medicine.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Are you comfortable, my darling? Shall I not get you another pillow?&quot;
+her grandmother asks. The old Countess is hardly to be recognized, her
+treatment of her grand-daughter is so humbly tender, so pathetically
+anxious. Her force and rigour have vanished: she can only pet and spoil
+Erika; she cannot incite her to any interest in life.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah, grandmother dear, everything is most comfortable,&quot; Erika replies.
+As if a pillow more or less could procure her ease!</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Shall I read aloud to you, my child?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;If you will be so kind.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother makes choice of a new novel of Norris's. As she reads,
+she looks across the book at Erika: the girl is not listening. The old
+Countess stops, and drops the book in her lap. Erika is not aware that
+she has ceased to read.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">After a while she looks up. &quot;Grandmother,&quot; she asks, gently, &quot;did no
+letters come while I was ill?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Of course,&quot; her grandmother replies. &quot;I had letters every day from
+various friends and acquaintances, asking how you were. Hedwig Norbin
+is with her married daughter in Via Reggia, and I had to send her
+bulletins reporting your condition three times a week.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika's thin cheeks flush slightly. &quot;And--did no letters come from
+Berlin?&quot; she asks, with averted face.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother hesitates for a moment, and then says, &quot;I do not
+correspond with any one in Berlin. I have written as few letters as
+possible during your illness.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Erika's head droops. &quot;How ashamed my grandmother must be for me, if she
+has not even told Goswyn that I am ill!&quot; she thinks.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">For a while there is silence; then Erika whispers, &quot;Grandmother, I am
+very tired. I should like to lie down.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her grandmother leads her to a lounge, where she lies down, with her
+face turned to the wall. She is very quiet. Is she sleeping?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">The old Countess softly leaves the room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">In Erika's boudoir she walks to and fro a couple of times, then sits
+down and takes up a book, but it soon drops in her lap unread. For
+weeks she has felt no interest in the comfortless philosophy of the
+books which were formerly her favourites. The book slips to the floor;
+she does not stoop to pick it up; with hands clasped in her lap
+she ponders upon many things that had not been wont to occupy her
+thoughts. She never notices a bustle in the hotel most unusual at this,
+the dull season, until Lüdecke opens the door and announces, &quot;Your
+Excellency, Herr von Sydow wishes to know if he may come up, or if your
+Excellency----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">She starts. &quot;Herr von Sydow!&quot; she repeats. &quot;Show him up,--very softly,
+of course: Countess Erika is asleep.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A moment afterwards he enters the room.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">At first she hardly recognizes him. His features are sharper; the hair
+about his temples is gray.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;My dear child, you here?&quot; she says, cordially, rising and advancing a
+few steps to meet him.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He kisses her hand. &quot;I learned only three days ago that she is ill. How
+is she?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Erika?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Who else could it be?&quot; he replies, impatiently.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The disease is cured; but she does not get well. She gains no
+strength. She has not improved in the last ten days; she has no
+appetite, takes no interest in anything. She is always weary.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;What does her physician say?&quot; Goswyn is sitting beside his old friend,
+leaning forward and listening eagerly to every word that falls from her
+lips. Both speak very softly.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;The physician begins to be anxious; there is not much to say. Entire
+relaxation of the nervous system,--want of vitality,--no love of
+life----&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;No love of life! Nonsense!&quot; exclaims Goswyn. &quot;Life must be made dear
+again for her.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Suddenly they hear a low rustle. The door leading into Erika's bedroom
+opens; on the threshold stands a slender figure in a long white
+dressing-gown, her hair loosely knotted at the back of her head.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">What is there in the poor thin face, in the large melancholy eyes, that
+suddenly reminds Goswyn of the unformed, timid child whom he met on the
+staircase in Bellevue Street on the evening of Erika's arrival in
+Berlin?</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Goswyn,&quot; she stammers, gazing at him, &quot;you here? What are you doing
+here?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He goes to her and takes her hand. &quot;I heard that you were ill, and I
+came to help your grandmother to carry you back to your home.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Her pale lips quiver, and her weak slender form sways uncertainly, and
+then--before he is conscious of it himself--he does what he ought to
+have done years before: he takes her in his arms and kisses her
+forehead.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">A wondrous sensation of perfect content, of blissful freedom from all
+desire, overcomes her; she clasps her emaciated arms about his neck,
+and murmurs, &quot;Goswyn, do you really want me now,--now, after all the
+pain I have given you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">He only clasps her closer to his heart. He, who for years has been
+dallying with opportunity because his courage failed him in view of
+little obstacles which would never have daunted another man, now leaps
+at a bound over the first real obstacle in his way. &quot;What!&quot; he cries,
+&quot;do you suppose I blame you for that folly, Erika? No; for me your
+illness began weeks before it did for the physicians.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">Meanwhile, he has tenderly conducted her to a lounge, upon which,
+exhausted as she is, she sinks down.</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;I must make one confession to you, Erika,&quot; he whispers. &quot;I was
+almost out of my senses in that terrible twenty-four hours after I
+received your letter and before I received your grandmother's; my gray
+temples bear witness to that; but then--then I took delight in your
+letter,--yes, in that terrible letter. For I learned from it what I had
+never ventured to hope,--that you cared for me a little, Erika.&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">&quot;Ah, Goswyn, you always were, of all men in this world, the most
+indispensable one to me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p class="normal">How fair life can be! For a while the lovers, hand clasped in hand,
+talk blissfully; then Erika looks round for her grandmother. But the
+old Countess has vanished: they do not need her at this moment. She is
+sitting in her own room, delighting in her two young people, recalling
+her far-distant past, as she says to herself that under certain
+circumstances love may be a beautiful thing, and when it is
+beautiful----</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h3>THE END.</h3>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Countess Erika's Apprenticeship, by Ossip Schubin
+
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
+
diff --git a/35531.txt b/35531.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2f85b1a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/35531.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,13056 @@
+Project Gutenberg's Countess Erika's Apprenticeship, by Ossip Schubin
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Countess Erika's Apprenticeship
+
+Author: Ossip Schubin
+
+Translator: A. L. Wister
+
+Release Date: March 8, 2011 [EBook #35531]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COUNTESS ERIKA'S APPRENTICESHIP ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provide by Google Books
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+ 1. Page scan source:
+ http://books.google.com/books?id=1hUtAAAAYAAJ
+
+ 2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ MRS. A. L. WISTER'S
+
+ Popular Translations from the German.
+
+ 12mo. Attractively Bound in Cloth.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ "O THOU, MY AUSTRIA!" By Ossip Schubin. $1.25
+ ERLACH COURT. By Ossip Schubin. 1.25
+ THE ALPINE FAY. By E. Werner. 1.25
+ THE OWL'S NEST. By E. Marlitt. 1.25
+ PICKED UP IN THE STREETS. By H. Schobert. 1.25
+ SAINT MICHAEL. By E. Werner. 1.25
+ VIOLETTA. By Ursula Zoege von Manteuffel. 1.25
+ THE LADY WITH THE RUBIES. By E. Marlitt. 1.25
+ VAIN FOREBODINGS. By E. Oswald. 1.25
+ A PENNILESS GIRL. By W. Heimburg. 1.25
+ QUICKSANDS. By Adolph Streckfuss. 1.50
+ BANNED AND BLESSED. By E. Werner. 1.50
+ A NOBLE NAME. By Claire von Gluemer 1.50
+ FROM HAND TO HAND. By Golo Raimund 1.50
+ SEVERA. By E. Hartner 1.50
+ THE EICHHOFS. By Moritz von Reichenbach. 1.50
+ A NEW RACE. By Golo Raimund. 1.25
+ CASTLE HOHENWALD. By Adolph Streckfuss. 1.50
+ MARGARETHE. By E. Juncker. 1.50
+ TOO RICH. By Adolph Streckfuss. 1.50
+ A FAMILY FEUD. By Ludwig Harder. 1.25
+ THE GREEN GATE. By Ernst Wichert. 1.50
+ ONLY A GIRL. By Wilhelmina von Hillern. 1.50
+ WHY DID HE NOT DIE? By Ad. von Volckhausen. 1.50
+ HULDA; or, The Deliverer. By F. Lewald. 1.50
+ THE BAILIFF'S MAID. By E. Marlitt 1.25
+ IN THE SCHILLINGSCOURT. By E. Marlitt. 1.50
+ AT THE COUNCILLOR'S. By E. Marlitt. 1.50
+ THE SECOND WIFE. By E. Marlitt. 1.50
+ THE OLD MAM'SELLE'S SECRET. By E. Marlitt. 1.50
+ GOLD ELSIE. By E. Marlitt. 1.50
+ COUNTESS GISELA. By E. Marlitt. 1.50
+ THE LITTLE MOORLAND PRINCESS. By E. Marlitt. 1.50
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ _J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY_,
+ _Publishers_,
+ _715 and 717 Market Street, Philadelphia, Pa_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ COUNTESS ERIKA'S
+
+ APPRENTICESHIP
+
+
+
+ TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
+ OF
+ OSSIP SCHUBIN
+ AUTHOR OF "O THOU, MY AUSTRIA!" ETC.
+
+
+
+ BY
+ MRS. A. L. WISTER
+
+
+
+
+ PHILADELPHIA
+ J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
+ 1891
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ * * * * *
+ Copyright, 1891, by J. B. Lippincott Company
+ * * * * *
+ _All rights reserved_.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ Printed By J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.
+
+
+
+
+ PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR.
+
+
+A friend returning from a stroll round the globe brought back an odd
+volume of my work picked up in San Francisco, translated without my
+leave, but proving by its very existence that the American reading
+world take a certain interest in my show and its puppets.
+
+Though in a certain sense these unauthorized editions are a picking of
+the author's pocket, yet I must confess that I felt rather flattered.
+
+Every one possessing any feeling for modernism must highly prize what
+American art and American literature have done and are doing for the
+directness, vividness, and intensity of presentation to our eyes or our
+imagination either of outward objects or the silent workings of
+character and inner sensations.
+
+The rapidity and intensity of picturing frequently remind us of an
+electric shock.
+
+We Old World folk take life, to a certain degree, more at our leisure,
+but nevertheless every real artist follows the great direction that has
+seized all our contemporary being.
+
+Directness of truth, vividness and intensity of presentation, exact
+rendering of impression, are the means by which we seek to produce
+life; life itself is the object, but I am afraid that to the end the
+life-giving spark will defy analysis.
+
+Let me hope that the figures whose woes and weal my reader will follow
+through these pages may be half as alive to him as they have been to
+me; and let me hope, likewise, that when he closes the volume we may
+have become fast friends.
+
+I cannot let this opportunity pass without thanking Mrs. Wister most
+heartily for her faithful and picturesque rendering of my story.
+
+What a rare delight it is to an author to find himself so admirably
+rendered and so perfectly understood only those can feel that have
+undergone the acute misery of seeing their every thought mangled, their
+every sentence massacred, as common translations will mangle and
+massacre word and thought.
+
+Therefore let every writer thank Providence, if he find an artist like
+Mrs. Wister willing to put herself to the trouble of following his
+intentions, and of clothing his ideas in so brilliant a garb.
+
+It is only natural, therefore, that, having been lucky enough to find
+so rare a translator, I should authorize the translation to the
+absolute exclusion of any other.
+
+So, hoping it may find favour in the eyes of my transatlantic readers,
+I should like to shake hands with them at parting and say good-bye with
+the Old World saw, "_Auf Wiedersehen_."
+
+ Ossip Schubin.
+
+
+
+
+
+ COUNTESS ERIKA'S
+ APPRENTICESHIP.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Baron von Strachinsky reclined upon a lounge in his smoking-room,
+recovering from the last pecuniary calamity which he had brought upon
+himself. The fact was, he had built a sugar-factory in a tract of
+country where the nearest approach to a sugar-beet that could be found
+was a carrot on a manure-heap, and his enterprise had been followed by
+the natural result.
+
+He bore his misfortune with exemplary fortitude, and beguiled the time
+with a sentimental novel upon the cover of which was portrayed a lady
+wringing her hands in presence of a military man drinking champagne. At
+times he wept over this fiction, at others he dozed over it and was at
+peace.
+
+This he called submitting with dignity to the mysterious decrees of
+destiny, and he looked upon himself as a martyr.
+
+His wife was not at home. Whilst he reposed thus in melancholy
+self-admiration, she was devoting herself to the humiliating occupation
+of visiting in turn one and another of her wealthy relatives, begging
+of them the loan of funds necessary for the furtherance of her
+husband's brilliant scheme.
+
+"It is very sad, but 'tis the fault of circumstances," sighed the Baron
+when his thoughts wandered from his book to his absent wife, and for a
+moment he would cover his eyes with his hand.
+
+It was near the end of August, and the asters were beginning to bloom.
+Cheerful industry reigned throughout the village. The Baron indeed
+complained of the failure of the harvest, but this he did of every
+harvest the proceeds of which were insufficient to cover the interest
+of his numerous debts: the peasantry, who by no means exacted so high a
+rate of profit from their meadows and pasture-lands, were happy and
+content, and the stubble-fields were already dotted with hayricks.
+
+Outside in the garden a little girl in a worn and faded frock was
+playing funeral: she was interring her canary, which she had found
+dead in its cage. She was very sad: the bird had been her best friend.
+No one paid her any attention. Her mother was away, and the
+Englishwoman whose duty it was to superintend her education was just
+now occupied in company with the bailiff, an ambitious young man
+desirous of improving his knowledge of languages, in studying the
+working of a new mowing-machine. From time to time the child glanced
+through the open door of the principal entrance to the castle into a
+rather bare hall, its floor paved with red tiles and its high vaulted
+walls whitewashed and adorned with stags' horns of all sizes. The Baron
+von Strachinsky had bought these last in one lot at an auction, but he
+had long cherished the conviction that they all came from his forest.
+He had a decided taste for fine, high-sounding expressions, always
+designating his wood as his 'forest,' his estate as his 'domain,' and
+his garden as his 'park.'
+
+A charwoman with a flat, red, perspiring face, and a knot of thin
+bristling hair at the back of her head, from which her yellow cotton
+kerchief had slipped down upon her neck, was shuffling upon hands and
+knees, her high kilted skirts leaving her red legs quite bare, over the
+tiles of the hall, rubbing away at the dirt and footmarks with a wisp
+of straw, while the steam of hot soapy water rose from the wooden
+bucket beside her.
+
+The little girl outside had just planted a row of pink asters upon the
+grave, which she had dug with a pewter spoon, and had filled up duly,
+when the scratching of the wisp of straw suddenly ceased.
+
+A young fellow was standing in the hall,--very young, scarcely sixteen,
+and with a portfolio under his arm. His garb was that of a journeyman
+mechanic, but his bearing had in it something of distinction, and his
+face was delicately modelled, very pale, with large dark eyes, almost
+black, gleaming below the brown curls of his hair. The same class of
+countenance is frequently seen among the Neapolitan boys who sell
+Seville oranges in Rome; but such eyes as this lad had are seen at most
+only two or three times in a lifetime.
+
+The child in the garden looked with evident satisfaction at the young
+fellow. Apparently he had come into the castle through the back
+entrance,--the one used by servants and beggars.
+
+The charwoman wiped her red hands upon her apron and knocked at one of
+the doors opening into the hall. She was a new-comer, and did not know
+that the Baron von Strachinsky was never disturbed upon any ordinary
+pretext.
+
+She knocked several times. At last a sleepy, ill-humoured voice said,
+"What is it?"
+
+"Your Grace, a young gentleman: he wants to speak to your Grace."
+
+With eyes but half open, and the pattern of the embroidered cushion
+upon which he had been sleeping stamped upon his cheek, the Baron von
+Strachinsky came out into the hall.
+
+He was of middle height; his face had once been handsome, but was now
+red and bloated with excessive good living; he was slightly bald, and
+wore thick brown side-whiskers. His dress was a combination of
+slovenliness and foppery. He wore scarlet Turkish slippers, trodden
+down at heel, gray trousers, and a soiled dark-blue smoking-jacket with
+red facings and buttons.
+
+"What do you want?" he roared, in a rage at being disturbed for so
+slight a cause.
+
+The young fellow shrank from him, murmuring in a hoarse, tremulous
+voice, the voice of a very young man growing fast and but scantily
+nourished, "I am on my way home."
+
+"What's that to me?" Strachinsky thundered, not without some excuse for
+his indignation.
+
+The youth flushed scarlet. Shyly and awkwardly he held out his
+portfolio to the sleepy Baron. Evidently it contained drawings, which
+he would like to sell but had not the courage to show.
+
+"Give him an alms!" Herr von Strachinsky shouted to the cook, who,
+hearing the noise, had hurried into the hall; then, turning to the
+scrubbing-woman, who was standing beside her steaming bucket, her
+toothless jaws wide open in dismay, he went on: "If you ever again dare
+for the sake of a wretched vagabond of a house-painter's apprentice to
+deprive me of the few moments of repose which I contrive to snatch from
+my wretched and tormented existence, I'll dismiss you on the spot!"
+With which he retired to his room, banging to the door behind him.
+
+The cook offered the lad two kreutzers. His hand--a long, slender,
+boyish hand, almost transparent--shook, as he angrily threw the money
+upon the floor and departed.
+
+The little girl in the garden had been watching the scene attentively.
+Her delicate frame trembled with indignation, as she rose, and, with
+arms hanging at her sides and small fists clinched in a somewhat
+dramatic attitude, fixed her eyes upon the door behind which the Baron
+had disappeared. She had very bright eyes for a child of nine years,
+and a very penetrating glance, a glance by no means friendly to the
+Baron. Thus she stood for a minute gazing at the door, then put her
+arms akimbo, frowned, and reflected. Before long she shrugged her
+shoulders with an air of precocious intelligence, deserted the
+newly-made grave, and hurried into the house, and to the pantry.
+
+The door was open. She looked about her. By strict orders of the Baron,
+in his wife's absence all remains of provisions were hoarded in the
+pantry, although they were seldom of any use. As a consequence of this
+sordid housekeeping the child found a great store of dishes and bowls
+filled with scraps of meat and fish, stale cakes, and fermenting stewed
+apricots. It took her some time to discover what satisfied her,--a cold
+roast pheasant, and some pieces of tempting almond-cake left over from
+the last meal. These she packed in a basket with a flask of wine that
+had been opened, a tumbler, knife and fork, and a clean napkin. She
+decorated the basket with pink asters, and hurried out of the back
+door, intent upon playing the part of beneficent fairy.
+
+Deep down in her heart there was a vein of romance which contrasted
+oddly with the keen good sense already gleaming in her bright childish
+eyes.
+
+She ran until she was quite out of breath, searching vainly for her
+handsome vagabond. Should she inquire of some one if a young man with a
+portfolio under his arm had passed along the road? Her heart beat; she
+felt a little shy. From a distance the warm summer breeze wafted
+towards her the notes of a foreign air clearly whistled, and she
+directed her steps towards the spot whence it seemed to proceed.
+
+There! yes, there----
+
+Beside the road rippled a little brook on its way to the rushing stream
+beyond the village, a brook so narrow that a twelve-year-old school-boy
+could easily have jumped across it. Nevertheless the Baron von
+Strachinsky had thought best to span it with a magnificent three-arched
+stone bridge. In the shade thrown by this monumental structure, for the
+erection of which the Baron had vainly hoped to be decorated by his
+sovereign, the lad was crouching. He was even paler than before, and
+there were traces of tears on his cheeks, but all the same he whistled
+on with forced gaiety, as one does whistle when one has nothing to eat
+and hopes to forget his hunger.
+
+The little girl felt like crying. He looked up and directly at her.
+Overcome by sudden shyness, she stood for a moment as if rooted to the
+spot; then, awkwardly offering her basket, she stammered, "Will you
+have it?" When he did not answer she simply set the basket down before
+him, and in her confusion would have avoided all explanations by
+running away.
+
+But a warm young hand detained her firmly and kindly. "Did you come
+from there?" the lad asked, pointing to the castle. "Who sent you?"
+
+His voice was agreeable, and his address that of a well-born youth.
+
+"No one knows that I came," she answered, in confusion, and seeing that
+he frowned discontentedly at this, she added hastily, by way of excuse,
+"But if mamma had been at home she certainly would have sent me; she
+never lets a beggar leave the house without giving him something to
+eat."
+
+At the word 'beggar' he turned away, whereupon she began to cry loudly,
+so loudly that he had to laugh. "But what are you crying for?" he
+asked; and she replied, in desperation, "I am crying because you will
+not eat anything."
+
+"Indeed! is that all you are crying for?"
+
+"Yes. Oh, do eat something,--do!" she sobbed.
+
+"Well, since it is to gratify you so hugely," he replied, in a
+bantering tone; "but sit down beside me and help me." He looked full
+into her eyes with his careless, merry smile, then took her tiny hand
+in his and pressed his full, warm lips upon it twice.
+
+She was greatly pleased by this courteous homage, and perhaps by the
+caress, for it was seldom that anything of the kind fell to her share.
+She had fully decided that the young fellow was no mechanic, but a
+prince in disguise, and in this exhilarating conviction she sat down
+upon the grass beside him and unpacked her basket. How he seemed to
+enjoy its contents, and how white his teeth were! There were also
+various indications of refinement and good breeding about his manner of
+eating, which would have given a more experienced observer than the
+little enthusiast beside him matter for reflection with regard to his
+rank in life. His portfolio lay beside him. She thrust a slender
+forefinger between its pasteboard covers tied together with green
+cotton strings, and whispered, gravely, "May I look into it?"
+
+"If you would like to," he replied.
+
+With great precision, as if the matter in hand were the unveiling of a
+sacred relic, she untied the strings and opened the portfolio. Her eyes
+opened wide, and an "Oh!" of enthusiastic admiration escaped her lips.
+A wiser critic than the little girl of nine would scarcely have
+accorded the sketches so much approval. They were undoubtedly stiff and
+unfinished. Nevertheless, no genuine lover of art would have passed
+them by without notice, for they indicated a high degree of talent. The
+hand was unskilled, but the lad had eyes to see.
+
+The little girl gazed in rapt admiration. After a while she looked
+gravely up at her new friend, her compassion converted into awe. "Now I
+know what you are,--an artist!"
+
+"Do you think so?" the lad rejoined, flattered by the reverential tone
+in which the word was uttered: meanwhile, he had finished the pheasant,
+and was considerably less pale than before.
+
+"Can you paint everything you see?" she asked, after a short pause.
+
+"I cannot paint anything," he answered, with a sort of merry discontent
+which, now that his hunger was satisfied, characterized his every look
+and movement. "I cannot paint anything," he repeated, with a little
+nod, "but I try to paint everything that I like."
+
+They looked in each other's eyes, he suppressing a laugh, she in some
+distress. At last she blurted out, "Do you not like me at all, then?"
+
+"Shall I paint you?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"What will you give me for it?"
+
+She put her hand in her pocket, and took out a very shabby
+porte-monnaie, a superannuated possession of Herr von Strachinsky's
+which he had given her in a moment of unwonted generosity, and in which
+were five bright silver guilders. "Is that enough?" she asked.
+
+"I will not take money," he replied.
+
+She had been guilty of another stupidity. She was bitterly conscious of
+it, and so, to justify herself, she put on an air of great wisdom. "You
+are a very queer artist," she admonished him, "not to take money for
+your pictures. No wonder you nearly starve."
+
+He took the hand which held the five despised silver coins, and kissed
+it three times.
+
+"I do take money for my pictures," he declared, "but not from you: I
+will draw your picture with all my heart."
+
+"For nothing?"
+
+"No: you must give me a kiss for it. Will you?" He watched her without
+seeming to look at her. Again the insinuating, roguish smile hovered
+upon his lips,--a charming smile, which he must have inherited from
+some kind, light-hearted woman.
+
+She was not quite sure of the rectitude of her conduct, her heart
+throbbed almost as if she were on the verge of some compact with Satan,
+but finally, "If you will not do it without," she said, with a sigh,
+plucking at her hands,--very pretty hands, neglected though they were.
+
+He nodded gaily. "All right."
+
+Then he made her sit down on the grass opposite him, unpacked his tin
+colour-case, fastened a piece of rough gray paper upon the cover of his
+portfolio, and began.
+
+She sat very still, very grave, her feet stretched out straight in
+front of her, supporting herself upon both hands. Around them breathed
+the soft August air, the glowing summer sunshine sparkled on the
+translucent waters of the little brook above which the stone bridge
+displayed its pompous proportions, while upon the banks grew hundreds
+of blue forget-me-nots, and yellow water-lilies bloomed among the
+trunks of the old willows, which here and there showed gaping wounds in
+their bark, from which meadow daisies were sprouting and, with the
+silvery willow leaves, showing softly gray against the green background
+of the gentle ascent of the pasture-land. The brook murmured dreamily,
+and from the distance came the rhythmic beat of the threshers' flails.
+Steam threshing-machines were not then in general use.
+
+Both were mute,--he in the warmth of his youthful artistic enthusiasm,
+she with expectation.
+
+Suddenly the shrill tinkle of a bell broke the quiet. "That is the
+dinner-bell!" the little girl exclaimed, springing up with an impatient
+shrug. She knew that there could be no more pleasure and liberty for
+her; she would be missed, looked for, and found.
+
+"I must go home," she cried. "Have you finished it?"
+
+"Very nearly, yes."
+
+She ran and looked over his shoulder, breathless with astonishment at
+what she saw upon the gray paper,--a little girl in a very short, faded
+gown, and long red stockings, also much faded, a very slender figure, a
+little round face, a delicate little nose, two grave bright eyes that
+looked out into the world with a startled expression, a short upper
+lip, a round chin, a very fair skin, and shining reddish-brown hair
+which waved long and silky about the narrow childish shoulders and was
+tied at the back of the head with a blue ribbon.
+
+He had unfastened the sketch from the portfolio, and she held it in her
+hands, examining it narrowly. "Is it like?" she asked, and then,
+looking down at herself, she added, "The gown is like, and the
+stockings are like, but the face,--is that like?" She looked up at him
+eagerly.
+
+"I cannot do it any better," he replied, rather ambiguously.
+
+"Oh, you must not be vexed," she made haste to say. "I only wanted to
+know if--how can I tell--if--well, it looks too pretty to me, this
+picture of yours."
+
+He gave her a comical side-glance. "Every artist must flatter a little
+if he wishes to please a lady," was his reply.
+
+"And you give me the picture?" she asked, shyly, after a little pause.
+
+"Why, you ordered it," he replied.
+
+"I--I--thank you," she stammered, then turned away and would have run
+off.
+
+But he was by no means inclined to let her off so easily. "And my pay?"
+he cried, catching her in his arms and clasping her so tightly that her
+little feet were lifted off the daisy-sprinkled turf. "Traitress!" he
+exclaimed, reproachfully.
+
+She blushed scarlet, although she was but just nine years old; she put
+her arm around his neck and kissed him directly upon the mouth; his
+lips were still the lips of a girl. Then she walked away, but she could
+not hasten from the spot; something seemed to stay her steps. She
+paused and looked back.
+
+The lad was busied with packing up his small belongings: all the gaiety
+had vanished from his face, he looked pale and sad again. With her
+heart swelling with pity, she ran back to him.
+
+"You come for your basket," he said, good-naturedly, holding it out to
+her.
+
+"No, it isn't that," she replied, shaking her head, as she put down the
+basket on a willow stump and came close up to him.
+
+In some surprise he smiled down at her. "Something else to ask, my
+little princess?"
+
+"No,--that is----" She plucked him by the sleeve. "See here," she
+began, confused and yet coaxingly, "do not be vexed,--only--I thought
+just now how bad it would be if before you get home you should be
+treated by somebody else as that man treated you,"--she pointed to the
+castle,--"and then--and then--oh, I know so well how dreadful it is to
+have no money. I--please take the guilders: when you are a great artist
+you can give them back to me." And before he knew what she was doing
+she had slipped the porte-monnaie into his coat-pocket.
+
+The tears stood in his eyes; he put his arm around her, and looked at
+her as if to learn her face by heart.
+
+"It might be," he muttered; "perhaps you will bring me luck; I may
+still come to be something; and if you then should be as dear and
+pretty as you are now----" He kissed her upon both eyes.
+
+"Rika!" a shrill voice called from a distance.
+
+"Is that your name?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And what is your last name?"
+
+"My step-father's is Strachinsky. I do not know mine."
+
+"Rika!" the shrill tones sounded nearer.
+
+"And what is your name?" she asked him.
+
+Before he could reply, the fluttering skirts of the English governess
+came in sight: suddenly aroused to a consciousness of her neglected
+duties, she was looking along the road for her charge.
+
+The little girl clasped her picture close and fled.
+
+
+When she reached the house she ran up-stairs to put her precious
+portrait safely away, and then she allowed a clean apron to be put on
+over her faded frock by the agitated Englishwoman,--whose name was in
+fact Sophy Lange, and who had been born in Hamburg of honest German
+parents,--after which she presented herself in the dining-room with an
+assured air as if unconscious of the slightest wrong-doing.
+
+Her step-father received her with a stern reproof, and instantly
+inquired where she had been. She replied, curtly, "To the village;"
+upon which he read her a tremendous lecture upon the enormity of idly
+wandering about the country, addressing at the same time a few
+annihilating remarks to the Englishwoman from Hamburg. He had exchanged
+his bright-blue morning coat for a light summer suit, in which he
+presented a much better appearance. But he was no more pleasing to his
+step-daughter in his light-brown costume than in the blue coat with red
+facings. She paid very little attention to his discourse, but quietly
+went on eating. Miss Sophy, however, shed tears. The Baron von
+Strachinsky impressed her greatly; nay, more, she honoured him as a
+being from a higher sphere. He was popular with women of all ranks,
+from the lowest to the highest,--why, it would be difficult to tell. He
+possessed a certain amount of personal magnetism, but it had no effect
+upon his step-daughter.
+
+They were extraordinarily antipathetic, Strachinsky and his clear-eyed
+little step-daughter. What she took exception to in him was of so
+complex and delicate a nature as to defy explanation in words. What
+annoyed him in her was principally the fact that, in spite of her
+tender age, she saw through him, was quite free of all illusions with
+regard to him.
+
+It always increases our regard for our neighbour if he will but view us
+with flattering eyes. Some few illusions in our behalf we require from
+those around us; they are absolutely necessary to the pleasure of daily
+intercourse. But the demands of Herr von Strachinsky in this respect
+were beyond all reason, while his step-daughter's capacity to comply
+with them was unusually limited.
+
+Dinner progressed as usual: the gentleman continued to admonish, Miss
+Sophy to weep, and little Rika to maintain strict silence, until
+dessert, when Herr von Strachinsky, for whom eating was one of the
+most important occupations in life, inquired after an almond-cake of
+which, as he assured the servant, five pieces had been left from
+breakfast,--yes, five pieces and a little broken one: he had counted
+them.
+
+The servant repaired to the kitchen for information: the cook could
+give none, save that she herself had put the cake away in the pantry,
+whence it had vanished, without a trace, since the morning. Herr von
+Strachinsky was indignant; he accused every servant in the
+establishment of the theft, from the foremost of those employed in the
+house to the lowest stable-boy, and talked of having bars put up at the
+windows. Little Rika let him give full sweep to his anger; she fairly
+gloated over his irritation; at last she remarked, indifferently, "What
+would be the use of bars on the windows, when any one can walk in at
+the door? It is never locked."
+
+"Silence! what do you know about it?" thundered her step-father.
+
+"Oh, I know all about it," the child quietly replied, "and I know what
+became of the cake."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I took it. I carried it out to the painter whom you turned out of the
+house."
+
+Herr von Strachinsky's eyebrows were lifted to a startling extent at
+this confession. "You--ran--after--that house-painter fellow down the
+road?" he asked, with a gasp at each word.
+
+"Yes," the child replied, composedly; "and he was not a house-painter
+fellow, but a young artist, although I should have run after him all
+the same if he had been a house-painter fellow."
+
+"Indeed! And why?" he asked, with a sneer.
+
+She looked him full in the face. "Why? Because you treated him so
+badly, and I was sorry for him."
+
+For a moment he was speechless; then he arose, seized the child by the
+arm, and thrust her out of the door. Without making the least
+resistance, carelessly humming to herself, she ran up the staircase,--a
+staircase that turned an abrupt corner and the worn steps of which
+exhaled an odour of damp decay,--whilst Strachinsky turned to the
+Englishwoman from Hamburg and groaned, "My step-daughter is a positive
+torment. I am firmly persuaded that she will end at the galleys."
+
+The galleys were tolerably far removed from the sphere of the Austrian
+penal code, but Herr von Strachinsky had a predilection for what was
+foreign, and had recently read a novel in which the galleys played a
+prominent part.
+
+Meanwhile, little Erika had betaken herself to the drawing-room, a
+spacious but by no means gorgeous apartment, the furniture of which
+consisted principally of bookcases and a piano. She seated herself at
+this piano, and instantly became absorbed in the study of one of
+Mozart's sonatas, with which she intended to celebrate her mother's
+return. She had a decided talent for music; her slender little fingers
+moved with incredible ease over the keys, and her cheeks, usually
+rather pale, flushed with enthusiasm. It was going very well; she
+stretched out her foot to touch the pedal,--an act which in her opinion
+lent the crowning glory to her musical performance,--when suddenly she
+became aware of a kind of uproar that seemed to fill the house. Dogs
+barked, servants hurried to and fro, a carriage drove up and stopped
+before the castle door. Frau von Strachinsky had returned unexpectedly.
+
+The child hurried down-stairs, just in time to see Strachinsky take his
+wife from the carriage. They kissed each other like lovers,--which
+seemed to produce a disagreeable impression upon the little girl;
+moreover, it occurred to her that she did not know whether she might
+venture forward under existing circumstances. Then she heard her mother
+say, "And where is Rika?"
+
+Without awaiting her step-father's reply, she rushed into her mother's
+arms.
+
+"You look finely, darling," the mother exclaimed, patting her little
+daughter's cheeks. "Have you been a good girl?"
+
+Rika made no reply. Frau von Strachinsky's face took on a sad, troubled
+expression. Strachinsky frowned, and shrugged his shoulders. His wife
+looked from him to the child, who had taken her hand and was about to
+kiss it. "What has she been doing now?" she asked, turning to her
+husband.
+
+"Not to speak of her behaviour towards myself,--behaviour that
+is perfectly unwarrantable,--I repeat, unwarrantable," said
+Strachinsky,--"not to speak of that, the girl has again so far
+forgotten herself as----well, I will tell you about it by and by."
+
+"Tell now!" the child exclaimed. "I'd rather you would tell now!"
+
+"Hush, Miss Impertinence!" Strachinsky ordered her; then, turning to
+his wife, he asked, "Do you bring good news? Is your uncle willing?"
+
+Fran von Strachinsky shook her head sadly. "Unfortunately, no,--not
+quite," she murmured; "but he was very kind; he was enchanted with
+Bobby." Bobby was Rika's step-brother, whom the poor mother had carried
+with her upon her distressing journey, perhaps as some consolation for
+herself, perhaps to soften the hearts of her relatives. He did, indeed,
+seem admirably adapted to this latter purpose, for he was a charming
+little fellow, with a lovely pink-and-white face crowned by brown
+curls, and plump bare arms. His hands at present were filled with toys,
+which he carried to his sister to console her, since he instantly
+perceived that she was in disgrace.
+
+"I cannot understand that," Strachinsky murmured. "I should have
+credited Uncle Nick with a more generous spirit." And he looked sternly
+at his wife, as if she were responsible for the ill success of her
+mission.
+
+She laid her hand gently on his arm and said, "You are an incorrigible
+idealist, my poor Nello: you judge all men by yourself."
+
+And Strachinsky passed his hand over his eyes, and sighed forth
+sentimentally, "Yes, I am an idealist, an incorrigible idealist, a
+perfect Don Quixote."
+
+
+The rest of the afternoon was passed by the pair in the large
+drawing-room, trying to obtain some clear understanding of the state of
+Strachinsky's financial affairs,--a very difficult task.
+
+She, pencil in hand, did the reckoning. He paced the room to and fro
+with a tragic air, and smoked cigarettes. From time to time he uttered
+some effective sentence, such as, "I am unfit for this world!" or, "Of
+course a Marquis Posa like myself!"
+
+She sat quietly contemplating the figures with which the sheet before
+her was filled. Her face grow sad, while her husband's, on the
+contrary, brightened. Since he was succeeding in casting all his cares
+upon her shoulders, he felt quite cheerful.
+
+"I never had the least idea of this ten thousand guilders which you
+tell me you owe," the tortured woman exclaimed, in a sudden access of
+anger.
+
+"No?" her husband rejoined, with easy assurance. "I surely wrote you
+about it; or could the trifle have slipped my memory? Yes, now I
+remember you were with the children at Johannisbad. Loewy came and
+pestered me with its being such a splendid chance,--told me I had no
+right to hold back; and so I bought a hundred shares of Schoenfeld.'
+Good heavens! what do I understand of business?--how is such knowledge
+possible for a gentleman? In the army one never learns anything of the
+kind, and what can one do save follow advice? I trust others far too
+readily,--you have always told me so; it is the natural result of the
+magnanimity of my nature. I blame myself for it. I am an Egmont,--a
+perfect Egmont. Poor Egmont! There is nothing left for me but to sigh
+with him, 'Ah, Orange! Orange!'"
+
+Strachinsky imagined that this confession, uttered with an
+indescribably tragic emphasis, would quite reconcile his wife to his
+unfortunate speculation. But, to his great surprise, the anticipated
+result did not ensue. Frau von Strachinsky pushed her thick dark hair
+back from her temples, and exclaimed, "I cannot understand you; you
+promised me so faithfully not to speculate in stocks again."
+
+"But, my dear Emma, the opportunity seemed to me so brilliant a one,
+that I should have thought myself a very scoundrel not to try at
+least----"
+
+"And you see the result."
+
+"When a man acts conscientiously and with the best intentions, he
+should not be reproached, even although his efforts result in failure,"
+he said, pompously. "No, my dear Emma, not a word; do not speak now:
+you will only be sorry for it by and by."
+
+But Emma Strachinsky was not on this occasion to be thus silenced: she
+was indignant, and almost in despair. "You have always acted with the
+'best intentions'!" she exclaimed, hoarse with agitation, "and the
+result of your good intentions will be to beggar my children. Can you
+take it ill if I withhold from you my few farthings, that there may be
+some provision for the children in the future?"
+
+Jagello von Strachinsky looked her over from head to foot. "_Your_ few
+farthings!" he said, with annihilating severity. "What indelicacy!
+Well, I shall steer my course accordingly. Do as you choose in future.
+I have nothing more to say." And, with head haughtily erect, cavalier
+and martyr every inch of him, he stalked from the room.
+
+She looked after him: she had gone too far; again her impulsiveness had
+led her astray. Her heart throbbed; she felt sore with agitation,
+shame, and remorse.
+
+When Erika, towards evening, was playing hide-and-seek with her little
+brother in the garden, she saw her mother and her step-father strolling
+affectionately along the gravel path between the hawthorn bushes. He
+was already rather bald; his limbs were loosely knit; he wore full
+whiskers, and there was a languishing glance in his eyes, but he was
+still handsome, in spite of a dissipated air; she was tall, slender,
+and erect, with large dark eyes, and a pale, noble countenance, that
+could never, however, have been beautiful. They walked close together,
+and to a casual observer presented an ideal picture of happy wedded
+life. And yet when one observed more narrowly--his arm was thrown
+around her shoulder, and he leaned upon her instead of supporting her;
+the swing of his heavy frame, the languishing, sentimental expression
+of his face, everything about him, bespoke a self-satisfied, luxurious
+temperament; while she----in her eyes there was restless anxiety, and
+her figure looked as though it were slowly being bowed to the ground by
+a burden which she was either unable or afraid to shake off.
+
+She walked with a patiently regular step beneath her heavy load.
+Suddenly she seemed uneasy: she shivered.
+
+"What is it, darling?" Strachinsky asked her, clinging still closer to
+her.
+
+"Nothing," she murmured, "nothing," and walked on.
+
+They were passing the spot where the little brother and sister were
+playing, and in the gathering twilight Emma Strachinsky became aware of
+a pair of clear dark-brown childish eyes that seemed to ask, "How can
+she love that man?"
+
+Those childish eyes were positively uncanny!
+
+
+The child's dislike dated from far in the past; it was in fact the
+first clearly formulated emotion of her little heart. During the first
+years of her second marriage the mother, prompted by an exaggerated
+tenderness, had concealed from her little daughter as long as possible
+the fact that Strachinsky was not her own father: the child had learned
+the truth by accident. When she rushed to her mother to have what she
+had heard confirmed, she was received with the tenderest caresses, as
+though she were to be consoled for a great grief, while she was
+entreated not to be sad, and was told that "'papa' was far too good and
+kind to make any difference between herself and his own children, that
+he loved her dearly," etc.
+
+The mother's caresses were highly prized by the child, all the more
+that they were rather rare, but on this occasion she could not even
+seem to enjoy them, since she could not endure to be pitied and soothed
+for what brought her in reality intense relief.
+
+Her mother perceived this, and it angered her, although at the same
+time the child's evident though silent dislike made a deep impression
+upon her. Perhaps the consciousness of its existence in so frank and
+childish a mind first gave occasion to distrust of the terrible
+infatuation to which the gifted woman's entire existence had fallen a
+sacrifice.
+
+
+Frau von Strachinsky was wont to go herself every evening to see that
+all was as it should be in the large airy apartment where both the
+children slept. She hovered noiselessly from one bed to the other,
+signing the cross upon the brow of each,--an old-fashioned custom to
+which she still clung although she had long since adopted very
+philosophical views with regard to religion,--and giving each sleeping
+child a tender good-night kiss.
+
+The evening after her return she went to the nursery at the usual hour,
+but lingered only by the crib of the sleeping boy, passing her
+daughter's bed with averted face. Rika sat up and looked after her; her
+mother had reached the door without once looking back. This the child
+could not endure. She sprang out of bed, ran to her mother, and seized
+her by her skirt. "Mother! mother!" she cried, in a frenzy, "you will
+not go without bidding me good-night?"
+
+"Let go of my gown," Frau von Strachinsky replied, in a cold voice,
+which nevertheless trembled with emotion.
+
+"But what have I done, mother?" the child cried, clinging to her
+passionately.
+
+"Can you ask?" her mother rejoined, sternly.
+
+"Why should I not ask? How should I know what he has told you? I was
+not by when he accused me."
+
+"Erika! is that the way to speak of your father?" her mother said,
+angrily.
+
+The little girl frowned. "He is not my father," she declared,
+defiantly.
+
+Frau von Strachinsky sighed. "Your ingratitude is shocking," she
+exclaimed, and then, controlling herself with an effort, she added,
+"But that I cannot alter: you are an unnatural, hard-hearted, stubborn
+child. I cannot soften your heart, but I can insist that you conduct
+yourself with propriety, and I forbid you once for all to run after
+vagabonds in the street. And now go to bed."
+
+"I will not go to bed until you bid me good-night!" cried the child.
+She stood there with naked little feet, in her white night-gown, over
+which her long reddish-brown hair hung down. "And I was not so naughty
+as you think. You ought not to condemn me without giving me time to
+defend myself."
+
+The child was so desperately reasonable, her mother could not think her
+wrong, in spite of her momentary anger. She paused. An idea evidently
+occurred to the little girl. "Only wait one minute!" she exclaimed, as
+she flew across the room to a drawer where she kept her toys, and,
+returning with her _protege's_ water-colour sketch, held it up
+triumphantly before her mother's eyes. "Look at that!" she cried.
+
+Involuntarily Emma looked. "Where did that come from?" she exclaimed,
+forgetting her vexation in freshly-aroused interest.
+
+"Do you know who it is?" asked Erika, stretching her slender neck out
+of the embroidered ruffle of her night-gown.
+
+"Of course; it is your picture. It is charming. Who did it?"
+
+"The vagabond whom I ran after, the house-painter fellow," Erika
+replied. "At least you can see he was not _that_, but a young artist."
+
+Her mother was silent.
+
+"Ah, if you had only been at home!" the child's bare feet were growing
+colder, and her cheeks hotter with excitement, "you would have done
+just as I did. If you had only seen him! He was very handsome, and so
+pale and thin and weary with hunger,--why, _I_ could have knocked him
+down,--and he never begged,--he was too proud,--only held out the
+portfolio to papa, and his hand trembled----" Suddenly the excitable
+temperament which the girl had inherited from her mother asserted
+itself, and she began to sob, her whole childish frame quivering with
+emotion. "And papa turned him out of doors, and told the cook--to
+give--to give him two kreutzers. He threw them away--and then--then I
+ran after him!"
+
+Frau von Strachinsky had grown very pale; the child's agitated story
+had evidently made an impression upon her, but she did her best to
+preserve a severe demeanour. "But it is very improper to run after
+strangers in the street; you are too old."
+
+Erika hung her head, ashamed. "But I should not have done it if papa
+had not abused him," she declared, by way of excuse. "I did it out of
+pity for him."
+
+"Pity is a very poor counsellor." Her mother said these words with an
+emphasis which Erika never forgot, and which was to echo in her soul
+years afterwards. Then she extricated herself from the child's embrace
+and left the room, closing the door behind her.
+
+A few minutes afterwards she reopened the door. Little Erika was still
+standing where she had left her.
+
+"Go to bed," said her mother, in a far more gentle tone, stooping down
+to kiss her, "and be a better girl another time."
+
+The child clasped her slender little arms tightly about her mother's
+neck in a strangling embrace, crying, "Oh, mother, mother, you do love
+me still?" The pale woman did not answer the question, save by a kiss;
+she waited until the little girl had crept back to bed, and then tucked
+in the coverlet about her shoulders, and once more left the room.
+
+Erika, precocious child that she was, was a prey to emotions of
+a very mingled character. She had won a great victory over her
+step-father,--of this she was well aware,--but then she had grieved her
+mother sorely. All at once she was seized with profound remorse in
+recalling to-day's stroke of genius. Beneath her mother's severity she
+had been sure of having right on her side; now a great uncertainty
+possessed her. "It is very improper to run after strangers in the
+street; you are too old," she repeated, meekly, and she grew hot. "What
+would my mother think if she knew that I had kissed him?"
+
+In the midst of her distress she was overpowered by intense fatigue:
+her eyelids drooped above her eyes, and with her nightly prayer still
+on her lips she fell asleep.
+
+
+Emma von Strachinsky did not sleep; she sat in the bare room adjoining
+the nursery, the room where she taught Erika her lessons. She wrote two
+very difficult letters to her husband's creditors, and then proceeded
+to sew upon a gown for her daughter. She was proud of the child's
+beauty as only the mother can be who has all her life long been
+conscious of being obliged to forego the gift of beauty for herself.
+She loved her daughter idolatrously,--the daughter whom she often
+treated with a severity verging upon injustice, and whom she sometimes
+avoided for days because the glance of those clear eyes troubled her.
+
+The windows of the room were open, and looked out upon the road. The
+fragrance of ripened grain was wafted in from the earth outside,
+resting from its summer fruitfulness and saturated with the August
+sunshine. A song floated up through the silent night: the reapers were
+working by moonlight. The low murmur of the brook accompanied the song,
+and now and then could be heard the soft swish of the grain falling
+beneath the scythe. A cricket chirped.
+
+Emma dropped her hands in her lap and gazed into vacancy.
+
+Suddenly she started; a step approached the door of the room, and
+Strachinsky, smiling sentimentally, entered. "Emma," he said, tenderly,
+"have you written to Franks and Ziegler?"
+
+"Yes," she replied, and her voice sounded hoarse. "There lie the
+letters. Read them, and see if they are what you wish."
+
+"Not at all," her husband exclaimed, gaily. "I have implicit confidence
+in your tact. H'm! the perusal of such letters is a sorry amusement."
+
+"Do you suppose that it was a pleasure to write them?" Emma asked, with
+some bitterness.
+
+Strachinsky immediately assumed an injured air. "You are irritable
+again. One cannot venture upon the slightest jest with you. Do you
+suppose that I enjoy being forced to ask you to write the letters? Good
+heavens! it is hard enough, but--circumstances will have it so." He
+passed his hand over his eyes, and stroked his whiskers with an air of
+great dignity.
+
+She was silent. He watched her for a while, and then said, "That
+eternal sewing is very bad for you. Come to bed."
+
+"I cannot. I am not sleepy," she replied, plying her needle; "and,
+moreover, I must finish this frock; let me go on with it." She bent
+over her work with the air of one determined to complete a task.
+
+Strachinsky stood beside her for a while longer, hesitating and
+uncertain: he picked up each small article upon the table, looked at it
+and laid it down again after the fashion of a man who does not know
+what to do with himself, then he sighed profoundly, yawned, sighed
+again, and without another word left the room with heavy, lagging
+footsteps.
+
+When he was gone she laid aside her sewing, and went to the open window
+to breathe the fresh air. The bluish moonlight shone full upon the
+whitewashed walls of the peasants' cots crowned with their dark clumsy
+thatch; in the distance twinkled the little stream winding its plashing
+way directly across the village towards the river, its banks bordered
+with curiously-distorted willows that looked like crouching lurking
+gnomes, and spanned by the huge useless bridge. Bridge, willows, and
+cots all threw pitch-black shadows out into the glaring splendour of
+the moonlit night, which was absolutely free from mist and damp. Beyond
+the village stretched fields of grain and stubble in endless
+perspective, a surface of tarnished dull gold.
+
+The song was still informing the silence.
+
+At last it ceased, and shortly afterwards heavy, regular steps were
+heard passing along the road. The reapers were going home. They passed
+by Emma's windows, a little dark gray crowd of men; the scythes over
+their shoulders glimmered in the moonlight; then came a couple of
+women, bowed and weary, almost dropping asleep as they walked; and last
+of all the overseer, a young fellow whose hand clasped that of a girl
+at his side. How he bent over her! A low tender whispering sound
+reached Emma's ears through the dry August air which the night had
+scarcely cooled. She turned away, frowning. "How happy they look! and
+why?" she murmured to herself. Suddenly she smiled bitterly. Had she
+any right to sneer thus at others?--she? Surely if ever a woman lived
+who had believed in love and had married for love, she was that woman.
+
+And whom had she loved? A poor weakling, who had never been worthy to
+unloose the latchet of her shoe!
+
+Not only little precocious Erika, every sensible human being who had
+ever come in contact with the married pair had asked how such a union
+had been possible. And yet it was so simple a story,--so simple and
+commonplace,--the story of a woman lacking beauty, but gifted,
+enthusiastic, prone to romantic exaggeration, whose longing for
+affection had wrought her ruin.
+
+
+Her parents belonged to the most ancient if not the most illustrious of
+the native Bohemian nobility; he was of doubtful descent. She had
+always been wealthy; he possessed nothing save a scheming brain and a
+soaring self-conceit that bore him triumphantly aloft through all the
+annoyances of life.
+
+He was not entirely without talent, had had a good education, and was,
+previous to his marriage with Emma Lenzdorff, neither idle nor
+inactive, but possessed of a certain desire for culture, the secret
+springs of which, however, were to be found in an eager social
+ambition. At eighteen he entered the army: too poor to join the
+cavalry, and too arrogant to content himself among the infantry, he
+joined a Jaeger corps. He had risen to the rank of captain when he was
+wounded in the Schleswig-Holstein campaign. He made his wife's
+acquaintance in a private hospital in Berlin, which she had arranged in
+her own house for the martyrs of the aforesaid campaign.
+
+She was very young, very enthusiastic, and a widow,--widow of a cold,
+unloved northern German whom in accordance with family arrangements she
+had married while she was yet only a visionary child. The memory of her
+formal marriage inspired her with horror.
+
+Before meeting Strachinsky she had given scope to her romantic
+tendencies by all sorts of exaggerated charitable schemes, and by a
+fanatical devotion to art and poetry. She had long been convinced that
+her thirst for affection could never be satisfied. No one had ever
+shown her any passionate devotion, and, conscious of her lack of
+beauty, she had sadly resigned herself to swell the ranks of those
+women whom reason might prompt a suitor to woo, but who could never
+hope to be wooed in defiance of reason.
+
+The Pole had an easy task. That he was handsome even his enemies could
+not deny. And he knew how to make the most of his personal advantages:
+a century earlier he might have been taken for a Poniatowski, with a
+direct claim to the throne of Poland. His uniform was very becoming,
+and a wounded soldier is always interesting. As soon as he divined the
+young widow's weakness he wooed her with verses,--with passionate
+declarations of love.
+
+Poor Emma! Her thirsty heart thrilled with the sudden bursting into
+bloom of its spring so long delayed! Her parents, who might have warned
+her of what she was bringing upon herself, were dead; she paid no heed
+to her mother-in-law, who strenuously opposed her second marriage. When
+Emma, with burning cheeks, and trembling to her finger-tips with
+emotion, repeated to her the Pole's exaggerated expressions of
+devotion, the elder woman rejoined, coldly, "And you believe the
+coxcomb?"
+
+The words were to Emma like the sting from a whip-lash. "And why should
+I not believe him?" she asked, sharply. "Because, perhaps, you think me
+incapable of inspiring a man with affection?"
+
+"Nonsense!" replied the sensible mother-in-law. "You could inspire
+affection in any honest man with a heart in his bosom, but not in that
+shallow Pole, that second-rate dandy."
+
+"Perhaps you think him an adventurer, who wooes me for the sake of my
+money?" Emma exclaimed, indignantly.
+
+"No, I think him a superficial man who, flattered by having made an
+impression upon a woman of rank, is trying to better his condition.
+Adventurer! Nonsense! He has not wit enough. An opportunity offers
+itself, and he embraces it: _voila tout_. He is not to blame, but his
+suit is unworthy of you, and a marriage with him would be a misfortune
+for you, apart from the fact that you would disgrace your family by
+it."
+
+When a patient is to be persuaded to take a dose of medicine it ought
+not to be offered him in an unattractive shape.
+
+The old lady's representations were correct, but they were humiliating.
+Emma turned away, stubborn and indignant, and a month afterwards
+married Strachinsky and parted from her mother-in-law forever.
+
+Eight years had passed since then. First came a few months during
+which Emma revelled in the sensation of loving and being loved, and
+then--well, the bliss was still there, but a slight shadow had fallen
+upon it, dimming it, chilling it, a gnawing uneasiness, in the midst of
+which memory would suddenly suggest the sensible mother-in-law's
+unsparing predictions.
+
+His marriage put an end to all exertion on Strachinsky's part: it had
+at a single stroke, as it were, lifted him so far above all for which
+his ambition had thirsted that he had nothing left to desire, save to
+enjoy life in distinguished society as far as was possible. With his
+wife's money he purchased an estate in Bohemia where the soil was the
+poorest, so great in extent that it made a show in the map of the
+country, and developed a brilliant talent for hospitality: all the
+land-owners in the vicinity, all the cavalry-officers from the nearest
+garrison, were habitues of Luzano, as the estate was called. With his
+wife's unceasing attentions Strachinsky's self-importance increased,
+and his regard for her declined. She existed simply to insure his
+comfort,--for nothing else. The household was turned topsy-turvy when
+the master's guests appeared, whether invited or unannounced.
+Strachinsky entertained them with exquisite suppers, at which champagne
+flowed freely, but at which his wife did not appear. After supper cards
+were produced, and it was frequently four in the morning before the
+gentlemen were heard driving away from the castle; sometimes they
+remained until the next night.
+
+But the day came when Luzano ceased to be a branch of the military
+casino at K----. The life there suddenly became very quiet, and various
+disagreeable facts came to light which had been disregarded in the
+whirl of gaiety. Then first little Erika saw her mother, pencil in
+hand, patiently adding up her husband's debts, while Strachinsky, his
+hands clasped behind him, and a cigarette between his teeth, paced the
+room, dictating amounts to her.
+
+In addition to losses at play and in unfortunate speculations, he had
+magnanimously put his name to various notes of his distinguished
+friends.
+
+Emma did not even frown, but exerted herself in every way,--sold her
+trinkets and almost every valuable piece of furniture, that her husband
+might meet his liabilities, treating him all the while with the
+forbearance traditional in model wives, in order to save him from any
+depressing consciousness of his position.
+
+Was he conscious of it? If he were, he was entirely successful in
+concealing any consequent depression. The morning after the first
+painful revelation of his indebtedness, he skipped with the gayest air
+imaginable into the dining-room, where the family were already
+assembled at the breakfast-table, and exhorted all present to
+economize, and especially not to put too much butter on their bread,
+afterwards discoursing wittily upon 'poverty and magnanimity.'
+
+To lighten his burden,--perhaps to disguise his insensibility from her
+own heart,--Emma persuaded him that his course had been the result
+solely of warm-hearted imprudence and an exaggerated nobility of
+character.
+
+This view of the case was eagerly adopted by his vanity. He paraded his
+martyr's nimbus, and with a self-satisfied sigh styled himself a Don
+Quixote.
+
+Nothing could really be farther from Don Quixote's idealistic and
+unselfish craze than his utter egotism, in its thin veil of
+sentimentality. And as for his martyrdom, it was easily seen through.
+None of the misfortunes brought upon himself by himself did he ever
+allow to affect his existence. He possessed a kind of cunning
+intelligence that never forsook him, and that enabled him in the midst
+of ruin to insure his own personal ease.
+
+But how could Emma have borne at that comparatively early period to see
+him as he really was? She seized upon every excuse for him; she patched
+up her damaged illusions; she would support, restrain him, develop all
+that was really noble in him.
+
+In her jealous ambition to make his home so delightful that he would
+never look for entertainment elsewhere, she exerted herself to the
+utmost, pandered to his love of eating, even cooked herself when they
+were no longer able to bear the expense of such a cook as he had been
+accustomed to, tried to conform her intellectual interests to his lack
+of any such,--in short, did everything to strengthen the tie between
+herself and him. She succeeded completely: she made the tie so strong
+that no loosening of it was possible.
+
+She tried to withdraw him from all outside influences, to win him
+wholly to herself, and she succeeded; her presence, her tenderness,
+became an absolute necessity of existence to him; he had never so
+adored her even during their honeymoon.
+
+Good heavens! now she would have given everything in the world for any
+breach between them that could be widened beyond all possibility of
+healing. It was too late; she must drag on the burden with which she
+had laden herself; it was her duty; she could not sink beneath it; she
+had no right to.
+
+But in spite of all her efforts her nerves at length gave way. She
+became irritable. At times she grieved over the change which she saw in
+him; at other times the thought would suggest itself that this change
+was merely superficial, that he had never really been any other than at
+present. Then her blood would seem to run cold; she could have
+screamed. No, no, she would not see!
+
+There is nothing sadder in this world than the dutiful, tortured life
+of a woman with a husband whom she has ceased to love.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Full four years had passed by since Erika had kissed the young artist.
+She recalled the little adventure, which had taken upon itself quite
+magnificent dimensions in her lively imagination, with secret delight
+and a vague sense of shame.
+
+Emma was bearing her cross as best she might, but at every step she
+well-nigh fell exhausted. Her wretchedness not unfrequently found vent
+in angry words, for which she was sure to repent and apologize.
+
+Her relation with her daughter, now a tall, slender, and unusually
+clever girl of fourteen, suffered from her general wretchedness. She
+still loved the child tenderly, but the girl's clear, observant gaze
+pained her. It had grown much clearer and more penetrating with years.
+
+A certain weight, an oppression, seemed to brood over Luzano like the
+sense of an impending catastrophe.
+
+The only ray of sunshine in the unhappy wife's gloomy lot was her
+little son. Out of several children by her second marriage he alone had
+survived. He was strong and healthy, the darling of all, his sister's
+idol. Then--he had hardly passed his seventh birthday when he too died.
+
+The little fellow had sickened in the midst of his play, had run to his
+sister and had fallen asleep with his head in her lap. The girl sat
+still, not to disturb him, and enjoined silence upon Miss Sophy, who
+was in the room. The twilight stole gray and vague in upon the bare
+apartment. The maid-servant--there were no longer any men-servants at
+Luzano--brought in a lamp, and a plate of rosy-cheeked apples for the
+children's supper. The boy opened his eyes, but closed them again with
+a low moan and turned his head away from the light.
+
+His mother appeared, saw at a glance how matters stood, and put the
+little fellow to bed. She did not come down to supper, and when Erika
+went, as was her wont, to say good-night to her brother, she was not
+allowed to enter his room. The next morning the doctor was sent for.
+
+Whilst he was in the sick-room Erika was taking her daily lesson in
+English with Miss Sophy, with no thought of any trouble. She was
+learning by heart her scene from Shakespeare, when her mother suddenly
+put her head in at the door and said, "Diphtheria!" The tone of her
+voice and the expression of her face were such as to terrify the girl.
+But when Erika, trembling with dread, ran towards her, she waved her
+off and vanished.
+
+Miss Sophy was established in the sick-room, which Erika was not
+allowed to enter. No one paid her any attention, and she spent hours
+forlornly watching at the end of a long gloomy corridor the door behind
+which so much that was terrible was going on. If she was seen she was
+sent away; but before long the entire household was too anxious to pay
+her the slightest heed.
+
+It was about eleven in the forenoon of the fifth day since the first
+symptoms of the disease had appeared. Erika stood listening eagerly
+near the door, trembling with a sense of something vaguely terrible
+going on behind it. Suddenly it opened, and her mother staggered out,
+her dress disordered, her face distorted with agony, and supported by
+the little boy's nurse. Behind her came Strachinsky, his handkerchief
+at his eyes.
+
+In absolute terror Erika looked after her mother, who passed her by,
+even brushing her with her skirt, without seeing her. Then she entered
+the room which the wretched woman had just left. The bed was covered
+with a white sheet, which revealed the outline of the little form
+beneath it. The girl's heart throbbed almost to bursting. She lifted a
+corner of the sheet: there lay her little brother, dead, so white, and
+with his sweet face unchanged by disease. The little hands lay half
+open upon the coverlet, as though life had just slipped from them. A
+grace born of death hovered above the entire form. His sister gazed in
+tearless distress. She could not cry; she felt no definable pain, only
+a terrible heaviness in her limbs, and a weight upon her heart that
+almost choked her. She bent over the corpse to kiss it, when Miss Sophy
+rushed into the room, seized her by the arm, and thrust her out of the
+door.
+
+Of course the first thing Erika did was to look for her mother. She
+found her in the morning-room, seated in a large arm-chair, quivering
+in every limb. Minna, the nurse, was moistening her forehead with
+cologne, but she seemed entirely unconscious. Her hands were folded in
+her lap, and her gaze was fixed on vacancy. Erika could not summon the
+courage to approach her.
+
+Meanwhile, Strachinsky was pacing the room in long strides: his tears
+were already dried; every now and then he would pause and heave a
+profound sigh. At first Emma seemed not to notice him, but on a sudden
+she roused from her apathy, and, passing her hand over her brow, with a
+feeble, wailing cry, she said, "For God's sake, stop, Nello!"
+
+He paused, cleared his throat several times, took an English penknife
+from his pocket, began to pare his nails, and then went to his wife and
+stroked her cheek. She shrank from him involuntarily.
+
+He groaned feelingly, left her, and went to the window: with one hand
+he stroked his whiskers, with the other he jingled the keys in his
+pocket.
+
+After a while he began in an undertone, probably with the foolish
+expectation of distracting the wretched mother's thoughts, to detail
+what was going on outside, all in a melancholy, sentimental monotone,
+that would have set healthy nerves on edge. "Ah, see that little
+sparrow with a straw in its beak! it must be fitting up its winter
+nest."
+
+Poor Emma sat bolt upright, except that her head inclined somewhat
+forward, and gazed at the man at the window.
+
+Suddenly she uttered a short, shrill scream, and, pressing both hands
+to her temples, rushed out of the room.
+
+When she had gone Strachinsky shrugged his shoulders, sighed as if
+gross injustice had been done him, and retired to his room to make a
+list of the names of all those whom he wished notified of the death.
+
+
+The funeral took place the third day afterwards.
+
+On that day they assembled at the dinner-table as on other days. The
+poor mother ate nothing, and Erika could scarce swallow a morsel. The
+tears which had refused to come at first were falling fast upon her new
+black gown.
+
+Strachinsky ate, but after a while he too pushed his plate away. For
+the first time in her life his stepdaughter was conscious of an emotion
+of compassion for him. She thought that his grief had made eating
+impossible, when he cleared his throat, and, "This is intolerable," he
+whined; "at best I have no appetite, and here is tomato sauce! You know
+I never eat tomato sauce."
+
+His wife made no reply: she only looked at him with her strange new
+gaze, with eyes from which the last veil had fallen, and which were
+pained by the light. The look in those eyes would have made one
+shudder.
+
+The clock in the castle tower struck one quarter of an hour after
+another, bringing ever nearer the time for the interment. The little
+body was already laid in the coffin. The coffin-lid leaned up against
+the wall. A fierce restlessness, the strained expectation of a certain
+moment which was to be the culmination of an intolerable misery,
+possessed Erika: she hurried from place to place, and at last ran after
+her mother, who had gone into the garden.
+
+It was cold and stormy. The autumn had come late and suddenly. Some
+bushes had kept all their leaves, but they were blackened and
+shrivelled; others had retained only a few red and yellow leaflets that
+fluttered in the wind. The trees, on the other hand, were almost
+entirely bare. The naked boughs showed dark gray or purplish brown
+against the cloudy sky: the birches alone could still boast some
+golden-coloured foliage. On the moist gravel paths and the sodden
+autumn grass lay wet brown leaves mingled with those but lately fallen.
+The asters and chrysanthemums, nipped by the first frost, hung their
+heads, and among all the autumnal decay the poor mother wandered about,
+seeking a few fresh flowers to lay in her dead child's coffin. With
+faltering steps, tripping now and then over the skirt of her gown, she
+tottered from one ruined flower-bed to another. The sharp autumn wind
+fluttered her dress and outlined her emaciated limbs. From her lips
+came a low moaning mingled with caressing words. She kissed the few
+poor flowers, frost-touched, which she held in her hand. Erika walked
+close behind her. Once or twice she stretched out her hand to grasp her
+mother's skirt, but withdrew it hastily, as if fearing to hurt her by
+even the gentlest touch.
+
+Ten minutes afterwards the sharp strokes of a hammer resounded through
+the castle, and the unhappy woman was crouching in the farthest corner
+of her room, her hands held tightly to her ears.
+
+In the night following the funeral Erika was waked from sleep by a low
+moan. She started up. By the vague light of early dawn, in which the
+windows were defined amid the darkness, she saw something dark lying
+upon the floor beside her bed. She cried out in terror, and then it
+stirred. It was her mother lying there upon the hard floor, where
+she must have been for some time, for when Erika touched her she was
+icy-cold. The girl took her in her arms and drew her into the soft warm
+bed beside her. Neither spoke one word, but their hearts beat in
+unison: all discord between them had vanished.
+
+
+She had thrown off her burden; she breathed anew; she would stand erect
+once more. Then she discovered that a heavier burden yet, a fresh tie,
+bound her to the husband whom now, stripped of all illusion, she
+detested. The consciousness of this misfortune crept over her slowly;
+at first she would not believe it, and when she could no longer doubt,
+it seemed to her that her reason must give way.
+
+Erika soon perceived that her mother's misery was not due alone to the
+loss of her child. No, that pain brought with it a tender and gentle
+mood. Another burden oppressed her, something against which her entire
+nature angrily rebelled, and under the weight of which she displayed a
+gloomy severity from which her daughter alone never suffered. Towards
+her since the boy's death Emma had shown inexpressible tenderness, and
+the girl, thirsting for affection, was never weary of nestling close in
+her mother's arms, receiving her caresses with profound gratitude,
+almost with devout adoration. Sometimes the mother would smile in the
+midst of her grief as she stroked the gold-gleaming hair back from her
+child's pale face with its large dark eyes. "They do not see it," she
+would murmur, "but I see how pretty you are growing. Poor little Erika!
+you have had a sad youth; but life will atone to you for it when I am
+no longer here."
+
+"Do not say that!" cried the girl, clasping her mother in her arms. "As
+if I could endure life without you! Mother! mother!"
+
+"You do not dream of what can be endured," her mother said, bitterly.
+"One submits. Learn to submit; learn it as soon as may be. Do not ask
+too much from life; ask for no complete happiness: it is an illusion.
+You, indeed, are justified in claiming more than your poor, ugly mother
+had any right to, my beautiful, gifted child!" She uttered the words
+almost with solemnity. Something of the romantic strain which had
+characterized her through every stage of her prosaic, humiliating
+existence came to light now in her worship of her daughter.
+
+She strongly impressed Erika with the idea that she was an exceptional
+creature, and, although she was always admonishing her to expect
+nothing of life, she nevertheless gave her to understand that life was
+sure to offer something extraordinary for her acceptance. On the whole,
+in spite of the girl's grief at the loss of her little brother, she
+would have been happier than ever before had it not been for a growing
+anxiety with regard to her mother, whose health had entirely given way.
+Whereas she had been wont from early morning until late at night to
+make her presence felt throughout the household and on the estate,
+grasping with a firm and skilled hand the reins which her husband had
+idly dropped, now she took an interest in nothing.
+
+Erika was tortured by anxiety, an anxiety all the more distressing from
+the fact that she could not define her fears.
+
+Towards her husband Emma displayed a daily increasing irritability. But
+his easy content was not at all disturbed by it. Thanks to a fancy
+which was ever ready to devise means for sparing and nourishing his
+self-conceit, he discovered a hundred reasons other than the true one
+for his wife's attitude towards him. Her irritability was all due, so
+he informed Miss Sophy, to her situation. And in receiving Miss Sophy's
+admiring and compassionate homage he found, and had found for some
+time, his favourite occupation.
+
+Emma now lived apart in a large room, which, besides her bed and
+wash-stand, was furnished only with a couple of book-shelves, two
+straight-backed chairs covered with horsehair, and a round tiled stove
+decorated with a rude bas-relief of a train of mad Bacchantes and
+bearing on its level top a large funeral urn. The boards of the floor
+were bare, and in a deep window-recess there was an arm-chair. In this
+chair the miserable woman would sit for hours, her elbows resting upon
+its arms, her hands clasped, staring into vacancy.
+
+In the garden upon which this window looked the snow lay several feet
+deep; upon the meadow beyond, which sloped gently to the broad frozen
+river, and upon its icy surface, it was so deep that meadow and river
+were undistinguishable from each other; upon the dark pine forest
+that bounded the horizon--upon everything--it lay cold and heavy. All
+cold!--all white! Huge drifts of snow; no road definable; never a bird
+that chirped, never a leaf that stirred; all cold and white, without
+pulsation, without breath, dead,--the whole earth a lovely stark
+corpse.
+
+And the wretched woman's gaze could fall upon naught outside save this
+white monotony.
+
+Spring came. The dignified repose of death dissolved in feverish
+activity, in the restless change of seasons, vibrating between fair and
+foul, between purity and its opposite.
+
+The earth absorbed the snow, except where in dark hollows it lingered
+in patches, to disappear slowly in muddy pools.
+
+Emma still sat for hours daily in her room with hands clasped in her
+lap, but her eyes were no longer fixed on vacancy; they had found an
+object upon which to rest. Among the tender green of the meadows so
+lately stripped of their snowy covering, glided the river, dark and
+swollen. How loudly it exulted in its liberation from its icy fetters!
+"Freedom!" shouted its surging waves,--"Freedom!"
+
+Upon this river her gaze was now riveted.
+
+Days passed,--weeks; the air was warm and sweet; the window by which
+she sat was open, and the voice of the river was clear and loud.
+
+One afternoon at the end of April the ploughs were creaking over the
+road, there was an odour of freshly-turned earth in the air, and the
+fruit-trees were already enveloped in a white mist.
+
+The sun had set, and in the west the crescent moon hung pale and
+shadowy.
+
+Erika was standing at the low garden wall, looking down across the
+meadow. Her youthful spirit was oppressed by anxiety so vague that she
+could neither define it nor struggle against it: she seemed to be
+blindly dragged along to meet the inevitable.
+
+Her mother had to-day been especially tender to her, but sadder than
+ever before. She had talked as if her death were nigh at hand, and had
+spent a long time in writing letters.
+
+On a sudden the girl perceived a dark object moving rapidly along in
+the warm damp evening air,--a tall figure in a black gown which
+fluttered in the south wind. It was her mother.
+
+How quickly she strode through the high rank grass! how strange was her
+gait! Erika had never before seen any one hasten thus, with long
+strides, and yet falteringly as though borne down by weariness, on--on
+towards the dark-flowing river.
+
+Suddenly the girl divined what her mother intended to do. She would
+have screamed, but for an instant her voice failed her, and in the next
+she was silent from presence of mind, the clear-sight of terror.
+
+She clambered over the low wall and flew after her mother, her feet
+scarcely touching the ground, her breath coming in painful gasps.
+
+The dark figure had reached its goal, the river-bank; it leaned
+forward,--when two nervous, girlish hands clutched the black folds of
+her gown. "Mother!" shrieked Erika, in despair.
+
+She turned round. "What do you want?" she said, harshly, almost
+cruelly, to her daughter. Then she shuddered violently, and burst into
+a convulsive sobbing which it seemed impossible to her to control.
+
+Her daughter put her arm around her, nestled close to her, and kissed
+the tears from her cheeks. "Mother," she cried, tenderly, "darling
+mother!" and without another word she gently led the wretched woman
+away from the water. The mother made no resistance; she was mortally
+weary, and leaned heavily upon the slender girl of fourteen.
+
+They slowly returned to the house. A white translucent mist was rising
+from the fields, and flying through it with drooping wings, so low that
+they almost stirred the grass, a flock of hoarsely-croaking ravens
+passed them by.
+
+
+In the night Erika suddenly aroused from sleep, without knowing what
+had wakened her. She rubbed her eyes, and turned to sleep again, when
+just outside of her door she heard a voice exclaim, "Ah, God of
+heaven!" In an instant, barefooted and in her nightgown, she was in the
+corridor, where she saw the cook hurrying in the direction of her
+mother's room. "What is the matter?" the girl cried, in terror. The
+cook looked round, shrugged her shoulders, and hurried on.
+
+Erika would have followed her, but Strachinsky appeared at the turning
+of the corridor where the cook had vanished. He looked as if just
+roused from sleep; he had on a flowered dressing-gown, and carried a
+lighted candle. Beside him Minna walked, pale as ashes.
+
+Strachinsky set the candlestick down upon a long low table in the
+passage. "Have the horses harnessed immediately," he ordered, "and send
+the bailiff to K---- for the doctor."
+
+"Will not the Herr Baron go himself? People are not always to be relied
+upon," said Minna, with a significant glance at the master of the
+house.
+
+"Oh, no; the bailiff will attend to it perfectly, and then--you can
+understand that I do not wish to be away at this time from my wife, who
+will of course ask for me----" Minna's eyes still being fixed upon him
+with a very strange expression in them, he added, snapping out his
+words in childish irritation, "And then--then--it is no business of
+yours, you stupid fool!" And, turning on his heel, he left her.
+
+Minna shrugged her shoulders, and turned towards the staircase to give
+the necessary orders.
+
+Neither she nor Strachinsky had noticed Erika. The girl ran to the
+nurse and plucked her by the sleeve. "Minna," she asked, in dread,
+"what is the matter? Is my mother ill?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What is the matter with her? Tell me, Minna! oh, tell me!"
+
+But the nurse shook off her clasping hands. "Let me alone, child. I am
+in a hurry," she murmured.
+
+Erika advanced a step, hesitated, and then returned to her room,
+where she found Miss Sophy in great distress, her head crowned with
+curl-papers, which she cut out of the _Modern Free Press_ every evening
+and which made her look half like Medusa and half like a porcupine.
+
+"Where are you going?" she asked, seeing that Erika began to dress
+hurriedly. "To my mother; she is ill."
+
+Miss Sophy gently detained her. "Do not go," she said, softly: "they
+would not let you in; you would only be in the way, now. Wait a little.
+Your mother does not want you there." And she wagged her porcupine head
+with melancholy solemnity as she added, "I believe--I think you will
+perhaps have a little brother, or sister."
+
+Erika stared at her. This it was, then!
+
+
+Among the many sad experiences that were to fall to Erika's lot there
+were none to equal the dull restlessness, the mortal dread mingled with
+a mysterious, inexpressible emotion, of these hours.
+
+She went on dressing, striving only to be ready quickly, as one dresses
+when the next house is on fire. Then she seated herself opposite Miss
+Sophy, at a tottering round table upon which stood a guttering candle.
+
+For a while all was silent; then there was a noise outside the door.
+The girl sprang up and hurried out, to see a stout, elderly woman in a
+tall black cap, with the phlegmatic flabby face of a monk, going
+towards her mother's room. Erika recognized her as the needy widow of a
+stone-mason; she was wont to doctor both men and cattle in the village.
+Her name was Frau Jelinek. The scullery-maid who had brought her was
+just behind her.
+
+They passed Erika without heeding her, and the girl looked after them
+in a fresh access of dread.
+
+Two hours passed. Miss Sophy was asleep; Erika still waked and watched.
+A light rain had begun to fall; the drops pattered against the
+window-panes.
+
+Once more Erika arose and crept out into the corridor. Trembling in
+every limb, she stood at the door of the room through which her
+mother's sleeping-apartment was reached. It was ajar, and light
+streamed through the crack. She looked in. Strachinsky was seated at a
+table, playing whist with three dummies. It had for some time past been
+his favourite occupation. A maid stood in a corner, arranging a pile of
+linen. Erika was about to address her, when Frau Jelinek, her black
+leathern bag on her arm, came out of her mother's bedroom.
+
+"May I not go to mamma,--just for a moment?" the girl asked, in an
+agitated whisper.
+
+The bedroom door opened again, and Minna appeared. "Is it you, child?"
+
+"Yes, yes," Erika made answer.
+
+"Do not disturb your mother. Stay in your room till you are called,"
+Minna said, authoritatively.
+
+And from the room came the poor mother's weary, gentle voice: "Go lie
+down, my child; don't sit up any longer; go to bed, dear."
+
+For a while Erika stood motionless; then she kissed the hard cold door
+that would not open to her, and went back to her room. She lay down on
+the bed, dressed as she was, and this time she fell asleep. On a sudden
+she sat upright. The candle on the table was still burning, and by its
+light she saw that Miss Sophy, who had been sleeping on the sofa, was
+sitting up, awake, and listening, with a startled air.
+
+Erika hurried out; Minna met her in the corridor, and at the same
+moment a vehicle rattled into the courtyard.
+
+"The doctor!" exclaimed Minna. "Thank God!"
+
+The bailiff appeared on the staircase.
+
+"Where is the doctor?"
+
+"He was not at home," the man made answer.
+
+"Did you not ask where he was and go after him?" Minna asked,
+impatiently.
+
+"No," replied the bailiff, twirling his straw hat in his hands. "But I
+left word for him to come as soon as he got home."
+
+"Fool!" Strachinsky, who had now come into the corridor, exclaimed,
+shaking his fist at the man. "You are dismissed," he added,
+grandiloquently. Then, turning to Minna, he said, "Good heavens, if I
+had a horse I could ride to K----."
+
+Without heeding him, Minna hurried down the staircase, and a few
+moments later a carriage again left the court-yard.
+
+Minna had herself gone for the doctor, before her departure beseeching
+Erika to keep quiet: she should be summoned as soon as it would be
+right for her to see her mother.
+
+The girl obeyed, and sat in her room, rigid and motionless, at the
+table where the candle was burning down into the socket. At first, to
+shorten the time, she tried to knit, but the needles dropped from her
+fingers.
+
+Miss Sophy sat opposite her, with elbows upon the table, and her head
+in her hands, listening.
+
+In the distance there was a sound of wheels; it came nearer and nearer.
+Thank God! It was Minna, and she brought the doctor. There was a
+hurried running to and fro, and then all was still, still as death.
+
+The dawn crept in at the window. The flame of the candle burned red and
+dim. The rain had ceased, and through the misty window-panes could be
+seen a glimmer of white blossoms, and behind them a pale-blue sky in
+which the last stars were slowly fading.
+
+Then the door opened, and Minna entered. "Come, Erika," she said, in a
+low voice.
+
+Erika arose hastily. "Have I really a little brother?" she asked,
+anxiously.
+
+Minna shook her head. "It is dead."
+
+"And my mother?"
+
+"Ah, come quickly."
+
+She drew the girl along with her through the long whitewashed corridor.
+In the room leading to the dying woman's chamber Strachinsky was
+standing with the physician. The latter stood with bowed head;
+Strachinsky was weeping.
+
+Erika went directly to her mother's bedside. The dying woman's hair was
+brushed back from her temples; her lips were blue. Erika kneeled down
+and buried her face in the bedclothes. Her mother laid her hand upon
+her head and stroked it--ah, how feebly! But how soothing was the
+touch!
+
+In one corner old Minna kneeled, praying.
+
+Outside, the world was brightening; there was a golden splendour over
+all the earth. The birds twittered, at first faintly, then loudly and
+shrilly. The dying woman stirred among the pillows: Erika was to hear
+the dear voice once more.
+
+"My child, my poor, dear child, I have been a poor mother to you----"
+
+"Oh, mother, darling----"
+
+"My death will make it all right. Write to----"
+
+At this moment Strachinsky knocked at the door. "Emma!" he whispered.
+
+The dying woman's face expressed positive horror. "Do not let him come
+in!" she exclaimed.
+
+Erika flew to the door and turned the key; when she returned to the
+bedside her mother was struggling for breath.
+
+Evidently most anxious to impart some information to her daughter, she
+had not the strength to do so. Once more she passed her hand over
+Erika's head,--it was for the last time; then the hand grew heavier; it
+no longer lavished a caress; it was a mere weight.
+
+Erika moved, and looked at her mother. The tears stood in her eyes
+unshed, so wondrous was her mother's face. The battle was won.
+
+All the pain of life--the sweet pain of supreme rapture hinting to us
+of that heaven which we cannot attain, and that other bitter pain
+pointing to the grave at which we shudder--was for her extinct.
+
+
+Erika threw herself upon the body and covered it with kisses. With
+difficulty could she be induced to leave it; but when they led her from
+the room, as soon as the door closed behind her she was docile and
+gentle. She seemed bewildered, and walked slowly with bowed head beside
+Minna. Once only she looked back when a thin, melancholy wail resounded
+through the quiet morning air. It was the bell in the little tower of
+the castle, tolling restlessly.
+
+
+Years afterwards she could not bring herself to recall in memory the
+terrible days that followed,--the dreary burden that she dragged about
+with her from morning until night, the sleep born of utter exhaustion,
+the slow pursuance of daily custom as in a dream, the awakening with
+nerves refreshed by forgetfulness, and then the sudden consciousness of
+misery, the sensation of soreness in every limb, a sensation
+intensified by every motion, by a word spoken in her presence, the
+restlessness which drove her hither and thither until in some dim
+corner she would crouch down and cry,--cry until the very fount of
+tears seemed dry and her burning eyes would close again in the leaden
+sleep which still had to yield to the terrible awakening.
+
+She felt the most earnest desire to do something, to perform some
+office of love for her mother; but scarcely for one moment was she left
+alone with the body.
+
+Strangers prepared the loved one for the tomb, the coachman and the
+gardener lifted her into the coffin. Shortly before it was closed,
+Strachinsky remembered that his wife had once expressed a wish to be
+buried in the dress and veil she had worn at her marriage with him. But
+neither could be found. The cabinet where she was wont to hoard her
+treasures was empty, except for a lock of hair of her dead boy, and
+this they laid beneath her head.
+
+Her husband bestowed but little thought upon the circumstance. He
+honestly regretted the dead, and lost his appetite for two days; but as
+the time for the funeral drew near, he worked himself into an exalted
+frame of mind, which found vent in solemn pomposity.
+
+He had ordered a hearse from the city. Erika was standing at a window
+of the corridor when, with nodding plumes, it rattled into the castle
+court-yard, and her misery reached the point of despair.
+
+Until then she had not quite comprehended it all. She heard the men
+stagger down the stairs beneath the weight of the coffin, heard it
+knock against the wall at a sharp turn.
+
+She followed it to the grave. All walked behind the hearse, the shabby
+splendour of which suited so ill with the rural landscape.
+
+Most of the gentry of the surrounding country, who had long since
+ceased to visit at Luzano, assembled to pay the last honours to the
+poor woman, but they were only a speck in the endless funeral train.
+Behind the few black coats and high hats following close upon the
+hearse came a swarming crowd. All the peasants, day-labourers, and
+beggars from Luzano and the surrounding estates paid the last token of
+respect to the martyr gone to her eternal rest: she had been good and
+kind to all.
+
+It was the first of May. The fields were clothed in a light green, and
+the apple-trees showed pink with half-open blossoms. A reddish smoke
+curled upward to the skies from the flames of the torches. And there
+was a flutter of sighs among the blossoming boughs of the trees and
+above the meadows,--the breath of the freshly-born spring.
+
+Through the new life strode death.
+
+Noiselessly the funeral train moved on. Erika walked almost
+mechanically, looking neither to the right nor to the left, only moving
+forward. On a sudden something attracted her gaze. On a little
+elevation by the roadside, between two apple-trees, stood a young
+peasant woman with a child in her arms,--a child who stared at the long
+procession with large eyes of wonder.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER III.
+
+
+The day after the funeral Strachinsky, in melancholy mood, paced to and
+fro in the room where his wife had died. From time to time he walked to
+the window and looked out,--then he would turn again towards the
+interior of the chamber. Suddenly his eyes fell upon a sheet of
+blotting-paper left upon the writing-table.
+
+His wife's handwriting had been remarkably large, and the words which
+were of course imprinted backwards upon the sheet attracted his notice.
+With very little trouble he deciphered them: "My last will."
+
+He frowned. "So she has made a fresh will," he said to himself. In
+spite of his enormous self-conceit, he did not doubt that it could
+hardly be in his favour. The blood rushed to his head. Where was the
+will? Probably in her writing-table. But where were the keys? The
+shrewdness which, in spite of his intellectual deterioration, stood him
+in stead whenever he feared personal inconvenience came to his aid. He
+remembered that his wife had been wont to keep her keys in the drawer
+of a small table at her bedside, and he reflected that, in the sad
+confusion ensuing upon her death, it was hardly likely that they had as
+yet been removed. In fact he found them there, and with them he opened
+the middle drawer of her writing-table. It contained a large sealed
+envelope inscribed "My last will." Strachinsky slipped the document
+into his pocket, and returned the keys to their place.
+
+At that moment the door opened, and Erika entered. She looked
+wretchedly pale and wan, with dark rings around her weary eyes. She
+wore a black gown which her mother had made hastily for her when her
+little brother died, and which she had outgrown during the winter.
+Although the day was warm and sunshiny, she looked cold, and in all her
+movements there was something of the timorous hesitation that a dog
+will display after losing his master, when he seems uncertain where to
+creep away and hide himself. The resolute attitude she had been wont to
+maintain when with her step-father was all gone; heart, mind, and soul
+seemed alike crushed.
+
+"What do you want here?" Strachinsky asked, suspiciously.
+
+She looked at him in what was almost surprise, and a tremor of pain
+passed through her. "What should I want?" she murmured, in a hoarse
+whisper. "I want to go to my mother!" She said it to herself, not to
+him; she seemed to have forgotten his presence. Her chin trembled, her
+lips twitched, the tears rushed to her eyes.
+
+No, that pitiable creature never could have come to look for a will.
+Strachinsky, always ready to be sentimental, gave a sigh of relief, put
+his hand over his eyes, and left the room. Scarcely had he gone when
+Erika's sad eye fell upon the bed: it had been stripped of all its
+coverings and looked like some couch in a lumber-room that had been
+unused for years. With a shudder the girl turned away. Yes, what could
+she want here? She asked herself the question now. But on a sudden she
+perceived hanging on the wall a black skirt, the hem soiled with mud.
+It was the gown her mother had worn when she hurried across the fields,
+the day before her death. Erika clutched it as if it had been a living
+thing, and with a low wail buried her face in its folds, about which
+some aroma of her dead mother seemed to cling.
+
+Meanwhile, Strachinsky had locked himself into his room, where he
+walked to and fro, lost in reflection, the portentous will in his
+pocket, with the seal as yet unbroken. The only legal document of the
+kind, in his opinion, was the will made by his wife eleven years
+previously, shortly after their marriage, by which she constituted him
+her sole heir and the guardian of her daughter. Any later testamentary
+disposition he could not possibly regard otherwise than as the result
+of an aberration of mind, of which she had for some time shown
+symptoms, and which had, shortly before her death, come to be
+distinctly developed.
+
+Poor Emma! There was no doubt that her intellect, once so clear and
+strong, had been clouded of late years.
+
+So soon as he had entirely convinced himself of this fact, he broke the
+seal of the will.
+
+Even in his rascality he was a thorough sentimentalist. He never could
+have committed a crime without first skilfully contriving to exalt in
+his own eyes both himself and his motives.
+
+Whilst reading the document he changed colour several times. When he
+had finished he sighed thrice consecutively: "Poor Emma!" Then, after
+pacing the room thoughtfully, he said to himself, "She would be indeed
+distressed if this paper--worthless legally in view of her mental
+condition, and throwing so false a light upon our marriage--should ever
+be made public; she--to whom the tie between us was so sacred!" A flood
+of proofs of his wife's devotion to him, interrupted but temporarily,
+overwhelmed Strachinsky's soul. He lit a candle and burned Emma's last
+will.
+
+And then, without the slightest pricking of conscience, he betook
+himself to his beloved lounge. He had the sensation of having performed
+an act of exalted devotion.
+
+"No need, dearest Emma," he said, apostrophizing his wife's portrait
+which hung above his couch, "to say that I never shall let your child
+want. No legal document is necessary to insure that. Poor Emma!" And,
+remembering the extract-books which he had devised at a former period
+of his existence, he moaned, drearily, "Oh, what a noble mind was there
+o'erthrown!"
+
+When, a few hours afterwards, he encountered his step-daughter, he felt
+it incumbent upon him to be especially kind to her. He patted her
+shoulder, with the insinuating tenderness people are apt to show
+towards those whom they have wronged, and said, solemnly, "Poor little
+Rika! Your loss is great. Your mother is gone; but never forget that
+you still have a father."
+
+
+Weeks passed,--months; everything in the house went on as best it
+could. Strachinsky lay on the sofa from morning until night, reading
+novels most of the time. In the pauses of this edifying occupation he
+roused himself to an unedifying activity; that is to say, he scolded
+all the servants, without assigning any grounds for his displeasure. No
+one minded it much: every one knew that after such an episode he would
+betake himself to his sofa again and to his sentimental romances.
+
+With regard to his step-daughter's education, he showed the same
+tendency to vehement attacks of zeal. He would suddenly go to the
+school-room, inspect her written exercises, question her as to some
+historical date which he had quite forgotten himself, and conclude by
+asking her to play something upon the piano.
+
+During her performance he would pace the room with a face expressive of
+the gravest anxiety.
+
+At first she took pains to play for him, but when she discovered that
+he had determined beforehand to find fault, she rattled away upon the
+keys of her old instrument like a perfect imp of waywardness, whenever
+required to show what progress she had made.
+
+Almost before her fingers had left the key-board the scolding began. "I
+see no improvement; no, not the slightest improvement do I perceive!
+And to think of all that has been done for your education! I fairly
+work my fingers to the bone to give you every advantage that a princess
+could claim, while you--you do nothing!" And then would follow a long
+dramatic summary of the sacrifices that had been made for her. He
+always talked to her like the father addressing a worthless daughter in
+some popular melodrama, ending upon every occasion with, "What is to
+become of you? Tell me, what--what will become of you?" Then he would
+bring down both fists upon the top of the piano, to emphasize the
+horror inspired by the thought of her future, shake his head for the
+last time, and leave the room with a heavy stride. Afterwards he was
+sure to complain of the injury the agitation had caused him, and to
+betake himself to his sofa.
+
+The girl was left more and more to herself. About six months after her
+mother's death Miss Sophy was dismissed. She was a thoroughly capable
+woman, personally much attached to her pupil, trustworthy and practical
+as a housekeeper, but prone to fall in love with every man, and to find
+a rival and foe in every woman who refused to be the confidante of her
+morbid and distorted sentimentality.
+
+During Emma's lifetime she had been able to conceal most of her
+eccentricities in this respect, but afterwards she became positively
+intolerable,--perhaps because there was no one to restrain or
+intimidate her. Without a single personal attraction, she was
+inordinately vain, forever striving by her dress and conduct to invite
+attention from the other sex. In the forenoons she gave Erika lessons,
+in the afternoons she mended and made her clothes,--she was a skilled
+needlewoman,--and the evenings she devoted to music.
+
+She sang. Her repertoire was limited, consisting principally of the
+soprano part of Mendelssohn's duet "I would that my love could silently
+flow in a single word," which she shrieked out as a solo, and in
+Schumann's "I'll not complain,"--which last always caused her to shed
+copious tears.
+
+At last her love of self-adornment as well as her musical enthusiasm
+passed all bounds. She cut off her hair, dressed it in short curls, and
+purchased two new silk gowns. She also bought an old zither, and every
+evening, with her hair freshly curled, and in a rustling silk robe, she
+betook herself to the drawing-room, where Strachinsky, in pursuance of
+his boasted activity, was wont to finish the day by endless games of
+patience.
+
+Her manner, the languishing looks cast at him over her instrument, left
+no doubt as to her sentiments towards him.
+
+At first the master of the house took but little heed of these
+demonstrations. Her performance upon the zither he found rather
+agreeable: the whining drawl of the tones she evoked from it soothed
+his melancholy. But one evening when he had requested her to play for
+him "The Tyrolean and his Child," and also to repeat "May Breezes," she
+was so carried away by triumphant vanity that she attempted to sing
+with her instrument, accompanying her shrill notes with such
+languishing glances that their object could no longer ignore their
+meaning.
+
+The next morning Strachinsky sent for his stepdaughter. Clad in his
+dressing-gown, as he reclined upon his lounge, with all the romantic
+drawling indifference in his air and voice which he had learned from
+his favourite hero "Pelham," he asked her as she stood before him,--
+
+"The Englishwoman's behaviour must have struck you as extraordinary?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+He passed his hand thoughtfully across his brow. She did not speak, and
+he went on playing the English nobleman to his own entire satisfaction.
+His left hand, in which he held a French novel, hanging negligently
+over the arm of the lounge, he waved his right in the air, and said,
+"Of course I pity the poor creature, but she bores me. Rid me of the
+fool, I pray,--rid me of her!"
+
+He then inclined his head towards the door, and buried himself in the
+perusal of his novel.
+
+From that time Erika ceased to spend the evenings with Miss Sophy in
+the drawing-room; she withdrew after supper to the solitude of the old
+school-room, which in fact she greatly preferred.
+
+Of course Miss Sophy suspected some plot of Erika's in Strachinsky's
+altered demeanour, and lost every remnant of sense still left in her
+silly head. She employed all her leisure moments in writing to her hero
+letters which she bribed the maid to lay upon the table in his
+dressing-room.
+
+This would all have been ridiculous, if the affair had not taken a
+tragic turn.
+
+One morning Miss Sophy did not appear at the breakfast-table, and when
+Minna went to call her she found the wretched woman in bed, writhing in
+agony. In despair at Strachinsky's insensibility she had poisoned
+herself with the tips of some old lucifer matches. The physician,
+summoned in haste, was barely able to save her life; and of course she
+left Luzano as soon as she was able to travel.
+
+Strachinsky was much flattered that the poor woman's love for him had
+ended in madness, and he invested her memory with an ideal excellence,
+recalling her as brilliantly gifted by nature and endowed with many
+personal attractions.
+
+
+Erika was now left without instruction. Her step-father decided that a
+young girl of her age needed no further supervision, and that the
+daughter of a poor farmer could lay no claim to any personal luxury.
+
+When he spoke of himself only, it was always as an 'impoverished
+cavalier;' when he alluded to himself as her father, he was always
+degraded to simply 'a poor farmer.'
+
+All through the summer she was alone, and during a long dreary winter,
+followed by another summer and another winter, she was still alone.
+Another girl in her place might have fallen into gossip with the
+servants to pass the time; another, again, might have married the
+bailiff out of sheer ennui: assuredly any one else would have grown
+stupid and uncouth. She did nothing of the kind.
+
+She had occupation enough. She learned long pages of Goethe and
+Shakespeare by heart, and declaimed them, clad in improvised costumes,
+before a tall dim mirror; she played on the piano for hours daily, and
+made decided progress, despite certain bad habits unavoidable in the
+lack of instruction. The rest of her time was spent in building
+numberless castles in the air, and in taking long walks about the
+neighboring country.
+
+But when three years had gone by since her mother's death, without the
+least alteration in her circumstances, the poor child began to be
+impatient and to look eagerly about for some relief from so sordid an
+existence. Why could she not be an artist?--an actress, a singer, or a
+pianist?
+
+On a cold spring morning towards the end of April she seated herself at
+the big table in her former school-room and indited a letter to the
+director of the Castle Theatre at Vienna,--a letter in which she
+partially explained to him her position and requested him to make a
+trial of her dramatic talent, with a view to an engagement at his
+theatre. She declared herself ready to go to Vienna if he would promise
+her an audience. She had finished the clearly-written document, but
+when about to sign her name she hesitated. Erika Lenzdorff she signed
+at last. "Lenzdorff," she repeated, thoughtfully,--"Lenzdorff." What
+possessed her to write to the director of a theatre--an utter
+stranger--explaining her circumstances? Would it not be much better to
+turn to her father's relatives? To be sure, she knew nothing about
+them,--not even their address; but that, she thought, might be
+procured. Her mother had never spoken of them; she had always abruptly
+changed the subject when Erika asked about her father and his
+relatives. Why?
+
+Strachinsky and his wife had often spoken of the parents of the latter,
+but never of those of her first husband.
+
+"Lenzdorff." She wrote the name again and again on a sheet of paper. It
+looked distinguished. Perhaps they were wealthy people, who could do
+something for her; but----
+
+Emma had told her daughter that her name was Lenzdorff the day after
+the adventure with the young painter, when the child, mortified at not
+having been able to tell it, had asked what it was. But when she had
+precociously repeated, in a questioning tone, "_Von_ Lenzdorff?" her
+mother had replied, sternly, "What is that to you? It is of no
+consequence whatever."
+
+Erika began to ponder. Her mother's parents had died long since; must
+not her father's parents be dead also? If they were still living, it
+was difficult to see why Strachinsky had not cast upon them the burden
+of her maintenance. Still, there were reasons why he should not have
+done so.
+
+If her father's relatives were people of integrity and refinement, any
+business discussion or explanation with them would have been most
+distressing; no wonder that he avoided it, especially since Erika's
+maintenance cost him little or nothing.
+
+Thus far she had arrived in her reflections, when Minna entered and
+asked her to go immediately to the drawing-room, where a visitor
+awaited her.
+
+A visitor at Luzano? Such an event was unheard of.
+
+In some distress Erika looked down at her shabby gown, made out of an
+old dressing-gown of her mother's, black, with a Turkish border. There
+was a hole in the elbow of the left sleeve.
+
+"What sort of a gentleman is it, Minna?" she asked, irritably,
+suspecting him to be some business acquaintance of Strachinsky's.
+
+"A foreign gentleman."
+
+"Old or young?"
+
+"An elderly gentleman."
+
+"Well, if he is elderly, and has no lady with him," she murmured, "I
+can go just as I am." She knew from books, whence she derived all her
+worldly wisdom, that ladies were much more critical than gentlemen.
+
+"What in the world can he want of me?"
+
+She went up to the mirror, smoothed her hair, drew together with a
+black thread the hole in her sleeve, and hurried down to the
+drawing-room. The apartment to which this name was still given was on
+the ground-floor, as large as a riding-school, and almost as empty.
+
+Besides the piano it still contained two huge bookcases, a shabby sofa
+behind a rickety table, and a round piano-stool. The rest of the
+furniture had disappeared. Some chairs had been banished as unsafe; the
+other things had been sold piece by piece, under stress of various
+pecuniary embarrassments, to the Jew broker of the village.
+
+Strachinsky had several times attempted to dispose thus of the books
+also, but Solomon Bondy had no market for them. Once the Pole had tried
+to sell the piano. But Solomon had curtly refused to find a purchaser
+for it, knowing that with the piano the last remnant of enjoyment would
+be snatched from the poor lonely girl vegetating in the castle. The Jew
+had shown more mercy than the Christian. And then her dead mother had
+been dear to him, as she was to all around her.
+
+She had been dear to Strachinsky also, but he never allowed his
+affection to stand in the way of his ease.
+
+In consequence of the total lack of furniture, Strachinsky, when Erika
+entered the room, was sitting beside the stranger on the sofa,--which
+looked comical.
+
+The stranger, a man of middle age, tall, broad-shouldered, and erect in
+bearing, rose to receive her.
+
+"May I beg you to present me to the Countess?" he said, turning to
+Strachinsky.
+
+"Countess!" It thrilled her. Had she heard aright?
+
+"Herr Doctor Herbegg--my daughter," with a wave of the hand.
+
+"Your step-daughter," the stranger corrected him, with cool emphasis.
+
+"I have never made any difference between her and my own children, dead
+in their early youth," said the other; and he was right, for he had
+taken very little interest in his own children. "You know that, my
+child," he added, in a caressing tone that in his stepdaughter's ears
+was like an echo of his old love-making to his wife, and which offended
+her. He would have taken her hand, but she withdrew it hastily from his
+flabby warm touch.
+
+Since there was no other scat to be had, she turned to the piano to get
+the piano-stool. Doctor Herbegg arose and took it from her.
+
+Then Strachinsky started up with incredible activity, and a positive
+struggle for the stool ensued, a mutual "Pray, pray, Herr Baron--Herr
+Doctor!"
+
+Erika calmly looked on at their strange behaviour. Had she suddenly
+become of such importance that each was striving to show her courtesy?
+Through her youthful soul the word 'Countess' echoed again with
+thrilling fascination.
+
+Strachinsky finally gained the day: he placed the piano-stool for his
+step-daughter, panting as he did so, so unused was he to the slightest
+physical exertion.
+
+Erika seated herself upon the stool, although each gentleman offered
+her a place on the sofa, assumed a dignified air, or what she supposed
+to be such, and calmly surveyed the situation and the stranger.
+Something told her that his visit was an important event for her and
+hinted at a turning-point in her life. She was not mistaken. Doctor
+Herbegg was her grandmother's legal adviser.
+
+He began to converse upon indifferent topics, watching her narrowly the
+while.
+
+Her step-father, who had become utterly unaccustomed to the reception
+of guests, wriggled about on the sofa as if stung by a tarantula. He
+had always been restless in his demeanour when he was not awkwardly
+stiff, but formerly his good looks had compensated for his defective
+training. They no longer existed: the self-indulgent indolence to which
+he had given himself over, so soon as all social contact with the world
+was at an end for him, had done its part in effecting their decay.
+
+"A bottle of wine! Bring a bottle of wine!" he ordered the young girl,
+forgetting the suavity of speech he had just before adopted, and
+falling into his usual tone.
+
+"Pray do not trouble the Countess on my account," Doctor Herbegg
+interposed. "I can take nothing. My time is limited, since I must catch
+the next train for Berlin."
+
+"Surely, Herr Doctor, you will take a glass of Tokay," Strachinsky
+persisted, and, perceiving that his manner of addressing his
+step-daughter had offended the lawyer, he was amiable enough to add,
+"Do not trouble yourself, my dear Rika; I will attend to it." He arose,
+and as he was leaving the room he went on, "The Herr Doctor will inform
+you, meanwhile, as to the change in your prospects."
+
+The lawyer made no attempt to detain him. He cared very little about
+the glass of Tokay, but very much about an interview with the young
+girl. When Strachinsky had left the room he approached Erika, and in a
+short time had explained matters to her.
+
+The title of Countess, which her mother had concealed from her,
+apparently because in the circumstances in which she was forced to
+educate her child it would have been more of a hinderance than a help,
+was hers of right. Her mother's first marriage had been with the only
+son by a second marriage of Count Lenzdorff: he had held office under
+the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and two years after his marriage had
+been killed in a railroad accident. By her second marriage Frau von
+Strachinsky had alienated her mother-in-law. Meanwhile, the two sons of
+Count Lenzdorff's first marriage had died, childless, and finally the
+Count himself had died, at a very advanced age,--so old that he had
+persuaded himself that he had outlived death, and had therefore never
+taken the trouble to make a will; consequently his entire estate
+devolved upon his grand-daughter.
+
+The lawyer had just imparted this intelligence to the grand-daughter in
+question, when Strachinsky re-entered the room, very much out of breath
+and excited, and followed by Minna, tall, gaunt, with the bearing of a
+grenadier and the gloomy air of an energetic old maid whom it behooves
+to be upon the defensive with the entire male sex. She carried a
+waiter, which she placed upon the table before the sofa.
+
+"One little glass, Herr Doctor,--one little glass!" cried Strachinsky.
+
+The Doctor bowed his thanks, and touched the glass distrustfully with
+his lips.
+
+"The Tokay is excellent," he remarked, in evident surprise at finding
+anything of Strachinsky's genuine.
+
+"Yes, yes," his host declared; "you can't get such a glass of wine as
+that everywhere, Herr Doctor. I purchased it in Hungary by favour of an
+intimate friend, Prince Liskat,--_les restes des grandeurs passees_, my
+dear Doctor."
+
+After a first glass Strachinsky became tenderly condescending: he
+patted the lawyer on the shoulder. "Pray don't hurry, my dear Herbegg;
+you'll not easily find another glass of such Tokay."
+
+Erika observed that Doctor Herbegg bit his lip and did not touch his
+second glass. He looked at his watch and said, "Unfortunately,
+Countess, I have but little time left, but I should like to inform
+myself upon several points, in accordance with your grandmother's wish.
+Where and with whom have you been educated?"
+
+"At home, and with my mother."
+
+"Exclusively with your mother?"
+
+"Yes; she even gave me lessons in French and upon the piano."
+
+She was burning to rehabilitate her mother in his eyes.
+
+"My wife was an admirable performer, an artist, a pupil of Liszt's,"
+Strachinsky interposed.--"Play something to the Doctor; be quick!" he
+ordered, grandiloquently, dropping again his _role_ of tender parent.
+His imperious tone provoked Erika unutterably: she would have liked to
+rush from the room and fling to the door behind her, but she conquered
+herself for her mother's sake and--out of vanity.
+
+She opened the piano, and played the last portion of Beethoven's
+Moonlight Sonata,--the last thing that she had studied with her mother.
+Her execution was still rude and unequal, like that of an ardent
+youthful creature whose musical aspirations have never been toned down
+by culture, but an unusual amount of talent was evident in her
+performance.
+
+"Magnificent, Countess!" exclaimed the lawyer, rising and going towards
+her as she left the piano.
+
+"Very well; but you missed that last chord once," Strachinsky said,
+pompously.
+
+Doctor Herbegg paid him not the least attention. "Now I am forced to
+go," he said to the young girl; "and you must not smile, Countess, if I
+tell you that I leave you with a much lighter heart than the one I
+brought with me. Your grandmother sent me here to reconnoitre, as it
+were: I find a gifted young lady, where I had feared to encounter an
+untrained village girl."
+
+Then suddenly Erika's overstrained nerves gave way. "My grandmother had
+no right to allow of such a fear on your part; no one who had ever
+known my mother could have supposed anything of the kind."
+
+He looked her full in the face more steadily, more searchingly than
+before, and his cold, clear eyes suddenly shone with a genial light.
+"Forgive me," he said, kissing the hand she held out to him; then,
+turning, he would have left the room with a brief bow to Strachinsky.
+
+His host, however, made haste to disburden himself of a fine speech.
+"You will have something to tell in Berlin, will you not? You have at
+least seen how a Bohemian gentleman lives. No lounging-chairs in the
+drawing-room, but Tokay in the cellar. Original, at all events, eh?"
+
+"Extremely original," the lawyer assented.
+
+On the threshold he paused. "One question more, Herr Baron," he began,
+bending upon his condescending host a look of keenest scrutiny. "Did
+the late Frau von Strachinsky leave no written document by which she
+provided for her daughter's future?"
+
+Strachinsky listened to this question with a scarcely perceptible
+degree of embarrassment. "Not that I know of," he said, shifting
+uneasily from one foot to the other.
+
+Erika suddenly remembered that her mother had been busily engaged in
+writing a few days before her death.
+
+Meanwhile, her step-father, having gained entire control of his
+features, continued, "Moreover, in this case any testamentary document
+would have been entirely superfluous. My wife knew well that should she
+die I should care for her daughter as for my own."
+
+"H'm!" the Doctor ejaculated. "And did Frau von Strachinsky never speak
+to you of her Berlin relatives, Countess?"
+
+"No," Erika replied, thoughtfully. "She was very restless for some
+weeks before her death, and often told me that as soon as we were quite
+sure of being uninterrupted she had an important communication to make
+to me. But she never did so: death closed her lips."
+
+The Doctor reflected for a moment, and then said, "I am rather
+surprised, Herr von Strachinsky, that you did not advise old Countess
+Lenzdorff of your wife's death."
+
+Strachinsky assumed an injured air. "Permit me to ask you, Herr
+Doctor," he said, with lofty emphasis, "why I should have informed
+Countess Lenzdorff of my adored wife's death? Countess Lenzdorff was my
+bitterest enemy. She opposed my wife's union with me not only openly,
+but with all sorts of underhand schemes, and when she could not succeed
+in severing the tie that united our hearts, she dismissed my wife and
+her daughter without one friendly word of farewell. Since she entirely
+ignored my wife while she lived, how was I to suppose that she would
+take any interest in the death of my idolized Emma?"
+
+"But the announcement of her death would have seriously influenced your
+step-daughter's destiny," Doctor Herbegg observed.
+
+"My wife considered me the guardian of her child," Strachinsky
+declared, with pathos. "Another man might have refused to accept a
+burden entailing upon him sacrifice of every kind. But I am not like
+other men. My wife evidently supposed that her child would be best
+cared for under my protection; and I was not the man to betray her
+confidence. You look surprised, Doctor. Yes, no doubt you think it
+strange for a man nowadays to vindicate his chivalry and
+disinterestedness, to his own ruin. But such a man am I,--a Marquis
+Posa, a Don Quixote, an Egmont----"
+
+"Pardon me, Herr Baron, I shall be late for the train," said the
+Doctor, and, with a bow to Erika, he left the room.
+
+Strachinsky ran after him with astonishing celerity, expatiating upon
+his chivalrous disinterestedness. Shortly afterwards a carriage was
+heard driving out of the courtyard; and Strachinsky returned to the
+bare drawing-room, which his step-daughter had not yet left.
+
+His face beamed with satisfaction; rubbing his hands, he cried out,
+"Now we shall lack for nothing!" Then, turning to Erika, he continued,
+"I shall see to it that your German relatives do not squander your
+property. This lawyer-fellow seems to me a schemer, a sly dog. But I
+shall do my best to watch over your interests. In fact, it is my duty
+as your guardian to administer your affairs. Moreover, in three years
+you will be of age, and then we can avail ourselves of your money to
+free Luzano from its weight of debt."
+
+This delightful scheme made him extremely cheerful. After pacing the
+apartment for a while, lost in contemplation of its feasibility, he
+went to the table, and, taking up the Doctor's untouched second glass
+of Tokay, he poured its contents back into the bottle. This he called
+economy. Then with the bottle in his hand, apparently with a view of
+re-sealing it, he went towards the door, saying, "The affair has
+greatly agitated me. I am so very sensitive. But when one has had to
+wait upon fortune so long---!"
+
+He had settled it with himself that he was the person principally
+interested; his step-daughter was quite a secondary consideration, at
+most the means to an end. But circumstances shaped themselves after
+what was to him a most unexpected and undesirable fashion. Erika
+received a brief and rather formal letter from Countess Lenzdorff, in
+which the old lady requested her to repair as soon as possible to
+Berlin, but upon no account to allow Strachinsky to accompany her; in
+short, the old Countess refused to have any personal intercourse with
+him whatever.
+
+By the same post came a letter from Doctor Herbegg to Strachinsky,
+formally advising him to resign his guardianship voluntarily. Should he
+comply, the Countess would refrain from closer examination of his
+administration of the property of her daughter-in-law and of her
+grandchild. But if, on the other hand, he made the slightest attempt to
+interfere in the management of his step-daughter's German estate, she
+would, as the guardian appointed by the late Count, resort to legal
+means for relieving herself of such interference.
+
+Had Strachinsky's conscience been perfectly clear he would probably
+have set himself in opposition, but as it was he contented himself with
+gnashing his teeth and raging for two days, indulging freely in
+vituperation of old Countess Lenzdorff. Then he made a final tender
+attempt to work upon Erika's feelings and to induce her to espouse his
+cause with her grandmother. When this failed, he wrapped himself in his
+martyr's cloak and submitted with much grumbling. Dulled as his nature
+was, he bore his disappointment with comparative ease. At first he
+assumed an air of magnanimous renunciation towards his step-daughter,
+but after a while he overwhelmed her with good advice, and groaned for
+her whenever she lifted any weight or stooped in her packing. Erika
+herself, meanwhile, was in a state of tremendous excitement.
+
+On the morning of her departure, when her trunks were all packed she
+took a walk. She first visited her mother's grave for the last time,
+and then went into the garden, pausing in all her favourite haunts, and
+avoiding with a shudder even a glance towards the spot by the low
+garden wall whence she had seen her mother hurrying across the fields
+towards the river.
+
+Still, in whatever direction she turned she felt the presence of the
+stream: she heard its voice loud and wailing as it rushed along swollen
+by the winter's snows. A soft breeze swept above the earth, mingling
+its sighs with the graver note of the water. Everything trembled and
+quivered; every tree, every sprouting plant, throbbed; all nature
+thrilled with delicious pain,--the fever of the spring. And on a sudden
+she felt herself carried away by a like thrill of excitement; a
+nameless yearning, ignorant of aim, possessed her, transporting her to
+the skies, and yet binding her to the earth in the fetters of a languor
+such as she had never before experienced.
+
+Once more there arose in her memory the figure of the young artist who
+had drawn her picture there beside the brook as it rippled dreamily on
+its way to the river. She saw him distinctly before her: her heart
+began to throb wildly.
+
+She hurried on to the spot where he had sketched her. The swollen brook
+murmured far more loudly over the pebbles than it had done on that hot
+day in midsummer; the reddish boughs of the willows began to show
+silver-gray buds, and on the bank there gleamed something blue,--the
+first forget-me-nots. She stooped to pluck them.
+
+At that moment she heard Minna's voice calling, "Rika! where are you?"
+
+She started, and, tripping upon the wet slippery soil, all but fell
+into the brook. With difficulty she regained her footing, and without
+her flowers; they grew too far below her. She looked at them longingly
+and went her way.
+
+When she reached the house she found the carriage already in the
+court-yard,--a huge, green, glass coach, that clattered and jingled
+at the slightest movement. It was lined with dark-brown striped
+awning-stuff,--the shabbiest vehicle that ever ran upon four wheels.
+
+Beside the carriage stood a clumsy cart, in which the luggage was to be
+piled. Herr von Strachinsky was ordering about the servants carrying
+the trunks. Everything in the house was topsy-turvy. Breakfast had been
+hurriedly prepared, and was waiting--a most uninviting repast--upon the
+dining-room table. Erika could not eat. She ran to her room and put on
+her bonnet.
+
+"Hurry, hurry!" Minna called up from below.
+
+She ran down and crossed the threshold. The air was warm and damp, and
+a fine rain was falling. Strachinsky helped her into the carriage with
+pompous formality. "I shall not accompany you to the station," he said.
+"I do not like driving in a close carriage. Adieu!" He had nothing more
+affectionate to say to her, as he shook her hand. The carriage door
+clattered to; the horses started. Thus Erika rattled out of the
+court-yard, with Minna beside her. The servant looked tired out; her
+face was very red, and she had a hand-bag in her lap, and a bandbox and
+two bundles of shawls on the seat opposite her. The carriage was very
+stuffy, and smelled of old leather. Erika opened one of the windows.
+They were driving along the same road by which she had followed her
+mother's coffin; there beyond the meadow she could see the wall of the
+church-yard. She leaned far out of the window. The driver whipped up
+his horses; the church-yard vanished. The young girl suddenly felt as
+if the very heart were being torn from her breast, and she burst into
+tears, sobbing convulsively, uncontrollably.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+On the evening of the same day an old lady was walking to and fro in a
+large, tastefully-furnished apartment looking out upon a little front
+garden in Bellevue Street, Berlin. Both furniture and hangings in the
+room, in contrast with the prevailing fashion, were light and cheerful.
+The old lady's forehead wore a slight frown, and her air was somewhat
+impatient, as of one awaiting a verdict.
+
+At the first glance it was plain that she was very old, very tall,
+broad-shouldered, and straight as a fir. In her bearing there was the
+personal dignity of one whose pride has never had to bow, who has never
+paid society the tribute of the slightest hypocrisy, who has never had
+to lower a glance before mankind or before a memory; but it was at the
+same time characterized by the unconscious selfishness, disguised as
+love of independence, of one who has never allowed aught to interfere
+with personal ease. Upon the broad shoulders, so well fitted to support
+with dignity and power the convictions of a lifetime, was set a head of
+remarkable beauty,--the head, noble in every line, of an old woman who
+has never made the slightest attempt to appear one day younger than her
+age. Oddly enough, there looked forth from the face--the face of an
+antique statue--a pair of large, modern eyes, philosophic eyes, whose
+glance could penetrate to the secret core of a human soul,--eyes which
+nothing escaped, in the sight of which there were few things sacred,
+and nothing inexcusable, because they perceived human nature as it is,
+without requiring from it the impossible.
+
+Such was Erika's grandmother, Countess Anna Lenzdorff.
+
+After she had paced the room to and fro for a long time, she seated
+herself, with a short impatient sigh, in an arm-chair that stood
+invitingly beside a table covered with books and provided with a
+student-lamp. She took up a volume of Maupassant, but a degree of
+mental restlessness to which she was entirely unaccustomed tormented
+her, and she laid the book aside. Her bright eyes wandered from one
+object to another in the room, and were finally arrested by a large
+picture hanging on the opposite wall.
+
+It represented an opening in a leafy forest, dewy fresh, and saturated
+with depth of sunshine. In the midst of the golden glow was a strange
+group,--two nymphs sporting with a shaggy brown faun. The picture was
+by Boecklin, and the forest, the faun, and the white limbs of the nymphs
+were painted with incomparable skill: nevertheless the picture could
+not be pronounced free from the reproach of a certain meretriciousness.
+
+It had never occurred to Countess Lenzdorff to ponder upon the picture;
+she had bought it because she thought it beautiful, and certainly an
+old woman has a right to hang anything that she chooses upon her walls,
+so long as it is a work of art. To-night she suddenly began to attach
+all sorts of considerations to the picture.
+
+Meanwhile, an old footman, with a duly-shaven upper lip, and very bushy
+whiskers, entered and announced, "Herr von Sydow."
+
+"I am very glad," the old lady rejoined, evidently quite rejoiced,
+whereupon there entered a very tall, almost gigantic officer of
+dragoons, with short fair hair and a grave handsome face.
+
+"You come just at the right time, Goswyn," she said, cordially,
+extending her delicate old hand. He touched it with his lips, and then,
+in obedience to her gesture, took a seat near her, within the circle of
+light of the lamp.
+
+"How can I serve you, Countess?" he asked.
+
+"You are acquainted with my small gallery," she began, looking around
+the large airy room with some pride.
+
+"I have frequently enjoyed your works of art," the young officer
+replied. The phrase was rather formal; in fact, he himself was rather
+formal, but there was something so genial behind his stiff North-German
+formality that one easily forgave him his purely superficial
+priggishness,--nay, upon further acquaintance came to like it.
+
+"Rather antiquated in expression, your reply," the old lady rejoined.
+"My small collection thanks you for your kindly appreciation; but that
+is not the question at present. You know my Boecklin?"
+
+"Yes, Countess."
+
+"What do you think of it?"
+
+He fixed his eyes upon it. "What could I think of it? It is a
+masterpiece."
+
+"H'm! that all the world admits," the old lady murmured, impatiently,
+as if vexed at the want of originality in his remark; "but is it a
+picture that one would leave hanging on the wall of one's boudoir when
+one was about to receive into one's house as an inmate a grand-daughter
+of sixteen? Give me your opinion as to that, Goswyn."
+
+Again Goswyn von Sydow fixed his eyes upon the picture. "That would
+depend very much upon the kind of grand-daughter," he said, frowning
+slightly. "If she were a young girl brought up in the world and
+accustomed from childhood to works of art, I should say yes. If she
+were a young girl educated in a convent or bred in the country, I
+should say no."
+
+The old lady sighed. "I knew it!" she said. "My Boecklin is doomed. Ah!"
+she exclaimed, wringing her hands in mock despair. "Pray, Goswyn,"--she
+treated the young officer with the affectionate familiarity an old lady
+would use towards a young fellow whom she has known intimately from
+early childhood,--"press that button beside you."
+
+The dragoon, evidently perfectly at home in the house, stretched out a
+very long arm and pressed the button.
+
+The footman immediately appeared. "Luedecke, call Friedrich to help you
+take down that picture."
+
+"Friedrich has gone to the station, your Excellency," Luedecke permitted
+himself to remark.
+
+"Yes, of course everything is topsy-turvy; nothing is as it has been
+used to be. 'Coming events cast their shadows before.' It will always
+be so now," sighed the Countess.
+
+"I will help you take down the picture, Luedecke," Herr von Sydow said,
+quietly, and before the Countess could look around there was nothing
+save a broad expanse of light cretonne and two hooks upon the wall
+where the Boecklin had hung.
+
+Luedecke's strength sufficed to carry the picture from the room.
+
+"Bring in tea," the Countess called after him. "You will take a cup of
+tea with me, Goswyn?"
+
+"Are you not going to wait for the young Countess?" Sydow asked, rather
+timidly.
+
+"Oh, she will not be here before midnight. I don't know why Friedrich
+has gone at this hour to the station; probably he is in love with the
+young person at the railway restaurant; else I cannot understand his
+hurry. However, I thank you for your admonition."
+
+"But, my dear Countess----" exclaimed the young man.
+
+"No need to excuse yourself," she cut short what he was about to say.
+"I am not displeased: you have never displeased me, except by not
+having arranged matters so as to come into the world as my son.
+Moreover, I should seriously regret the loss of your good opinion. Pray
+forgive me for not driving myself to the railway station to meet my
+grand-daughter and to edify the officials with a touching and effective
+scene. Consider, this is my last comfortable evening."
+
+"Your last comfortable evening," Goswyn von Sydow repeated,
+thoughtfully.
+
+"Now you disapprove of me again," the old Countess complained,
+ironically.
+
+"Disapprove!" he repeated, with an ineffective attempt to laugh at the
+word. "Really, Countess, if I did not know how kind-hearted you are, I
+should be sorry for your grand-daughter."
+
+Ho cleared his throat several times as he spoke; he always became a
+little hoarse when speaking directly from his heart.
+
+"Kind-hearted,--kind-hearted," the old lady murmured, provoked; "pray
+don't put me off with compliments. What sort of word is 'kind-hearted'?
+One has weak nerves just as one has an aching tooth, and one does all
+that one can to spare them; all the little woes one perceives one
+relieves, if possible,--of course it is very disagreeable not to
+relieve them,--but the intense misery with which the world is filled
+one simply forgets, and is none the worse for so doing. You know it is
+not my fashion to deceive myself as to the beauty of my own character.
+You are sorry for my grand-daughter."
+
+He would have assured her that he spoke conditionally, but she would
+not allow him to do so. "Yes, you are sorry for my grand-daughter," she
+said, decidedly, "but are you not at all sorry for me?"
+
+"Upon that point you must allow me to express myself when I have made
+acquaintance with the young Countess."
+
+"That has very little to do with it," rejoined the old lady. "Let us
+take it for granted that she is charming. Doctor Herbegg says she is a
+jewel of the purest water, lacking nothing but a little polish;
+between ourselves, I do not altogether believe him. He exaggerated my
+grand-daughter's attractions a little to make it easy for me to receive
+her. He is a good man, but, like two-thirds of the men who are worth
+anything,"--with a significant side-glance at Sydow,--"a little of a
+prig. But let us take for granted that my grand-daughter is the
+ph[oe]nix he describes, it is none the less true that on her account I
+must, in my old age, alter my comfortable mode of life, and subject
+myself to the thousand petty annoyances which the presence of a young
+girl in my house is sure to bring with it. Do you know how I felt when
+my indispensable old donkey"--the Countess Lenzdorff was wont
+frequently to designate thus her old footman Luedecke--"carried out my
+Boecklin?" She fixed her eyes sadly upon the bare place on the wall. "I
+felt as if he were dragging out with it all the comforts of my daily
+life! Ah, here is the tea."
+
+"It has been here for some time," Sydow said, smiling. "I was just
+about to call your attention to the kettle, which is boiling over."
+
+She made the tea with extreme precision. It was delightful to see the
+beautiful old lady presiding over the old-fashioned silver tray with
+its contents. She wore on this evening a white tulle cap tied beneath
+the chin, and over it an exquisite little black lace scarf. A refined
+Epicurean nature revealed itself in her every movement,--in the
+delicate grace with which she handled the transparent teacups and
+measured the tea from its dainty caddy,--in the gusto with which she
+inhaled the aroma of this very choice brand of tea.
+
+"There!" she said, handing the young officer a cup, "you may not agree
+with my views of life, but you must praise my tea, which is in fact
+much too good for you, who follow the vile German custom of spoiling it
+with sugar."
+
+She herself had put in the sugar for him, taking care to give him just
+as much as he liked; she handed him a plate, and offered him the
+delicate wafers which she knew he preferred. She was excessively kind
+to him, and he valued her; he was cordially attached to her; she had
+been his mother's oldest friend; she had spoiled him from boyhood, and
+had, as she said, "thought the world of him." This could not but please
+any man. He appreciated so highly her kindness and thoughtfulness that
+until to-night the selfishness of which she boasted, and by which she
+had laid down the rules of her life, had seemed to him little more than
+amusing eccentricity. But to-night her attitude towards her grandchild
+grieved him. Not that he regarded this grandchild from a romantic point
+of view. He was no unpractical dreamer, nor even what is usually called
+an idealist, which means in German nothing except a muddled brain that
+deems it quite improper to hold clear views upon any subject or to look
+any reality boldly in the face. On the contrary, he had a very calm and
+sensible way of regarding matters. Consequently he thought it probable
+that the poor, neglected young girl, left for three years to the care
+of a boorish step-father, awkward and tactless as she must be under the
+circumstances, would be anything but a suitable addition to the
+household of the Countess Lenzdorff; but, good heavens! the girl was
+the old lady's flesh and blood, a poor thing who had lost her mother
+three years previously and had had no one to speak a kind word to her
+since. If the poor creature were ill-bred and neglected, whose fault
+was it, in fact? It passed his power of comprehension that the old lady
+should feel nothing save the inconvenience and annoyance of the
+situation, that she should be stirred by no emotion of pity.
+
+Perhaps she guessed his thoughts,--she was skilled in divining the
+thoughts of others,--but she cared nothing about shocking people; on
+the contrary, she rather liked to do so.
+
+When he picked up one of the books on her table she said, "None of your
+namby-pamby literature, Goswyn, but a bright, witty book. Tell me, do
+you think that in my grand-daughter's honour I ought to lock up all my
+entertaining books and subscribe to the 'Children's Friend'?"
+
+"Let us take for granted that your grand-daughter has not contracted
+the habit of dipping into every book she sees lying about," Goswyn
+observed.
+
+"Let us hope so," she said, with a laugh; "but who knows? For three
+years she has been without any one to look after her, and probably she
+has already devoured her precious step-father's entire library."
+
+"Oh, Countess!"
+
+"What would you have? Such cases do occur. Look at your sister-in-law
+Dorothea: she told me, with an air of great satisfaction, that before
+her marriage she had read all Belot."
+
+"She avowed the same thing to me just after she came home from her
+wedding journey, and she seemed to think it very clever," replied
+Goswyn, slowly.
+
+"H'm! the wicked fairy always asserts that you were in love with your
+sister-in-law," the old lady said, archly menacing him with her
+forefinger.
+
+"Indeed? I should like to know upon what my aunt Brock founds her
+assertion," the young man rejoined, coldly.
+
+"Why, upon the intense dislike you always parade for your pretty
+sister-in-law," the Countess said, with a laugh.
+
+"I do not parade it at all."
+
+"But you feel it."
+
+Goswyn von Sydow had risen from his chair. "It is very late," he said,
+picking up his cap.
+
+"I have not driven you away with my poor jests?" the old lady inquired,
+as she also rose.
+
+"No," he replied,--"at least not for long: if you will permit me, my
+dear Countess, I will call upon you in the autumn."
+
+"And until then----?"
+
+"I shall not have that pleasure, unfortunately; I leave with the
+General to-morrow for Kiel, and came to-night only to bid you good-bye.
+When I return I shall hardly find you still in Berlin."
+
+"Indeed? I am sorry," she replied, "first because I really like to see
+you from time to time, although you entertain antiquated views of life
+and always disapprove of me, and secondly because I had hoped you would
+help me a little in my grand-daughter's education. Of course if she has
+already perused all Belot----"
+
+"It would suit you precisely, Countess," he said, rallying her, "for
+then you could--h'm--hang up your Boecklin in its old place."
+
+"What an idea!" cried the Countess. "But you are quite mistaken: I
+should be furious if my grand-daughter should be found to have read all
+Belot's works."
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+"Of course; because then there would be absolutely no hope of your
+taking the child off my hands."
+
+He frowned.
+
+"Do you understand me?" the old lady asked, gaily.
+
+"Partly."
+
+"Unfortunately, you seem to have very little desire for matrimony."
+
+"I confess that for the present it is but faint."
+
+"Let us hope that this mysterious Erika will be charming enough to----"
+
+Suddenly she turned her head: a carriage was rolling along Bellevue
+Street, already deserted at this hour because of the lateness of the
+season. It stopped before the house. The old lady started, grew visibly
+paler, and compressed her lips.
+
+The hall door opened; the servants ran down the staircase.
+
+"Good night, Countess!" Goswyn touched the delicate old hand with his
+lips and hurried away.
+
+On the staircase he encountered a tall slender girl in the most
+unbecoming mourning attire that he had ever seen a human being wear,
+and with gloves so much too short that they revealed a pair of
+slightly-reddened wrists. He touched his cap, and bowed profoundly.
+
+He carried into the street with him an impression in his heart of
+something pale, slender, immature, pathetic, concealing the germ of
+great beauty.
+
+He could not forget the distress in the eyes that had looked out from
+the pale oval face. He recalled the coldly-sneering old woman in the
+room he had left, with her disdain of all emotion. He knew how she
+would be repelled by the red wrists and the disfiguring gown. "Poor
+thing!" he said to himself.
+
+In thoughtful mood he walked along a path in the Thiergarten. All
+around reigned silence. The sweet vigour of the spring-time was wafted
+from the soil, from the trees, from every tender soft unfolding leaf.
+In the gentle light of countless sparkling stars the feathery young
+foliage gleamed with a ghostly pallor; here and there a lantern shone,
+a spot of yellow light in the dimness, colouring the grass and leaves
+about it arsenic-green.
+
+No people were here who had anything to do; only here and there a pair
+of lovers were strolling in the warm shade of the spring night.
+
+The insistent rhythm of some popular dance interrupted the yearning
+music of spring which was sighing through the half-open leaves and
+blossoms. The noise annoyed him, reminding him unpleasantly of the
+cynicism with which unsuccessful men are wont to vaunt the bitterness
+of their existence.
+
+He had walked far out of his way, into the midst of the Thiergarten.
+
+More lovers; another pair,--and still another.
+
+Except for them the place was deserted, silent: above were the
+glimmering stars, and on the earth below them the tall trees full of
+life, striving upward to the light; everywhere breathed the fragrance
+of fresh young growth, mingled with the aroma of last year's decaying
+leaves; the thrill of life around, with the echo in the distance of the
+vulgar dance-music.
+
+He could not have told how or why it was, but Sydow was more than ever
+conscious to-night of the discord sounding through creation, vainly
+seeking, as it has done for centuries, for its solution.
+
+And in the midst of his discontent there arose within him the memory of
+the haunting distress in the young girl's large eyes, and he was filled
+with warm, eager compassion for the poor, forlorn creature for whom
+there was no one to care. He would have liked to take the child in his
+arms and soothe her distress as one would have petted a bird fallen
+from the nest, or a truant, beaten dog.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER V.
+
+
+The Countess Lenzdorff had gone to meet her granddaughter as far as the
+vestibule, which was hung with Japanese crape and lighted by red
+Venetian lanterns in wrought-iron frames.
+
+She had been convinced from the first that the brilliant description
+which Doctor Herbegg had given of her grand-daughter was not to be
+trusted, and she had consequently moderated her expectations, but yet
+she was startled at what she encountered in the vestibule, the door of
+which the ever-ready Luedecke had left open. At first she thought that
+the tall spare girl in that gown was her grand-daughter's attendant;
+but since behind the awkward creature whose clothes were all awry
+stalked a broad-shouldered female grenadier with a woollen kerchief on
+her head and a pasteboard bandbox in her hand, she doubted no longer
+which was her grand-daughter: it was not necessary for Doctor Herbegg
+to present the girl to her with, "Here is the young Countess, your
+Excellency."
+
+She advanced a step and touched the girl's forehead with her lips.
+
+"Welcome to Berlin, dear child," she said, coldly. This, then, was her
+grand-daughter,--this angular creature with red wrists and a servant
+who wore a woollen kerchief on her head and carried in her hand an
+archaic pasteboard bandbox. The Countess shuddered. "Will you have a
+cup of tea, my dear Doctor?" she said, turning to her lawyer with the
+hope of putting a little life into the situation. Then, seeing him look
+at her with something of the dismay in his expression which Goswyn von
+Sydow's features had shown when she had complained that this was to be
+her last comfortable evening, she added, hastily, "You will not? Well,
+you are right; it is late; another time, my dear Herbegg, you will do
+me the pleasure; and I--I could hardly remain with you; I am too--too
+desirous of making acquaintance with my grand-daughter."
+
+The last words came with something of a stumble, as if the Countess had
+been obliged to give them a push before they would leave her lips.
+
+The Doctor took a ceremonious leave. Minna, with her bandbox, which she
+refused to allow any one to take from her, was conducted by a footman
+to the servants' hall, the Countess Lenzdorff having informed her
+that her own maid would attend for this evening to her young
+mistress's wants. Erika followed her grandmother through several
+brilliantly-lighted apartments, the arrangement of which produced upon
+her the impression of a fairy-tale, to an airy little room adjoining
+the old Countess's sleeping-apartment.
+
+"This is your room," said Countess Lenzdorff. "I had your bed put for
+the present in my dressing-room; it is the best arrangement, and--and
+I--I think I would rather have you close at hand. Of course it is all
+provisionary: I do not even know yet what is to be done with you,
+whether--whether you will stay with me, or go for a while to some
+school. At any rate, for the present you must try to feel comfortable
+with me."
+
+Comfortable! It was asking much of the girl that she should feel
+comfortable under the circumstances! She wanted to say something: it
+annoyed her to have to play the part of a dunce,--her poor, youthful
+pride rebelled against it,--but she said not a word; she had to summon
+up all her resolution to keep back the tears that would well up to her
+eyes. With the slow stony gaze of one who is determined not to cry, she
+looked about her upon her new surroundings.
+
+How airy and fragrant, how bright and fresh and inviting, it all was!
+But in the midst of this Paradise she stood, trembling with fatigue,
+sore in soul and body, timid and sad, with but one wish,--that she
+might creep away somewhere into the dark.
+
+a?c Her grandmother perceived something of the girl's suffering, but
+still could not overcome her own distaste. "Will you dress first, or
+have some supper immediately?" she asked, with an evident effort to be
+kind. As she spoke, her bright eyes scanned the girl from head to foot.
+Poor Erika! She understood only too clearly that her grandmother was
+disappointed in her, that personally she was in no respect what the old
+lady had hoped for.
+
+"I should like to brush off some of this dust," she stammered, meekly.
+Her voice was remarkably soft and sweet, and her accent brought a
+reminiscence of the Austrian intonation, so much admired in Berlin.
+
+For the first time the Countess's heart was moved in favour of the
+young creature; some chord within her vibrated agreeably. "Well, my
+child, do just as you like," she said, rather more warmly, as she made
+an attempt to unfasten the top button of the ugly black garment that so
+disfigured her grand-daughter. With a shy gesture Erika raised her
+hands and held her poor gown together over her breast. There was
+something in the gesture that touched the old lady. "You may go,"
+she said to the maid, who had meanwhile been unpacking Erika's
+travelling-bag. "I will ring for you when we want you." Then, turning
+to Erika, she added, "I will help you myself to undress."
+
+Erika's sensations can hardly be described. Apart from the fact that in
+consequence of her intense shyness, the shyness of a very strong, pure
+nature bred in solitude, it was terrible to her even to take off her
+gown in the presence of a stranger, it suddenly seemed very hard to her
+(she had not thought of it at first) to expose to her grandmother's
+penetrating gaze the poverty of her wardrobe. She trembled from head to
+foot as her grandmother drew down her gown from her shoulders. But,
+strange to say, it almost seemed as if with the ugly dress some sort of
+barrier of separation between herself and her grandmother were removed.
+The old lady's bright eyes were dimmed by a certain emotion as she
+noticed the coarse, ill-made, but daintily white linen shift that left
+bare a small portion of the young, half-developed shoulders. "Poor
+thing!" she murmured, the words coming for the first time warm from her
+heart. Then, stroking the girl's long, slender, nobly-modelled arm, she
+said, "How fair you are! I only begin now to see what you look like."
+She lifted the heavy knot of shining hair from the back of Erika's
+neck, and, in an access of that absence of mind for which she was noted
+in the Berlin world of society, exclaimed, "_Mais elle est
+magnifique!_--In three years she will be a beauty!--Turn your head a
+little to the left."
+
+Her grand-daughter's stare of dismay recalled her. "What would Goswyn
+say if he heard me?" she thought, and smiled.
+
+Erika had only bathed her face and hands, and slipped on a long white
+dressing-gown of her grandmother's, when the maid brought in a waiter
+with her supper. In spite of her continued sense of discomfort, youth
+demanded its rights. She was decidedly hungry, and it was long since
+she had seen anything so inviting as this dainty repast. She sat down
+and began to eat.
+
+The old Countess observed her narrowly, but saw nothing to displease
+her. Her grandchild's manner of eating and drinking, of holding her
+fork, her glass of water,--all was just as it should be.
+
+The whole thing seemed odd to the Countess Lenzdorff: she delighted in
+everything odd.
+
+Not to disturb the girl at her repast, she looked away from her,
+glancing at the contents of the shabby old travelling-bag which the
+maid had unpacked. How poverty-stricken it all looked, in almost
+ridiculous--no, in positively pathetic--contrast with the young
+creature who in spite of her awkwardness had a regal air. "_Mais elle
+est superbe!_ Where were my eyes?" the Countess thought, as she
+casually picked up a book from among Erika's belongings. It was a
+volume of Plutarch. "'Tis comical enough," she thought, "if I am to
+have a little blue-stocking in the house."
+
+As she turned over the leaves rather absently, she noticed that
+passages here and there were encircled by thick pencil-marks: sometimes
+an entire page would be thus marked, sometimes only a few lines.
+
+"What does that mean?" she asked.
+
+"My mother always used to mark so in my books the parts that I must not
+read," Erika said, simply.
+
+The Countess's eyes flashed. How sure a way to lead a child to taste
+the forbidden fruit!--or was it possible that girls growing up in the
+country under the exclusive influence of a mother might be differently
+constituted from girls in cities and boarding-schools?
+
+"And you really did not read those portions?" she asked, half smiling.
+
+The girl's face grew dark. "How could I?" she exclaimed, almost
+angrily.
+
+"Brava!" cried her grandmother, patting her grandchild's shoulder. "You
+are an honourable little lady,--a very great rarity. We shall get along
+very well together."
+
+But, far from the girl's expressing any pleasure at this frank
+recognition of her excellence, her face did not relax one whit.
+
+
+Erika had gone to bed. Countess Lenzdorff was still up and pacing her
+chamber to and fro. She thoroughly understood the full significance of
+her granddaughter's being with her; she was neither heartless nor
+complaining, but, where emotion was concerned, a sensitive old woman
+who studiously avoided everything that could agitate her nerves. But at
+present she could not control her emotion; feeling awoke within her as
+from a long sleep. At first she was conscious only of a vague
+discomfort,--a strange sensation which she ascribed to nervousness that
+must be controlled; but, far from being controlled, it increased,
+growing stronger until it became a positive hunger of the heart.
+
+The self-dissatisfaction which had begun to torment her when she
+learned that Erika after her mother's death had been entirely uncared
+for, left alone with her step-father, now increased tenfold. It was the
+fault of the Pole, who had not notified her of his wife's death. But
+this excuse did not content her. How could she blame him? What had he
+done save follow her example in caring only for his own personal ease?
+
+The unkindness with which she had treated her daughter-in-law now
+troubled her more than her loveless neglect of her grandchild. Had she
+any right to despise and cast her off because of her weakness? Good
+heavens! she was a rare creature in spite of everything; she had shown
+herself so in her child's education. What an influence she must have
+exercised over the girl to preserve her from deterioration through
+those terrible three years. Poor Emma! The old Countess's heart grew
+heavy as she recalled her. Her injustice to the poor woman dated from
+years back. She could not deny it.
+
+She had never been fond of her daughter-in-law: each differed too
+fundamentally from the other. On the one hand was Anna Lenzdorff, with
+her keenly observant mind, self-interested even in her strict morality
+which in her arrogance she regarded as the necessity of her nature for
+moral purity and independence, something for which she claimed no
+merit, since she practised it solely for her private satisfaction;
+good-natured, but without enthusiasm, endlessly but lovelessly
+indulgent to humanity, and rather of opinion that life is nothing but a
+farce with a tragic conclusion, something out of which the most
+advantage may be gained by observing it from a safe, comfortable
+corner, without ever making an attempt to mingle in its activities,
+firmly convinced that the best conduct of life consists in
+acknowledging its glaring contradictions, its lack of harmony, in
+making use of palliatives where they are of use, and in postponing for
+as long as possible the facing of the huge deficit sure to appear
+at the close of every human existence. And on the other hand was
+Emma,--Emma, who had a positive horror of the philosophy of life,
+which her mother-in-law with easy indifference denominated "my
+laughing despair,"--Emma, who believed in everything, in God and in
+humanity,--yes, even, as her mother-in-law maintained, in the cure
+of leprosy and the disinterestedness of English politics,--Emma, for
+whom an existence in which she could take no active part was devoid
+of interest, and who looked upon a loveless life as worse than
+death,--Emma, whose unselfishness bordered upon fanaticism, blinding
+her conscience for a moment now and then, when she would have given to
+one person what she had no right to take from others,--Emma, utterly
+unable to appreciate proportion and moderation, and who, scorning all
+the palliatives and make shifts with which one eases existence,
+demanded from life absolute happiness, and consequently, dazzled by an
+illusion, plunged blindly into an abyss.
+
+Ah, if it had been only an abyss! but no, it was a slough, and Anna
+Lenzdorff could not traverse it.
+
+It certainly was strange that she, who found an excuse for every
+criminal of whom she read in the papers, had never been able to forgive
+her daughter-in-law when, thanks to her inborn thirst for the romantic,
+she forgot herself so far as to adore that Polish nonentity. What in
+the world could a woman of sense find in romance?
+
+When Anna von Rhoedern, at twenty-two, had married Count Ernst
+Lenzdorff, her views of life were in great measure the same that she
+had since elaborated so perfectly. She was of Courland descent, and the
+daughter of a prominent diplomat in the Russian service. Unlike her
+daughter-in-law, she had been a courted beauty, but at two-and-twenty
+she had turned her back upon all the sentimental possibilities to which
+in virtue of her great charm she had a right, and had married Count
+Lenzdorff, whose entire part in her existence she afterwards summed up
+in declaring that he really had bored her very little. And that, she
+maintained, was a great deal in a husband.
+
+She had become acquainted with him in Paris, where he was secretary to
+the Prussian legation, and she married him there; afterwards he took up
+his abode in Berlin, where he held a distinguished position in the
+Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In moments of insolent frankness she was
+wont to describe him as an automaton whose key was in the possession of
+whoever might be Minister of Foreign Affairs. Once wound up, he could
+perform all the duties of his office during the few hours in which they
+were required of him; when they were over he was a lifeless wooden
+figure-head--nothing more. A wooden figure-head whom one is obliged to
+drag after one in life conduces but little to one's comfort, especially
+when the wooden figure-head is of the dimensions of Count Ernst
+Lenzdorff, and of this his wife shortly became aware. With great
+courtesy and skill she removed him from her life as soon as possible,
+placing him somewhere in the background upon a suitable pedestal,--the
+best place for wooden figureheads, and one where they can be made to
+look very effective.
+
+The Countess's only son was the very image of his father, and quite as
+imposingly wooden.
+
+If Emma, following her mother-in-law's example, could have courteously
+and respectfully put him upon a pedestal in some corner where he would
+not have been in her way, she might have led a very tolerable life with
+him. The mistake was that she attempted to make him happy.
+
+Poor Emma! As if one possibly could make a wooden figure-head happy!
+Young Count Lenzdorff was extremely uncomfortable in view of his wife's
+exertions to make him happy. What ensued was of a very unedifying
+character: from being simply a state of contented indifference, the
+marriage became a decidedly irksome bond. Nevertheless it was most
+unfortunate for Emma when Edmund Lenzdorff, two years after their
+marriage, lost his life in a railway accident. Had he lived, her
+existence might at least have been a quiet one; in time she would have
+relinquished her ill-judged attempts to make him happy, and have found
+an object in life in the education of her child; while, as it was, he
+was no sooner dead than her existence began to totter uncertainly, like
+a ship from which the ballast has been removed.
+
+At first she sickened, as her mother-in-law expressed it, with an
+attack of acute philanthropy. She haunted the most disreputable corners
+of Berlin in search of cases of misery to be relieved, never allowing a
+servant to accompany her, because, as she explained, it might humiliate
+the poor. Upon one of her excursions her watch was snatched from her,
+and another time she caught spotted fever. This was very annoying to
+the Countess Anna, but she forgave her, with--as she was wont to
+declare--praiseworthy courage, in view of the terrible disease.
+
+Six months afterwards Emma married Strachinsky; and this her
+mother-in-law did not forgive her.
+
+Since then fourteen years had passed, fourteen years during which she
+had had nothing whatever to do with poor Emma. And now she was sorry.
+
+Again and again did the Countess Anna revert to the education given to
+the young girl asleep in the next room.
+
+A woman who could so educate her child, and who could continue so to
+influence her after her death, was no ordinary character.
+
+Of course she had had fine material to work upon. And the old Countess
+was conscious of an emotion never awakened within her by her son, yet
+now aroused by her grand-daughter,--pride in her own flesh and blood.
+"A splendid creature!" she murmured to herself once or twice, then
+adding, with a sneer at her own lack of perception, "and I was fool
+enough to think her ugly at first. Whom does she resemble? she is not
+in the least like her mother,--nor like my son!" Still pondering, she
+paused in her monotonous pacing to and fro, strangely thrilled. Going
+to an antique buhl cabinet with a multitude of drawers, she opened one
+of them,--a secret drawer, which had long been undisturbed,--and began
+to look through its contents. At last she found what she sought, a
+lithograph representing a young girl, _decolletee_, and with the huge
+sleeves in fashion in 1830. A very charming young girl the picture
+portrayed,--Countess Lenzdorff when she was still Anna von Rhoedern.
+
+The little faded picture trembled in the old lady's hand: it worked
+upon her like a spell, carrying her back to a time long forgotten,--a
+time when life had been to her something different from a farce with a
+tragic ending, by which one might be vastly entertained, but in which
+one should scorn to play a part. She was suddenly deeply pained at
+sight of the beautiful, grave, proud young face: it suggested to her
+something that had begun very finely and ended in unutterable
+bitterness, something through which the best and most genial part of
+her had been destroyed, or at least paralyzed. Hark! What was that? A
+low, suppressed sob! another! They came from the adjoining room. The
+old Countess dropped the little picture, and, with a candle in her
+hand, went to her grand-daughter's bedside. When she heard her
+grandmother coming, Erika closed her eyes, feigning sleep, but she had
+not time to wipe away the tears from her cheeks.
+
+Her grandmother set the candle upon the table, and then, bending over
+the girl, whispered, softly, "Erika!" Erika did not stir. How pathetic
+she looked!--pale and thin, and yet so noble and charming in spite of
+the traces of tears.
+
+The Countess sat down upon the edge of the bed and stroked the girl's
+wet cheeks. "Erika, my darling, what is the matter? Are you homesick?"
+
+Then Erika opened her large eyes and looked gloomily at her
+grandmother. She answered not a word, but compressed her lips. How
+could her grandmother ask her if she was homesick, when all that she
+had of home was a grave?
+
+For one moment the old Countess hesitated; then, lifting the reluctant
+girl from the pillows, she clasped her to her breast, pressing her lips
+upon the golden head, and murmuring softly, "Forgive me, my child,
+forgive me!" For one moment Erika's obstinate resistance was
+maintained; then she began to sob convulsively; and then--then her
+grandmother felt the slender form nestle close within her arms, while
+the weary young head fell upon her shoulder and a sensation of sweet,
+young warmth penetrated to the Countess's very heart, which suddenly
+grew quite heavy with tenderness.
+
+Erika was soon sound asleep, but her grandmother still felt no desire
+to retire to rest. "I will write to Goswyn," she said to herself. "I
+must tell him she is charming, and that I will make her happy."
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+Nine months had passed since Erika's arrival in Berlin. She had
+travelled much with her grandmother, passing the time in Schlangenbad,
+Gastein, and the Riviera. As soon as she had become further acquainted
+with her, Countess Anna had relinquished all thoughts of sending her
+grand-daughter to a boarding-school. "What could you gain from a
+boarding-school?" she said. "H'm! Have your corners rubbed off? In my
+opinion that would be matter of regret. And as for your education,
+there's too much already in that head of yours for a girl of your age;
+but that we can't alter, and must make allowance for." And she tapped
+Erika on the cheek, and looked at her with eyes beaming with pride.
+
+Erika had come to be the centre of her existence, her idol, the most
+entertaining toy she had ever possessed, the most precious jewel she
+had ever worn. Moreover, she was the late-awakened poetry of her life,
+the transfigured resurrection of her own youth. That was all very
+natural: she was not the first grand-mother in the world who had
+thought her grand-daughter a phenomenon; and it would have mattered
+little in any wise if she had not thought it necessary to impress her
+grand-daughter with the high opinion she entertained of her. Everything
+that she could do to turn the young girl's head she did, all out of
+pure inconsequence and love of talking, because never in her life had
+she been able to keep anything to herself. For in fact she was as
+unwise as she was clever: her cleverness was an article of luxury,
+something with which she entertained herself and others, with which she
+theoretically arranged the most complex combination of circumstances,
+but which never helped her over the simplest disturbance of her daily
+life. She was thoroughly unpractical, and was aware of it, without
+understanding why it was so. Since she could not alter it,--indeed, she
+never tried to,--she evaded every difficult problem of existence, with
+the Epicurean love of ease which was her only enduring rule of conduct.
+Her affection for Erika was now part of her egotism. She was never
+weary of exulting in the girl's beauty and brilliant qualities; she
+felt every annoyance experienced by her grand-daughter as a personal
+pang, every triumph as homage paid to herself; but she never thought of
+the responsibility she had assumed towards this lovely blossom
+unfolding in such luxuriance. She was convinced that Erika's life would
+develop of itself just as her own had done, and in this conviction she
+felt not the slightest compunction in spoiling the girl from morning
+until night, and in absolutely forcing her to consider herself the
+centre of the universe.
+
+With almost equal impatience grandmother and grand-daughter awaited the
+moment when Erika should enchant the world of Berlin society.
+
+And now it was the beginning of February, and the first
+Wednesday-afternoon reception of Countess Anna Lenzdorff after her
+return from Italy. She, whose social indolence had long been
+proverbial, had sent out numerous cards, many of them to people who had
+long since supposed themselves forgotten by her. All this, too, without
+any idea of as yet introducing her grand-daughter to society, but
+simply that people "might have a glimpse of her."
+
+As a result of the Countess Anna's suddenly developed amiability
+towards Berlin society, this reception was largely attended. Erika
+presided at the tea-table in a toilette of studied simplicity and with
+a regal self-consciousness due to the enthusiasm which her grandmother
+displayed for her various charms, but which the girl had the good taste
+to conceal beneath an attractive air of modesty. She did not rattle her
+teacups awkwardly, she upset no cream, she never pressed a guest to
+take what had once been declined; in short, she committed none of the
+blunders so frequently the consequence of shyness in young novices; and
+she was, as her grandmother expressed it, simply "wonderful." Full
+forty times the old lady had presented "my grand-daughter," with the
+same proud intonation, observing narrowly the impression produced upon
+each guest,--an impression almost sure to be one of pleased surprise;
+whereupon Countess Lenzdorff--the same Countess Lenzdorff who had been
+always ready to ridicule, and to ridicule nothing more unsparingly than
+the mutual admiration characteristic of German families--would begin,
+in a loud whisper of which not one word escaped Erika's ears, to
+enumerate her grandchild's unusual attractions: "What do you think of
+this child who has dropped from the skies into my house to brighten my
+old age? 'Tis my usual luck, is it not? A charming creature; and what a
+carriage! Just observe her profile,--now, when she turns her head,--and
+the line of the cheek and throat. And to think that I was actually
+reluctant to receive the child! Oh, I treated her shamefully; but I am
+atoning to her for the past. I spoil her a little; but how can I help
+it? I thought it would be such a bore to have a young girl in the
+house, but, on the contrary, she makes me young again. No need to stoop
+to her intellectually: she is interested in everything. At first I was
+going to send her to school. H'm! there is more in that golden head of
+hers than behind the blue spectacles of all the school-mistresses in
+Germany. And that is not what interests me most: she has a certain
+frank honesty of nature that enchants me. Oh, she certainly is
+remarkable."
+
+There the Countess Lenzdorff was right,--Erika was remarkable,--but she
+was wrong in parading the child before her acquaintances: first because
+it bored her acquaintances,--when are we ever entertained by listening
+to the praises of somebody whom we hardly know?--and again because her
+exaggerated laudation of her grandchild excited the antagonism of her
+listeners. On this first reception-day she laid the foundation of the
+unpopularity from which Erika was to suffer long afterwards.
+
+The afternoon was nearing its close; the lamps were lit; three
+or four ladies only, all in black,--the court was in mourning at the
+time,--were still sitting in the cosiest corner of the drawing-room.
+Close by the hearth sat a tiny old lady, Frau von Norbin, _nee_
+Princess Nimbsch, with a delicately chiselled face framed in
+silver-gray curls, a face the colour of a faded rose-leaf, and with a
+thin clear voice that sounded like an antique musical clock and seemed
+to come from far away. She was about ten years older than Countess
+Anna, but had been one of her most intimate friends from childhood,
+belonging also to an old Courland family, which had given the Vienna
+Congress a good deal of trouble. She had known Talleyrand in her youth,
+and had corresponded with Chateaubriand. Countess Lenzdorff had a
+water-colour sketch of her as a young girl with a wreath of vine-leaves
+on her head, her hair hanging about her shoulders in Bacchante fashion,
+and with very bare arms holding aloft a tambourine. The rococo
+sentiment of the faded sketch contrasted strangely with the old lady's
+dignified decrepitude and poetically softened charm.
+
+Opposite her, and evidently very desirous to stand well with her, sat a
+certain Frau von Geroldstein, wife of a wealthy merchant who had
+purchased a patent of nobility in one of the petty German states,
+without, as he learned too late, acquiring any court privileges for his
+wife. Indignant at the pettiness of the German sovereign in duodecimo,
+he had established himself in Berlin, where his wife hoped to find a
+suitable stage for her social efforts. She had been there three years
+without finding any aristocratic coigne of vantage for her pretensions;
+in despair she had fallen back upon celebrities, artists, professors,
+politicians (even democrats), to lend a certain splendour to her
+_salon_. After at last finding her aristocratic vantage-ground at a
+watering-place in the shape of a General's widow, with debts, and a
+daughter of forty whom she alleged to be twenty-four, she annoyed her
+old acquaintances extremely. It was the business of her life to extort
+forgiveness from society for having once invited Eugene Richter to her
+house. Society never forgives, but it sometimes forgets if it be
+convenient to do so. It began to find it convenient to forget all sorts
+of things about Frau von Geroldstein, not only her political
+acquaintances, but also that her husband had made his fortune by
+furnishing army-supplies of doubtful quality.
+
+Frau von Geroldstein was so available, and was besides so ready to make
+any concessions required of her. She threw Eugene Richter overboard,
+and developed a touching enthusiasm for the court chaplain Dryander.
+She bombarded society with invitations to dinners which were excellent,
+and at which one was sure to meet no undesirable individuals. She paid
+endless visits, and possessed in fullest measure the article most
+indispensable to the career of social aspirants,--a very thick skin.
+
+She was about twenty-five years old, and was gifted by nature with a
+very small waist, which she pinched in to the stifling-point, and with
+a face which would have been pretty had it not given the impression, as
+did everything else about her, of artificiality. Of course her court
+mourning was trimmed with three times as much crape as that of any
+other lady present; and today she had made it her special business to
+win the favour of little Frau von Norbin. She had offered her three
+things already,--her riding-horse for Frau von Norbin's daughter, her
+lawn-tennis ground (she had a wonderful garden behind her house, which
+no one used), and her opera-box; but Frau von Norbin's manner was still
+coldly reserved. At last Frau von Geroldstein discovered from a remark
+of Countess Lenzdorff's that the old lady's principal interest lay in a
+children's hospital of which she was the chief patroness. Frau von
+Geroldstein instantly declared that the improvement of the health of
+the children of the poor was positively all that she cared for in life:
+when might she visit the hospital? Countess Lenzdorff smiled somewhat
+maliciously when Frau von Norbin, caught at last by this benevolent
+birdlime, plunged into a conversation with Frau von Geroldstein upon
+the most practical mode of nursing children.
+
+Meanwhile, Countess Lenzdorff turned for amusement to a young maid of
+honour, a charming person, whose delicate sense of humour had been
+uninjured by the debilitating atmosphere of the court, and who was now
+detailing the latest misfortunes of a certain Countess Ida von Brock.
+
+This Countess Brock was a notorious figure in Berlin society. She was
+usually called the twelfth fairy, since she was frequently omitted in
+the invitations to some social 'high mass' (the word was of Countess
+Lenzdorff's invention) and was then sure to appear uninvited and to do
+all kinds of mischief by her malicious gossip. Every winter she looked
+out for fresh lions for her menagerie, as her _salon_ was called in
+familiar conversation,--for artists sufficiently well bred to consort
+with men of fashion, and for men of fashion sufficiently intelligent to
+appreciate artists. Since, thanks to her numberless eccentricities and
+indiscretions, she had quarrelled with all sorts of people, she was
+always obliged to entreat a few influential friends to procure for her
+her anthropological curiosities. Some time ago she had applied to
+Countess Lenzdorff to provide her with 'twelve witty Counts,'--an order
+which Countess Lenzdorff had declined to fill, upon the plea that the
+supply was just then exhausted.
+
+During the previous winter the glory of her _salon_ had been a
+hypnotizer, a young American for whom the Countess Ida had been wildly
+enthusiastic.
+
+Mr. Van Tromp was his name; he had a dome-like forehead, and he cost
+nothing; he was quite ready to sacrifice his time without pay for the
+pleasure of mingling in good society,--a pleasure more highly prized by
+an American, as is well known, than by any European aspirant. At the
+close of the season the Countess's footman had unfortunately put
+aqua-fortis in the chambermaid's tea, and, as the Countess ascribed the
+crime to the influence of Van Tromp, she straightway relinquished her
+hypnotic pastime, the more willingly as most of her other guests
+considered it a rather dangerous game.
+
+Van Tromp was informed of this when he next visited the Countess. He
+acquiesced in her decision, and amiably and unselfishly hoped that
+without any further exercise of his peculiar talent she would allow him
+to visit her 'as a friend.' Countess Brock, however, wrote him a note
+thanking him for his great kindness, but at the same time insisting
+that she could not possibly allow him to waste his time at her house;
+the people frequenting it were in fact quite too insignificant to
+associate with so great a man as himself.
+
+This mode of turning out of doors people whom she could no longer make
+use of she called treating them with delicacy and tact. What Mr. Van
+Tromp thought of it is not known: he revenged himself, however, by
+writing a book upon Berlin society, which, as it was full of scandalous
+stories and appeared anonymously, lived through twenty-five editions.
+
+With a view of making her Thursday evenings attractive this year,
+Countess Brock had determined to have some one of her favourite modern
+dramas read aloud at each of them, and had engaged the services of a
+handsome young actor with a broad chest and a strong voice as reader.
+The readings had begun the previous week with a German translation of
+Dumas' "_Femme de Claude_."
+
+The young maid of honour had been present, and she declared it "comical
+beyond description."
+
+There were several young girls among the audience, and scarcely had the
+handsome young actor with the powerful voice reached the middle of the
+second act when there was a rustling in the assembly, caused by a
+mother's conducting her daughter from the room. This went on all
+through the evening. Whilst the reader pursued his way with enthusiasm,
+each scene frightened away some two or three delicate-minded
+individuals, until the hostess found herself left almost entirely alone
+with the handsome young actor and a few gentlemen. "I persisted in
+remaining," the maid of honour continued, amid the laughter of her
+audience, "but I assure you----"
+
+At this moment the servant announced "Frau Countess Brock," and there
+entered a woman of medium height, in a large high-shouldered seal-skin
+coat, for which departure from the prescribed court mourning a long
+crape veil atoned, a wonder of a veil, draped picturesquely over a Mary
+Stuart bonnet and hanging down over a slightly-bent back. Her grizzled
+hair was arranged above her forehead in curls, and her face, which must
+once have been handsome, was disfigured by affected contortions,
+sometimes grotesque, sometimes malicious, often both together.
+
+Countess Lenzdorff immediately presented her niece to the new-comer,
+but the 'wicked fairy' paid no heed, and Erika made her a graceful
+courtesy which she did not see. She gave additional proof of
+near-sightedness by almost sitting down upon Frau von Norbin, and by
+mistaking Frau von Geroldstein for a distinguished authoress aged
+seventy.
+
+Frau von Norbin smiled good-naturedly, and Frau von Geroldstein
+declared the blunder delicious. Privately she was furious, not at being
+mistaken for an aged woman, but at being supposed to be an authoress.
+However, she could endure it, since she had arranged a visit with Frau
+von Norbin to the children's hospital for the next afternoon. That was
+a triumph, at all events.
+
+"H'm! h'm! what were you all laughing at when I came in?" asked the
+'wicked fairy,' taking a seat beside Countess Lenzdorff.
+
+Upon which a rather embarrassed silence ensued, and she went on with a
+sigh: "At my disaster, of course. Yes, yes, I know, Clara,"--this to
+the maid of honour,--"you will tell the _desastre_ to all Berlin. It
+was terrible!--Oh, thanks, no,"--this with a polite grin to Erika, who
+offered her a cup of tea. "That frightful actor!" she wailed, raising
+her black-gloved hands, palms outward,--a gesture peculiarly her own
+and used to express the climax of despair. "I have already denounced
+him to our principal managers: he never will get any position in a
+Berlin theatre. Think of his insolence in reading my guests out of my
+drawing-room and showing me up as a lover of questionable literature."
+
+"Was the drama one of his selection?" asked Countess Lenzdorff.
+
+"No; I chose it myself. But, good heavens! the piece was of no
+importance. The mode of delivery was everything. All he had to do was
+to skip lightly over the questionable parts; instead of which he fairly
+roared them in the faces of my guests."
+
+"Evidently he liked them best," the maid of honour said, with a laugh.
+
+"Of course," the 'wicked fairy' went on, indignantly; "these people
+have neither tact nor sense of decency. Well, I have forbidden the man
+my house for the future."
+
+"Like Mr. Van Tromp," Countess Lenzdorff interposed.
+
+"Oh, I am too easily imposed upon," Countess Brock sighed. "The worst
+of it is that I have nothing now in prospect for my Thursdays."
+
+"I saw in the newspaper that a couple of almehs on their way from Paris
+to Petersburg are to appear at Kroll's," Countess Lenzdorff observed,
+maliciously: "you might hire them for an evening."
+
+"That would be against the law," remarked Frau von Geroldstein, who
+knew about everything and had no sense of humour. Countess Brock, who
+had declared that nothing should ever induce her to receive 'the
+Archduchess,' as she called Frau von Geroldstein, pretended not to
+hear; Frau von Norbin begged to be told what an _almeh_ was. Countess
+Lenzdorff laughed, and was just enlightening her in a low tone, out of
+regard for her grand-daughter, as to this Oriental specialty, when Herr
+von Sydow was announced.
+
+"Goswyn!" exclaimed Countess Anna, evidently delighted. "It is good of
+you to come at last, but not good to have let us wait so long for you."
+
+"I came as soon as I heard of your return," Sydow replied.
+
+"And, as usual, you come as late as possible," his old friend remarked,
+in an access of absence of mind, "in hopes of finding me alone."
+
+"I call that a skilful method of turning people out of doors,"
+exclaimed Frau von Norbin, laughing, and in spite of her hostess's
+protestations she arose and took her leave, accompanied by the young
+maid of honour.
+
+Whilst Erika, with the modest grace which she had learned so quickly,
+conducted the two ladies to the vestibule, where only two or three
+remained of the crowd of footmen that had occupied it early in the
+afternoon, Goswyn's eyes rested on the wall, where, to his great
+surprise, hung the same Boecklin that had been removed upon his former
+visit in view of the expected arrival of the Countess's grand-daughter.
+
+"So you sent the young Countess to boarding-school?" he remarked.
+
+"What?" exclaimed the Countess, indignant at such an idea. "You must
+see that I am far too old to forego the pleasure of having the child
+with me." Then, observing that the young man's eyes were directed
+towards her favourite picture, she suddenly remembered the conversation
+she had had with him in the spring. "Oh, yes; you are thinking of how
+hard it seemed to me to receive the child. It makes me laugh to recall
+it. As for the picture, there was no need to hide it from her: she knew
+the entire Vatican by heart when she came to me, from photographs. She
+looks at everything, and sees beyond it! I am longing to have you know
+her: did you not notice her? though this February twilight, to be sure,
+is very dim. She has just escorted Hedwig Norton from the room."
+
+"Was that your grand-daughter?" Sydow asked, in surprise. "I thought it
+was your niece Odette."
+
+"Where were your eyes?" Countess Lenzdorff asked, in an aggrieved tone.
+"Odette is pretty enough, but a grisette,--a mere grisette,--in
+comparison with Erika. Erika is a head taller; and then, my dear, _un
+port de reine_,--_absolument, un port de reine_. Ah, here she
+comes.--Erika, Herr von Sydow wishes to be presented to you: you know
+who he is,--a great favourite of mine, and the nicest young fellow in
+all Berlin."
+
+Erika inclined her head graciously, and, whilst the young man
+blushed at the old lady's exaggerated praise, said, with perfect
+self-possession, "Of course my grandmother has enlightened you as to my
+perfections. I think we may both be quite content, Herr von Sydow."
+
+He bowed low and took the offered chair beside his hostess. He
+knew that Countess Lenzdorff expected him to say something to her
+grand-daughter, but he could not; he was mute with astonishment. It was
+true that the Countess had written him shortly after the young girl's
+arrival that she was charming, but he had regarded this asseveration as
+a piece of remorse on her part, knowing that remorse will incline
+people to exaggerate, especially kind-hearted, selfish people, for whom
+the memory of injustice done by them is among the greatest annoyances
+of life.
+
+He could not reconcile his memory of the distressed, pale, shy girl
+whom he had seen for an instant with this extremely beautiful and
+self-possessed young lady who seemed expressly devised to act as a
+cordial for her grandmother's Epicurean selfishness. He did not know
+why, but he was half vexed that Erika was so beautiful: the previous
+tender compassion with which she had inspired him seemed ridiculous.
+
+The words for which he sought in vain with which to begin a
+conversation she soon found. "It is strange that you should not have
+recognized me here in my grandmother's drawing-room, where you might
+have expected me to be," she said, gaily. "I should have known you in
+Africa."
+
+"Where have you seen each other before?" the Countess asked, curiously.
+
+"On the stairs, on the evening of my arrival," Erika explained.
+"Evidently you do not recall it, Herr von Sydow: I ought not to have
+confessed how perfectly I remember."
+
+"Oh, I remember it very well," said Sydow, and then he paused suddenly
+with a faint smile, a smile peculiarly his own, and behind which some
+sensitive souls suspected a degree of malice, but which actually
+concealed only a certain agitation and embarrassment, a momentary
+non-comprehension of the situation. He was not very clever, except in
+moments of great danger, when he developed unusual presence of mind.
+
+"After all, 'tis no wonder that you made more impression upon me than I
+did upon you," Erika went on, easily and simply. "In the first place,
+you were the first Prussian officer I had ever met; I had never seen
+anything in Austria so tall and broad: your epaulettes inspired me with
+a degree of awe. And then you bowed so respectfully. You can't imagine
+how much good it did me. I was half dead with terror: you looked as if
+you pitied me."
+
+"I did pity you, Countess," he confessed, frankly. The tone of her
+voice, which had first won over her grandmother, was sweet in his ears.
+Moreover, she seemed very much of a child, now that she was talking.
+The impression of self-possession which she had at first given him was
+quite obliterated.
+
+"You knew that my grandmother was not glad to have me?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, I told him so, and he scolded me for it," Countess Lenzdorff
+declared, with a nod.
+
+"But, my dear Countess!" Sydow remonstrated.
+
+"Oh, I always speak the truth," the Countess exclaimed,--"always, that
+is, if possible, and sometimes even oftener: it is the only virtue upon
+which I pride myself. And you were right, Goswyn. But do you know how
+you look now? As if you were ashamed of your pity. Aha! I have hit the
+nail upon the head, and a very sensitive nail, too. It is human nature.
+There is one extravagance which even the most magnanimous never forgive
+themselves,--wasted compassion. In fact, you must perceive that the
+child has no need of the article."
+
+Goswyn was silent. If at first the Countess had hit the nail upon the
+head, he was by no means convinced of the truth of her last remark.
+Something in the old Countess's manner to her grand-daughter went
+against the grain with him: once while she was talking to him, and
+Erika, sitting beside her, nestled close to her with the innocent grace
+of a young creature to whom a little tenderness is as necessary as is
+sunshine to the opening flower, the grandmother suddenly, with a
+significant glance at Sydow, put her finger beneath the girl's chin and
+turned her face so that he might observe the particularly lovely
+outline of her cheek.
+
+Meanwhile, Countess Brock was defending herself with much ill humour
+and many grimaces from the exaggerated amiability of the 'Archduchess,'
+which found vent especially in the offer of a specific for the cure of
+neuralgia, from which the 'wicked fairy' suffered constantly, and which
+partly explained the peculiar twitching of her features. Extricating
+herself at last with much bluntness from the snare thus spread to
+entrap her favour, Countess Brock turned to the young officer, who,
+strange to relate, was her nephew. Strange to relate; for there
+certainly could be no greater contrast than that of his characteristic
+grave simplicity with her restless affectation.
+
+"My dear Goswyn!" she said, in a honeyed tone, taking a chair beside
+him.
+
+"Well, aunt?"
+
+"You scarcely spoke to me when you came in," she continued,
+reproachfully, in the same sweet tone.
+
+"You seemed very much occupied."
+
+"Occupied? yes, occupied indeed. For the last quarter of an hour I have
+been struggling like a fly in a trap. You come just at the right
+moment, dear boy." And she tapped his epaulette with a caressing
+forefinger.
+
+"Ah? Do you wish me to audit your accounts?" he asked, dryly: he had
+but slight sympathy with her.
+
+"God forbid!" exclaimed the 'wicked fairy,' raising her black-gloved
+hands with her characteristic gesture. "Nothing so prosaic as that this
+time. It was about----"
+
+"About your Thursdays," her nephew interrupted her.
+
+"Rightly guessed, dear boy. I want a new star; and you can help me a
+little. Do you know G----?"
+
+"The pianist?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I have practised with him once or twice." Goswyn played the violin in
+moments of leisure, a weakness to which he did not like to hear
+allusions made.
+
+"There! I thought so. You must bring him to me."
+
+"Pray excuse me," the young man said, decidedly. "I will have nothing
+to do with introducing any artist to you. I know too well what will
+ensue. You will squeeze him like a lemon, and then show him the door on
+the pretence that he outrages your aesthetic sense,--that his manners
+are not to your taste. You should inform yourself on that point before
+making use of him. We all know that artists are not always well bred."
+
+"Too true!" sighed Frau von Geroldstein, edging her chair nearer to the
+speaker.
+
+"All artists are ill-mannered," Countess Lenzdorff maintained, with her
+good-humoured insolence.
+
+"Even the greatest?" asked Erika, shyly. She was thinking of the young
+painter whom she had met by the monster of a bridge, and she could not
+decide whether to resent her grandmother's arrogance or to be ashamed
+of the childish admiration in which she had indulged all these years
+for the handsome vagabond of whom she had never heard since.
+
+As Frau von Geroldstein was gently sighing, "Ah, yes, even the
+greatest," Countess Anna interposed with a laugh, "They are the worst
+of all. Artistic mediocrities acquire a certain drawing-room polish far
+sooner than do the great geniuses who live in a world of their own.
+And, after all, average good manners are only the dress-suit for
+average men: they rarely sit well upon a genius. I care very little for
+them: a little _naive_ awkwardness does not displease me at all; on the
+contrary, to be quite to my mind an artist must always have something
+of the bear about him: I take no interest whatever in those trim
+dandies, 'gentlemen artists,' who think more of the polish of their
+boots than of their art."
+
+"Nor do I," sighed Frau von Geroldstein.
+
+"H'm! your discourse is always very instructive," the 'wicked fairy'
+declared, "but it does not help me in my trouble." She sighed
+tragically and arose. As she did so, her fur boa slipped from her
+shoulders to the ground. Erika picked it up and handed it to her. The
+'wicked fairy' stared at the young girl through her eye-glass, surprise
+slowly dawning in her distorted features. "You are the grand-daughter
+from Bohemia?" she asked, still with her eye-glass at her eyes.
+
+"Yes, Frau Countess."
+
+"Ah, excuse me: I have been taking you all this time for my dear Anna's
+companion. Now I remember she died last year: I sent some flowers to
+her funeral. Poor thing! she was desperately tiresome, but an excellent
+girl; you must remember her, my dear Goswyn. You used to call her the
+Duke of Wellington, because she was a little deaf and used to go on
+talking without hearing what was said to her. How could I make such a
+mistake! But I am very near-sighted, and very absent-minded." She put
+her finger beneath Erika's chin and smiled an indescribable smile. "And
+you are very pretty, my dear. What is your name?"
+
+"Erika."
+
+"Erika!--Heather Blossom! And you come from Bohemia. How poetic!--how
+poetic! She is positively charming, this grand-daughter of yours, Anna!
+Do you not think so, Goswyn?"
+
+Sydow flushed crimson, frowned, and was silent.
+
+"I must go: I seem to be saying the wrong thing," Countess Brock ran
+on; then, looking towards the window, "Good heavens!" she exclaimed,
+"it is pouring! Pray let them call a droschky."
+
+"Erika, ring the bell," said Countess Lenzdorff.
+
+Before Erika could obey, Frau von Geroldstein extended a detaining arm.
+
+"But, my dear Countess Erika, why send for a droschky, when my carriage
+is waiting below, and it will give me the greatest pleasure to drive
+Countess Brock home?--Surely you will permit me?"--this last addressed
+to the 'wicked fairy.'
+
+"I really cannot. I know you far too slightly to impose such a burden
+upon you," Countess Brock replied, crossly.
+
+"Why call it a burden? it is a pleasure," the other insisted.
+
+"There is no pleasure in driving with me: I am forced to have all the
+windows closed," said the Countess.
+
+Meanwhile, Erika stood uncertain whether or not to ring the bell, when
+suddenly affairs took a turn most favourable for Frau von Geroldstein.
+
+Herr Reichert was announced, and without another word Countess Brock
+vanished with Frau von Geroldstein, in whose coupe she was driven home.
+
+She had private reasons for this hurried retreat. Reichert, a special
+favourite of Anna Lenzdorff's, an animal painter with a lion face and
+an inexhaustible fund of anecdote, was among the '_remords_' of the
+'wicked fairy.' She called her '_remords_' the assemblage of men of
+talent of whom she had made use only to throw them aside remorselessly
+afterwards.
+
+The animal painter's visit was a brief one, and none of the Countess
+Lenzdorff's guests remained save Sydow, who stayed in obedience to the
+Countess's whispered invitation.
+
+"There! now I have had enough," she exclaimed, as the door closed
+behind her beloved animal painter. "Stay and dine, Goswyn: we dine
+early--at six--tonight, and then you can go with us to the Academy.
+Joachim is to play, and I have a spare ticket for you."
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+It is later by four-and-twenty hours. Countess Lenzdorff, with her
+grand-daughter, has just returned from a drive in a close carriage,--a
+drive interrupted by a couple of calls, and by a little shopping in the
+interest of the young girl's wardrobe.
+
+She is now sitting near the fire, a teacup in her hand, and saying,
+"You cannot go out very much this season, especially since you are not
+to be presented until next winter, but you can divert yourself with a
+few small entertainments. It was well to order your gown from Petrus in
+time: people must open their eyes when they see you first."
+
+Meanwhile, Erika has taken off her seal-skin jacket, and is sitting
+beside her grandmother, thinking of the gown that has been ordered for
+her to-day,--a white cachemire, so simple,--oh, so simple! "Nobody must
+think of your dress when they see you," her grandmother had said:
+nevertheless it was a triumph of art, this gown.
+
+"Everything about you must be perfect in style upon your first
+appearance in the world," her grandmother now says. "People must find
+nothing to criticise about you at first: afterwards we may, perhaps,
+allow ourselves a little eccentricity. I have a couple of gowns in my
+head for you which Marianne can arrange admirably, but just at first we
+must show that you can dress like everybody else,--with a slight
+difference. You must produce a certain effect. Give me another cup of
+tea, my child."
+
+Erika hands her the cup. The old lady, pats her arm caressingly.
+"Petrus is quite proud to assist at your debut: at first I thought of
+sending to Paris for a dress for you," she adds, and then there is a
+silence.
+
+The old lady has lain back in her arm-chair and fallen asleep. She
+never lies down to take a nap in the daytime, but she often dozes in
+her chair at this hour.
+
+Twilight sets in,--sets in unusually soon and quickly to-night, for the
+winter which had seemed to have bidden farewell to Berlin has returned
+with cruel intensity. The rain which on the previous day had forced
+Countess Brock into Frau von Geroldstein's arms and coupe has to-day
+turned to snow: it is lying a foot deep in the gardens in front of the
+grand houses in Bellevue Street, and is falling so fast that it has no
+chance to grow black: it lies on the trees in the Thiergarten, each
+twig bearing its own special weight, and down one side of each trunk is
+a broad bluish-white stripe; it lies on the roofs, on the palings of
+the little city gardens, yes, even on the telegraph-wires which stretch
+in countless lines against the purplish-gray sky above the white city.
+
+For a while Erika gazes out at the noiselessly-falling flakes: the snow
+still gleams white through the twilight.
+
+The girl has ceased to think of her gown: her thoughts have carried her
+far back,--back to Luzano. That last winter there,--how cold and long
+it had been!--snow, snow everywhere; nothing to be seen but a vast
+field of snow beneath a gloomy sky, the poor little village, the frozen
+brook, the river, the trees, all buried beneath it. The roads were
+obliterated; there was some difficulty in procuring the necessaries of
+existence. The cold was so great that fuel cost "a fortune," as her
+step-father expressed it. Erika was allowed none for the school-room,
+where she was wont to sit, nor for the former drawing-room, where was
+her piano. The greater part of the day she was forced to spend in the
+room, blackened with tobacco-smoke, where Strachinsky had his meals,
+played patience, and dozed on the sofa over his novels. What an
+atmosphere! The room was never aired, and reeked of stale cigar-smoke,
+coal gas, and the odour of ill-cooked food. Once Erika had privately
+broken a windowpane to admit some fresh air. But what good had it done?
+Since there was no glazier to be had immediately, the hole in the
+window had been stuffed up with rags and straw.
+
+Yet the worst of that last winter had been the constant association
+with Strachinsky.
+
+One day, in desperation, she had hurried out of doors as if driven by
+fiends, and had gone deep into the forest. Around her reigned dead
+silence. There was nothing but snow everywhere: she could not have
+got through it but that she wore high boots. Here and there the black
+bough of a dead fir would protrude against the sky. No life was to be
+seen,--not even a bird. The only sounds that at intervals broke the
+silence were the creak of some bough bending beneath its weight of
+snow, and the dull thud of its burden falling on the snow beneath.
+
+As she was returning to her home she was overcome by a sudden weakness
+and a sense of utter discouragement.
+
+Why endure this torture any longer? Who could tell when it would end,
+this intense disgust, this gnawing degrading misery, suffering without
+dignity,--a martyrdom without faith, without hope?
+
+And there, just at the edge of the forest, close to the meadow that
+spread before her like a huge winding-sheet, she lay down in the snow,
+to put an end to it: the cold would soon bring her release, she
+thought. How long she lay there she could not have told,--the
+drowsiness which she had heard was the precursor of the end had begun
+to steal over her,--when on the low horizon bounding the plain she saw
+the full moon rise, huge, misty, blood-red. The outlying firs of the
+forest cast broad dark shadows upon the snow, and upon her rigid form.
+The snow began to sparkle; the world suddenly grew beautiful. She
+seemed to feel a grasp upon her shoulder, and a voice called to her,
+"Stand up: life is not yet finished for you: who knows what the future
+may have in store?"
+
+Hope, curiosity, perhaps only the inextinguishable love of life that
+belongs to youth and health, appealed to her. She rose to her feet and
+forced her stiffened limbs to carry her home.
+
+Good heavens! it was hardly a year since! and now! She looks away from
+the large windows, behind the panes of which there is now only a
+bluish-white shimmer to be discerned, and gazes around the room. How
+cosey and comfortable it is! In the darkening daylight the outlines of
+objects show like a half-obliterated drawing. The subjects of the
+pictures on the walls cannot be discerned, but their gilt frames gleam
+through the all-embracing veil of twilight. There is a ruddy light on
+the hearth, partially hidden from the girl's eyes by the figure of the
+old Countess in her arm-chair; the air is pure and cool, and there is a
+faint agreeable odour of burning wood. From beneath the windows comes
+the noise of rolling wheels, deadened by the snow, and there is now and
+then a faint crackle from the logs in the chimney, now falling into
+embers.
+
+Erika revels in a sense of comfort, as only those can who have known
+the reverse in early life. Suddenly she is possessed by a vague
+distress, an oppressive melancholy,--the memory of her mother who had
+voluntarily left all this pleasant easy-going life--for what? Her
+nerves quiver.
+
+Meanwhile, Luedecke brings in two lamps, which in consequence of their
+large coloured shades fail to illumine the corners of the room, and
+hardly do more than "teach light to counterfeit a gloom." That grave
+dignitary was still occupied in their arrangement, when he turned his
+head and paused, listening to an animated colloquy in two voices just
+outside the portiere which separated the Countess's boudoir from the
+reception-rooms. Evidently Friedrich, Luedecke's young adjutant, who was
+not yet thoroughly drilled, was endeavouring to protect his mistress
+from a determined intruder.
+
+"If you please, Frau Countess, her Excellency is not at home," he said
+for the third time, whereupon an irritated feminine voice made reply,--
+
+"I know that the Countess is at home; and if she is not, I will wait
+for her."
+
+"The fairy," said Countess Lenzdorff, awaking. "Poor Friedrich! he is
+doing what he can, but there is nothing for it but to put the best face
+upon the matter." And, rising, she advanced to meet Countess Brock, who
+came through the portiere with a very angry face.
+
+"That wretch!" she exclaimed. "I believe he was about to use personal
+violence to detain me!" And she sank exhausted into an arm-chair.
+
+"Since I ordered him to deny me to every one, he only did his duty,
+although he may have failed in the manner of its performance," Countess
+Lenzdorff replied.
+
+"But he ought to have known that I was an exception," the fairy
+rejoined, still angrily.
+
+"Yes, he ought to have known. And now tell me what you have on your
+mind, for I see by your bonnet's being all awry that you have not
+engaged in a duel with that simpleton Friedrich without some special
+cause."
+
+"Ah, yes!" Countess Brock groaned. "I have a request--an audacious
+request--to make, and you must not refuse me."
+
+"We shall see. Is it fifty yards of red flannel for your association
+for the relief of rheumatic old women?"
+
+"Oh, if it were only that I should have no doubt of your assent,--every
+one knows how generous you are; but you have certain whims." The wicked
+fairy's smile was sourly sweet: "I begged Goswyn to prefer my request,
+for I know how much you like him, and that you would not willingly
+refuse him anything; but he would not do it. He behaves so queerly to
+me."
+
+"Tell me what you mean, without any further preliminaries. I am curious
+to know what the matter is with which Goswyn will have nothing to do."
+
+"It is about my next Thursday,--no, not the next, I shall simply skip
+that, but the one after the next,--which, under the circumstances,
+ought to be particularly brilliant. I want to have tableaux, and two of
+the greatest beauties in Berlin have promised to help me,--Dorothea
+Sydow and Constance Muehlberg," Countess Brock explained, breathlessly.
+
+"H'm! that is magnificent," her friend interposed.
+
+"Well, yes; but every one knows them by heart, and I want to show the
+Berlin folk something new. In short, I have come to the conclusion that
+the great attraction for my next evening reception must be your
+enchanting grand-daughter," the 'fairy' declared, wriggling herself out
+of her seal-skin coat.
+
+Erika, who had hitherto kept modestly in the background, occupying
+herself with some embroidery, here paused, her needle suspended in the
+air, and looked up curiously.
+
+"My grand-daughter?" her grandmother exclaimed, in surprise.
+
+"Yes, yes; I have fallen in love with your granddaughter,--actually
+fallen in love with her. She has a natural air of distinction, with a
+certain barbaric charm which is immensely aristocratic: it reminds me
+of some noble wild animal: the aristocracy always reminds me of a noble
+wild animal, and the bourgeoisie of a well-fed barn-yard fowl,--except
+that the former is never hunted and the latter never slaughtered. But,
+then, who can tell, _par le temps qui court? Mais je me perds_. The
+matter in hand is not socialism nor any other threatening horror, but
+my tableaux. There are to be only three,--Senta lost in dreams of the
+Flying Dutchman, by Constance Muehlberg, Werther's Charlotte, by Thea
+Sydow, and last your grand-daughter as a heather blossom. She will bear
+away the palm, of course: the others are not to be compared with her."
+
+Countess Lenzdorff looked at Erika and smiled good-naturedly, as she
+saw how the young girl had gone on sewing diligently as if hearing
+nothing of this conversation. It never occurred to the old lady that it
+might not be advisable thus calmly to extol that young person's beauty
+in her presence.
+
+"You will let the child do me this favour, will you not?" the 'fairy'
+persisted. "It is all admirably arranged. Riedel is to pose them,--you
+know him,--the little painter with such good manners who has his shirts
+laundered in Paris."
+
+"Oh, that colour-grinder!" Countess Lenzdorff said, contemptuously.
+
+The 'fairy' shrugged her shoulders impatiently. "Colour-grinder or not,
+he is one of the few artists whom one can meet socially."
+
+"Yes, yes; and he will find it much easier to arrange a couple of
+pictures than to paint them," Countess Lenzdorff declared.
+
+"Then you consent? I may count upon your grand-daughter?"
+
+"I must first consider the matter," Countess Lenzdorff replied, but in
+a tone which plainly showed that she was not averse to granting her
+eccentric old friend's request.
+
+"I see that affairs look favourable for me," Countess Brock murmured.
+"Thank heaven! I think I should have killed myself if I had met with a
+refusal. What o'clock is it?"
+
+"Six o'clock,--a few minutes past. Where are you going?"
+
+"To dine with the Geroldsteins. We are going to the Lessing Theatre
+afterwards. There have been no tickets to be had for ten days past."
+
+"You--are going to dine with the Geroldsteins?" The old Countess
+clasped her hands in frank, if discourteous, astonishment.
+
+"I am going to dine with the Geroldsteins," the 'wicked fairy'
+repeated, with irritated emphasis; "and what of it? You have received
+her for more than a year."
+
+"I have no social prejudices. Moreover, I do not receive her: I simply
+do not turn her out of doors."
+
+"Well, at present she suits me," Countess Brock declared, her features
+working violently. "I have been longing for two months to be present at
+this first representation, without being able to get a seat: she offers
+me the best seat in a box,--no, she does not offer it to me, she
+entreats me to take it as a favour to her. And then think how I begged
+Goswyn yesterday to introduce G---- to me. No, he would not do it. She
+will see to all that. She is the most obliging woman in all Germany.
+And then--this very morning I saw her driving with Hedwig Norbin in the
+Thiergarten. Surely any one may know a woman with whom Hedwig Norbin
+drives through the Thiergarten."
+
+She ran off, repeating her request as she vanished. "You will let me
+know your decision to-morrow, Anna?"
+
+Countess Lenzdorff shook her head as she looked after her,--shook her
+head and smiled. She is still smiling as she thoughtfully paces the
+room to and fro.
+
+What is she considering? Whether it is fitting thus, in this barefaced
+manner, to call the attention of society to a young girl's beauty.
+Evidently Goswyn does not think it right; but Goswyn is a prig. The
+Countess's delicacy gives way and troubles her no further. Another
+consideration occupies her: will her grand-daughter hold her own in
+comparison with the acknowledged beauties who are to share with her the
+honours of the evening? Her gaze rests upon Erika. "That crackbrained
+Elise is right. Erika hold her own beside them! the others cannot
+compare with her."
+
+"What do you say, child?" she asked, approaching the girl. "Would you
+like to do it?"
+
+"Yes," Erika confesses, frankly.
+
+"It would not be quite undesirable," says her grandmother, whose mind
+is entirely made up. "You cannot go out much this year, and it would be
+something to appear once to excite attention and then to retire to the
+background for the rest of the season. Curiosity would be aroused, and
+would prepare a fine triumph for you next year."
+
+The following morning Countess Brock received a note from Anna
+Lenzdorff containing a consent to her request.
+
+
+About ten days afterwards Countess Erika Lenzdorff presented herself
+before a select public, chosen from the most exclusive society in
+Berlin, as "Heather Blossom," in a ragged petticoat, with her hair
+falling about her to her knees.
+
+It was a strange _soiree_, that in which the youthful beauty made her
+first appearance in the world.
+
+Countess Brock, the childless widow of a very wealthy man who had
+derived much of his social prestige from his wife, had inherited from
+the deceased the use during her lifetime of a magnificent mansion,
+together with an income the narrowness of which was in striking
+contrast with her residence.
+
+The consequence whereof was much shabbiness amid brilliant
+surroundings.
+
+The tableaux were given in a spacious ball-room, decorated with white
+and gold, at one end of which a small stage had been erected. The
+stage-decorations had been painted for nothing, by aspiring young
+artists. The curtain consisted of several worn old yellow damask
+portieres sewed together, upon which the 'wicked fairy' herself had
+painted various fantastic flowers to conceal the threadbare spots.
+
+Whatever ridicule might attach to her Thursday evenings generally, on
+this one her preparations were crowned with success. The effect of the
+whole was greatly heightened by the musical accompaniment, furnished by
+G---- at the instigation of the indefatigable Frau von Geroldstein.
+
+For once this talented but shy young virtuoso forgot himself, and
+presented his audience with something more than a pattern-card of
+conquered technical difficulties.
+
+Whether it were the result of caprice, or of a vivid impression made
+upon him by Erika, or of a presumptuous desire to do all that he could
+to add to her triumph, thus irritating the acknowledged beauties of the
+day, certain it is that he played all his musical trumps in his
+accompaniment to the representation of "Heather Blossom."
+
+Old Countess Lenzdorff, who had been wont to compare his clear sharp
+performance to a richly-furnished cockney drawing-room far too
+brilliantly lighted, and with gas into the bargain, could scarcely
+believe her ears when as an introduction to the third picture the low
+wailing notes of the familiar but lovely melody "Ah, had I never left
+my moor!" rang through the crowded assemblage of fashionable people.
+How sweet, how melancholy, were the tones breathed from the instrument!
+they seemed to rouse an echo in the soul of Boris Lensky's magic
+violin.
+
+The curtain drew up, and revealed a waste, dreary heath, treated with
+tolerable conventionality by the amiable Riedel, and in the midst of it
+a single figure, tall, slender, in a worn petticoat and coarse white
+linen shift that left exposed the nobly-formed neck and the long and as
+yet rather thin arms, a pale face framed in heavy gleaming masses of
+hair, the features delicate yet strong, and with unfathomable,
+indescribable eyes.
+
+The painter Riedel had tried to force the Heather Blossom into the
+attitude of Ary Scheffer's Mignon. She had apparently yielded to his
+efforts, but at the last moment had posed according to her own wish,
+with her head bent slightly forward and her arms hanging straight by
+her side.
+
+The audacious simplicity of her pose puzzled the spectators, and those
+elegant votaries of fashion, weary of counterfeit presentments of art
+and poetry, were in a manner shaken out of the monotonous indifference
+of their lives at sight of the blank dumb despair embodied in this
+young creature. They seemed suddenly to feel among them the working of
+some mysterious force of nature.
+
+The curtain remained lifted for a longer time than usual; the young
+girl maintained her motionless attitude with a strength born of vanity;
+the wailing, sighing music sounded on.
+
+The curtain fell. The public was wild with enthusiasm. Three times the
+curtain rose; but when there was a demand for a fourth glimpse of the
+strange, pathetic picture, it remained obstinately down: Erika had
+retired.
+
+"Oh, the witch!" murmured old Countess Lenzdorff to Hedwig Norbin, who
+sat beside her.
+
+The stupidest and most innocent of country grandmothers could not have
+exulted more frankly in her grand-daughter's triumph than did the
+clever Countess Lenzdorff. She was never weary of hearing the child
+praised: her appetite for compliments was inappeasable.
+
+When Erika, transformed and modestly shy in her new gown from Petrus,
+appeared among the guests, she aroused enthusiasm afresh, and was
+immediately surrounded. She won the admiration not only of all the men
+present, but also of all the old ladies. Of course the younger women
+were somewhat envious, as were likewise the mothers with marriageable
+daughters. In a word, nothing was lacking to make her appearance a
+brilliant success.
+
+Her grandmother presented her right and left, and was unwearied in
+describing in whispered confidences to her friends the girl's
+extraordinary talents and capacity. Any other grandmother so conducting
+herself would have been called ridiculous, but it was not easy so to
+stigmatize Anna Lenzdorff; instead there was some irritation excited
+against the innocent object of such exaggerated praise, the girl
+herself, to whom various disagreeable traits were ascribed. The younger
+women pronounced her entirely self-occupied and thoroughly calculating.
+
+She was both in a certain degree, but after a precocious, childish
+fashion, that was diverting, rather than reprehensible.
+
+Countess Muehlenberg, the wife of an officer in the guards who did not
+appreciate her and with whom she was very unhappy, had appeared as
+Senta out of pure good nature, and held herself quite aloof from
+Erika's detractors,--in fact, she showed the young _debutante_ much
+kindness,--but Dorothea Sydow's dislike was almost ill-bred in its
+manifestation.
+
+She was a strangely fascinating and yet repulsive person,--very well
+born, even of royal blood, a princess, in fact, but so wretchedly poor
+that she had rejoiced when a simple squire laid his heart and his
+wealth at her feet. Her family at first cried out against the
+misalliance, but finally consented to admit that the young lady had
+done very well for herself. Some of her equals in rank came even to
+envy her after a while, for all agreed that there was not in the world
+another husband who so idolized and spoiled his wife, indulging her in
+every whim, as did Otto von Sydow his Princess Dorothea.
+
+He was Goswyn's elder brother, and the heir of the Sydow estates, which
+was why there was such a difference in the incomes of the brothers. In
+all else the advantage was decidedly on Goswyn's side.
+
+Otto looked like him, but his face lacked the force of Goswyn's; his
+features were rounder, his shoulders broader, his hands and feet
+larger, and he had a great deal of colour. The 'wicked fairy'
+maintained that he showed the blood of his bourgeoise mother.
+
+Countess Lenzdorff, who had been an intimate friend of the late Frau
+von Sydow, denied this, insisting that the Sydow mother had enriched
+the family not only by her money but also by her pure, strong, red
+blood. In fact, Otto was a genuine Sydow: such types are not rare among
+the Prussian country gentry.
+
+He was one of the men who always show to most advantage in the country
+and out of doors, for whom a drawing-room, even the most spacious, is
+too confined. In a brilliant crowd he looked as if he could hardly
+catch his breath. With the shyness not unusual in men with much-admired
+wives, he was wont to efface himself in a corner, emerging to make
+himself useful at supper-time, and never speaking except when he
+encountered some one still less at home in society than himself. He was
+never weary of watching his wife, devouring her with his eyes, drinking
+in her grace and beauty.
+
+Many people declared that she was not beautiful, only distinguished in
+appearance. In fact, she was both to an astonishing degree, and
+aristocratic to her finger-tips. Tall, slender almost to emaciation,
+with long, narrow hands and feet, a head proudly erect, and sharply-cut
+features, her carriage was inimitable, her walk grace itself. Wherever
+she went she attracted universal attention. She wore her fair hair
+short in close curls about her small head, a piece of audacity indeed,
+and she talked quickly in a rather high voice, and with a slight defect
+in her utterance, characteristic of the royal family to which she was
+related, and which made some people nervous, while her countless
+adorers declared it enchanting.
+
+However, beautiful or not, she had been a leader in Berlin society for
+two years, and would brook no rival near her throne.
+
+The evening ran its course; the servants opened the doors into the
+dining-hall; the ladies took their places at small tables, while the
+gentlemen served them--the entertainment being but meagre--before
+satisfying their own appetites. Some of them performed this duty with
+skill and dexterity, while others rattled plates and glasses and
+invariably dropped something.
+
+Erika, paler than usual, with sparkling eyes and very red lips, sat at
+a table with a charmingly fresh young girl about her own age, but ten
+years younger intellectually. Nevertheless the child's development
+might almost be said to be finished, while Erika's had scarcely passed
+its first stage. She had honestly tried to talk with this companion,
+but without success; nor had she much to say to the young men who,
+attracted by her beauty, thronged around her. Reaction had set in: her
+enjoyment of her triumph had been succeeded by a strange restlessness.
+
+Dorothea von Sydow was sitting near by at a table with one of the most
+fashionable women in Berlin, an Austrian diplomat, an officer of
+cuirassiers, and one of her cousins, Prince Helmy Nimbsch. All five had
+remarkably good appetites and talked incessantly. In their midst sat
+Frau von Geroldstein, a vacant place on each side of her,--solemn and
+mute. No one knew her, no one spoke to her, but she was sitting among
+people of rank and was content. Her only regret was that she had
+mistaken the continuance of the court mourning by a day, and had
+consequently appeared in a plain black gown in an assemblage of women
+in full dress with feathers and diamonds in their hair. To justify her
+error she had hastily trumped up a story of the death of a near
+relative.
+
+Goswyn's place was with the elder women, a distinction that frequently
+fell to his share. He looked grave and anxious, and Countess Lenzdorff,
+who had commanded his presence at her table, with her usual
+imperiousness, reproached him for being tiresome and bad-tempered. From
+time to time he glanced towards Erika, of whom he could see nothing
+save a slender neck with a knot of gold-gleaming hair, a little pink
+ear, and now and then the outline of a softly-rounded cheek.
+
+Yes, she was bewitching, there was no denying it, but she must be
+insufferable, there was no doubt of that either. The idea of thus
+making a show of a girl scarcely eighteen! It was in such bad taste: it
+was absolutely unprincipled: the old Countess, in her senseless vanity,
+was doing the child a positive injury. At times a kind of rage half
+choked him: he could have shaken his old friend, to whom he had been as
+a son, and who had from his boyhood petted him far more than her own
+child. Again he glanced towards Erika. Then his thoughtful gaze
+wandered across to the round table where his sister-in-law was sitting.
+She looked particularly well in a dress of white velvet with an antique
+Spanish necklace of emeralds around her slender neck. It was all very
+lovely, but her short hair was not in harmony with it.
+
+Beside her sat her cousin, Prince Helmy Nimbsch, a good-tempered dandy,
+scarcely twenty-five years old, with large light-blue eyes and a face
+smoothly shaven, except for a moustache. As Goswyn looked at Thea, she
+was laughing at her cousin over the champagne-glass which she held to
+her lips. Her eyes were her greatest beauty,--large hazel eyes, but
+with no soul in them, no expression, not even a bad one. Her charm was
+entirely physical, but it was very great. It was a pity that her
+manners were so loud. That perpetual giggle of hers rasped Goswyn's
+nerves. But he was alone in his dislike: her adorers were legion.
+
+He looked away from her. Where was his brother? Over in a corner, at a
+table without ladies, he was sitting with another gentleman.
+Fortunately he had found a man who was even more uncomfortable than
+himself in this brilliant assemblage.
+
+This was Herr Geroldstein, husband of the ambitious dame, a pale little
+man with a bald head and mutton-chop whiskers, who looked for all the
+world like a man who had wielded a yard-stick behind a counter all his
+life long,--a decent enough little man, with an air of being
+perpetually ashamed of himself, who never made use for his own part of
+the title which he had purchased as a birthday-present for his wife. He
+spoke very softly and ate and drank but little, while Otto von Sydow
+did both with great gusto, now and then uttering some oracular remark
+as to the best wine-merchant in Rheims. His face was redder than usual,
+and produced the impression of rude health beside the pale tradesman
+who had passed his life in his office. There was in Goswyn's opinion no
+denying that no man in the room was as ill fitted to be the husband of
+the slender Princess Dorothea as was his brother Otto.
+
+After supper there was a little music. When Goswyn was relieved from
+duty with Countess Lenzdorff, he was about to leave the house
+unnoticed, but longed for one more glimpse of Erika, whom he wished to
+remember as she looked to-night. "The dew will be brushed off so soon,"
+he said to himself, adding, "Oh, the pity of it!" He could not find her
+anywhere. "Ah, of course she is surrounded somewhere by a crowd of
+detestable admirers!" he said to himself, and turned to go. Why he had
+thus decided that all her admirers were detestable we shall not attempt
+to explain.
+
+The fourth and last in the suite of the 'wicked fairy's'
+reception-rooms was empty and dimly lighted. He suddenly seemed to hear
+low suppressed sobs, as he looked in. A red gleam of light played about
+the folds of a white gown behind a huge effective artificial palm.
+Involuntarily he advanced a step. There sat Erika, the youthful queen
+of beauty, whom he had supposed entirely absorbed in receiving the
+homage of her vassals, curled up in an arm-chair, her handkerchief to
+her eyes, crying like a tired child. Usually deliberate in thought and
+action, when once his nerves were irritated he became quick and
+impetuous. He did not hesitate a moment, but, bending over the girl,
+exclaimed, "Countess Erika! in heaven's name what is the matter? Can
+any one have offended you?" His voice grew angry at the bare suspicion.
+
+"Ah, no, no!" she sobbed.
+
+"Shall I go for your grandmother?"
+
+"No--no!"
+
+He paused an instant. Then, in a very low and kindly voice, he asked,
+"Do I annoy you? Would you rather be alone? Shall I go?"
+
+She took the handkerchief from her eyes and assured him frankly and
+cordially, "Oh, no, certainly not: I am glad to have you stay with me,"
+adding, rather shyly, "Pray sit down."
+
+Nothing was left of the self-possessed young lady: here was only a
+little girl dissolved in tears and dreading lest she should seem
+impolite to a friend of her grandmother's.
+
+"She treats me exactly like an old man," the young captain said to
+himself, at once touched and annoyed; nevertheless he accepted her
+invitation, and took a seat near her.
+
+"It will soon be over," she said, trying to dry her tears. But they
+would not be dried; they welled forth afresh: she was evidently quite
+unnerved by the excitement of her _debut_, poor thing!
+
+"Oh, heavens," she cried, making a supreme effort to control herself,
+"I must stop crying! What a disgrace it would be if any of those people
+should see me!"
+
+Apparently there was a great gulf in her mind between Goswyn and "those
+people." He was glad of it. For a while he was sympathetically silent,
+and then he said, kindly, "Countess Erika, would you rather keep your
+sorrow to yourself, or will you confide it to me?"
+
+His mere presence had had a soothing effect; her tears ceased to flow;
+she only shivered slightly from time to time.
+
+"Ah, it was not a sorrow," she explained,--"only a distress,--something
+like what I felt on the night when I first came to Berlin. It was not
+homesickness,--what have I to be homesick for?--but suddenly I felt so
+lonely among all those strangers who stared at me curiously but cared
+nothing for me. I seemed to feel a great chill around me: it all hurt
+me; their way of speaking, their way of looking down upon everything
+that was not as fine and proud as themselves, went to my heart.
+You--you cannot understand it, for you have grown up in the midst of
+it; you have breathed this air from your childhood."
+
+"I think you do me injustice, Countess Erika," he interposed. "I can
+understand you perfectly, although I have grown up in the midst of it
+all."
+
+"I felt as if I hated the people," she went on, her large melancholy
+eyes flashing angrily, "and then--then, amidst all this elegance and
+arrogance,"--she named these characteristics in a perfectly frank way,
+as if they were elements but lately introduced into her life,--"the
+thought came to me of the misery in which I grew up, and of all the
+little pleasures and surprises which my mother prepared for me in spite
+of our poverty,--ah, such poor little pleasures!--those people would
+laugh at the idea of any one's enjoying them,--but they were very much
+to me. Oh, if you knew how my mother used to look at me when she had
+contrived a new gown for me out of some old rag!--No one will ever look
+at me so again. And then"--she clinched the hand that held the poor wet
+handkerchief--"to think that my mother belonged of right to all this
+bright gay world, and to remember how she died, in what sordid
+distress, and that it is past,--that I can give her nothing of all that
+I have---- My heart seemed breaking." She paused, breathless.
+
+"Poor Countess Erika!" he murmured, very gently. "It is one of the
+miseries of this life to remember our dead and to be powerless to be
+kind to them. All that we can do is to bestow as much love as we can
+upon the living."
+
+"But whom have I to bestow my love upon?" Erika cried, with such an
+innocent insistence that, in spite of his pity, Goswyn could hardly
+suppress a smile. "I cannot offer it to my grandmother: she would not
+know what I meant, and would simply think me ill."
+
+"But in fact," he said, now openly amused, "it is not to be supposed
+that you will all your life have only your grandmother to love."
+
+"You mean that----" She looked at him in sudden dismay.
+
+"I mean that--that----"
+
+The sound of a ritornella drummed upon the piano suddenly fell on their
+ears, and then came the notes of a thin, clear, expressionless soprano.
+
+His sister-in-law was singing. He listened breathless.
+
+Just then Countess Lenzdorff with Frau von Norbin appeared. "Ah, here
+you are, Erika!" she exclaimed. "This I call pretty conduct. I have
+been looking for you everywhere. H'm! to run away from one's admirers,
+to be made love to by a young gentleman---- What do you say to it,
+Hedwig?" This last to Frau von Norbin.
+
+"It was only Goswyn," the old lady replied, in her musical-box voice.
+
+"Yes, that is an extenuating circumstance," Countess Anna admitted.
+
+"And he did not make love to me," Erika assured them.
+
+"Indeed? That I take ill of him," Countess Lenzdorff said, with a
+laugh, while Erika went on with sincere cordiality. "I suddenly felt so
+lonely and sad, and he was very, very kind to me!" She raised her eyes
+gratefully to his.
+
+"Ah, well----but come now, child; we are going home. I have had quite
+enough of this.--Adieu, Goswyn."
+
+"Perhaps you will permit me to take you home," said Goswyn.
+
+"You had much better go in there and put a stop to the mischief which,
+if I am not mistaken, is being largely added to to-night." This with a
+significant glance towards the music-room.
+
+"I am powerless," Goswyn observed, dryly. He conducted the ladies to
+the anteroom, where a regiment of lackeys were in waiting. After
+attending to the old ladies, he had the pleasure of helping Erika to
+put on her cloak. He had a strange sensation as he wrapped it about the
+girl's slender figure. The white fur with which it was trimmed was
+wonderfully becoming to her.
+
+"A heather blossom in the snow," the vain grandmother remarked, with a
+glance in his direction, whereby she discovered that there was no
+necessity for calling his attention to her grand-daughter's charms.
+This discovery rejoiced her. She bade him good-night with unusual
+cordiality, smiling to herself as she descended the brilliantly-lighted
+staircase.
+
+Meanwhile, Goswyn had returned to the music-room. His sister-in-law was
+still standing by the piano, singing. G---- was accompanying her,
+good-humouredly ready to burden his soul with any musical misdeed that
+could give pleasure to his audience, a readiness arising partly from
+the prosaic view which he took of his "trade," as he was wont to call
+his music. Quite a little throng of ladies had already rustled out of
+the room.
+
+Countess Brock was beginning to be uneasy. The effect of the Princess's
+performance vividly reminded her of the effect which the young actor's
+reading had had upon her guests.
+
+Goswyn glanced at his brother. Otto von Sydow was a picture of
+distress: he looked as if threatened with an apoplectic stroke; he
+alternately clinched and opened his gloved hands, looked uneasily at
+the men whom he saw laughing, and at the women whom he saw leaving the
+room; he stood first on one foot and then on the other; but he allowed
+his wife to go on singing.
+
+The first verses of the music-hall song she had now selected were
+simply coarse. Goswyn comforted himself with thinking that perhaps she
+would not sing the last. He had underrated his sister-in-law's
+temerity. She went on. Sight and hearing seemed to fail him.
+
+Suddenly there came a loud burst of applause. A few of the men present,
+in pity for the unhappy husband, had thus drowned the improprieties of
+the last verse.
+
+Princess Dorothea looked round,--saw men laughing significantly and
+women hurriedly leaving the room. She grew pale, and there came into
+her Spanish face a look of indescribable hardness. She was about to
+continue, when her hostess approached her.
+
+"Charming!" exclaimed the 'fairy,'--"charming, my dear Thea, but you
+must not exert yourself further: you are a little hoarse."
+
+It was too unequivocal. Princess Dorothea understood. Her assumed
+gaiety took another turn. "I have a sudden longing for a dance!" she
+exclaimed. "G----, play us a waltz: we will extemporize a ball."
+
+G---- began to play with immense spirit one of Strauss's waltzes, when
+a gray-haired old General raised his voice,--a clear, sharp voice,--and
+said, "It would be a little difficult to extemporize a ball, for, with
+the exception of the hostess, your Excellency is the only lady
+present."
+
+Dorothea grew paler still, held herself rather more erect than usual,
+threw back her head, and smiled. Just thus, deadly pale, hard, erect
+and smiling, Goswyn was to see her once again in his life, a couple of
+years later, when all her world was pointing at her the finger of
+scorn.
+
+
+"You will let me drive Helmy home, will you not, Otto?" Dorothea asked
+in the hall, where she was holding a kind of little court amid her
+admirers, a yellow lace scarf wound around her head, and a black velvet
+wrap about her shoulders. "Helmy has such a cold, and there is no
+finding a droschky at this hour."
+
+Involuntarily Goswyn, who was just buckling on his sabre, paused to
+listen to this little speech of his fascinating sister-in-law's,
+uttered in the tenderest tone.
+
+He had no idea that his brother had anything to fear from Prince Helmy:
+this was only Dorothea's way of escaping any admonition from her
+husband. If Otto did not scold on the spot he never scolded at all.
+There really was nothing objectionable in her driving home alone with
+her cousin, but then---- She laid her little hand on her husband's
+breast as she spoke: the gentlemen around her looked on. Without
+waiting to hear his brother's reply, Goswyn left the house. He had gone
+but two or three steps in the street when some one joined him: it was
+Otto.
+
+"Have you a light?" he asked, in a rather uncertain voice. Goswyn
+struck a match for him, and paused in silence while his brother lighted
+his cigar with unnecessary effort.
+
+"I am really very glad to walk," said Otto, keeping pace with his
+brother. "Thea cannot bear to have me smoke in the coupe."
+
+Goswyn was silent.
+
+"I know Thea through and through," Otto continued: "she is as innocent
+as a child, but a little imprudent; and then all those starched,
+stiff-necked Berlin women cannot forgive her for being more fascinating
+and original than the whole of them together. And, after all, what harm
+was there in her singing those songs? It was easy enough to see that
+she did not understand what she was singing, or at least did not think.
+The purest women are always the most imprudent. These people do not
+understand her. They admire her,--no one can help that,--but they do
+not appreciate her. When she saw that she was shocking those
+Philistines she sang on out of sheer bravado. It was perhaps not wise
+to brave public opinion."
+
+Each time that Otto von Sydow had broken the thread of his discourse in
+hopes that Goswyn would assent to his view of the situation, he had
+been disappointed. His brother was persistently mute.
+
+Otto's footsteps sounded louder, his breath came more heavily; Goswyn,
+who knew him thoroughly, saw that he was struggling against an access
+of rage. For a while he maintained a silence like his brother's; then,
+pausing, he addressed Goswyn directly: "Do you find anything to blame
+in my allowing my wife to drive home alone with a cousin who is not
+well, and who may thereby be saved a fit of illness,--a cousin, too,
+with whom her relations have always been those of a sister?"
+
+Goswyn shrugged his shoulders. "Since you ask me, I must speak the
+truth," he replied. "On this particular evening I think it would have
+been wiser for you to drive home _tete-a-tete_ with your wife than to
+let her go with young Nimbsch."
+
+Otto's breathing became still more audible; he stamped his foot, and,
+before Goswyn could look round, had turned off into a side-street with
+a sullen "good-night."
+
+He was greatly to be pitied: he had hoped that Goswyn would comfort
+him, but Goswyn had not comforted him.
+
+"He never understood her, and therefore never liked her," he muttered
+between his teeth. "He is the worst Philistine of all."
+
+And then he recalled Goswyn's persistent opposition to his marriage
+with the Princess Dorothea, how passionately--for Goswyn, calm as he
+seemed, could be passionate--he had entreated his brother not to
+propose to her. "A blind man could see how unfitted you are for each
+other: you will be each other's ruin!" he had said. The words rang in
+his ears now with vivid distinctness.
+
+It was about two o'clock in the morning: the streets were dim,
+deserted. At intervals of a hundred steps the reddish lights of the
+street-lamps were reflected from the brown muddy surface of the
+asphalt. From time to time a carriage casting two bluish rays of light
+before it shot past Otto with an unnaturally loud rattle in the dull
+silence. The windows of the houses were all dark and quiet, except
+where from one open building came the muffled notes of some light
+popular airs: it was a cheap kind of music-hall. Involuntarily Sydow
+listened: something in the faint melody commanded his attention. They
+were playing the music of the very song his wife had sung but now.
+
+His wretchedness was intolerable; his limbs seemed weighed down with
+fatigue. "Pshaw! it is this confounded thaw," he said to himself. In
+his ears rang the words, "You are utterly unfitted for each other."
+What if Goswyn had been right, after all?
+
+Good God! No one could have resisted her.
+
+They had met first in Florence. The two brothers had made a tour
+through Italy just after Otto's attaining his majority. They travelled
+together so far as that means having the same starting-point and the
+same goal, but each followed his own devices, stopping where he liked,
+so that sometimes they did not meet for a long while. While Goswyn
+underwent all kinds of inconveniences for the sake of visiting many
+interesting little towns in Northern Italy, Otto, whose first
+requirement was a good hotel, went directly from Venice to Florence. He
+had been there for five days, and was terribly bored; he missed Goswyn.
+Although Otto was the elder of the two, he had always been in the habit
+of letting Goswyn think for him. Old Countess Lenzdorff maintained that
+when they were children she had often heard him ask, "Goswyn, am I
+cold?" "Goswyn, am I hungry?"
+
+He had carried with him through life a certain sense of dependence upon
+his younger brother, looking to him for help in every difficulty, for
+support in every sorrow.
+
+He had no acquaintances in Florence, the food was not to his taste, the
+wine was poor, the beds, in which so many had slept before him,
+disgusted him, the theatres did not edify him. He took no pleasure in
+the opera; he was thoroughly--and for a German remarkably--devoid of a
+taste for music; and the Italian drama he did not understand.
+Consequently he found his evenings intolerably long: he spoke no
+Italian, and very little French. Since there were no Germans in the
+hotel save those with whom, in spite of his homesickness, he did not
+choose to consort, he led a very lonely life. And, as he took not the
+slightest interest in art, it was no wonder that on the fifth day of
+his sojourn in Florence he declared such an "Italian course of culture"
+the "veriest mockery of pleasure in which a Prussian country nobleman
+could indulge."
+
+The queerest thing was that Goswyn seemed to be enjoying himself so
+much. He received delighted post-cards from him from all kinds of
+little out-of-the-way places of which Otto had never before even heard
+the names, not even when he studied geography at school, and he seemed
+entirely independent of discomfort as to his lodgings in his enjoyment
+of all that "art-stuff," as Otto expressed it to himself.
+
+One afternoon in the cathedral, in an access of most depressing ennui,
+he was sauntering from one shrine to another, when he suddenly heard a
+sigh. He looked round. A young girl in a large Vandyke hat and a dark
+cloth dress trimmed with silver braid had just seated herself in one of
+the chairs, and was opening a yellow-covered novel. Everything about
+her, her hat, her dress, as well as her own striking figure, gave an
+impression of distinction, although of distinction somewhat down in the
+world.
+
+She was very young, and yet did not seem at all affected by her
+loneliness. Before long she noticed that Otto was observing her, and
+she bestowed a scornful glance upon him over the pages of her book.
+
+He instantly flushed crimson, and turned away, feeling very
+uncomfortable. Then in the twilight silence of the spacious church,
+always deserted at this hour of the day, he heard a delicate
+insinuating voice call, "Feistmantel, dear!"
+
+Involuntarily he looked round: it was the slender girl in the chair who
+had called.
+
+He then observed hurrying towards her a short, stout individual in a
+striped gray-and-black water-proof with an opera-glass in a strap,--a
+wonderful creature, whom he had noticed before strolling about the
+church, but without an idea that she had anything to do with the
+attractive occupant of the chair.
+
+"Feistmantel, dear."
+
+"Princess!"
+
+"I am so hungry. Have you not seen enough of those stupid old relics?"
+And the girl yawned, sighed, and rubbed her eyes.
+
+"Oh, pray, Princess!"
+
+Both ladies then walked to the door of exit, where they paused
+dismayed.
+
+It was raining in torrents, that steady downpour that gives no hope of
+any speedy cessation.
+
+"This is intolerable!" exclaimed the young girl, in her insinuating and
+now melancholy voice, and with a slight imperfection of speech which
+struck kindly, awkward Sydow as something too charming ever to be
+forgotten. "Insufferable! We cannot put our skirts over our heads, like
+female pilgrims."
+
+"Pray permit me to call a droschky for you." With these words the young
+Prussian approached the pair; then when the girl measured him from head
+to foot with a half-merry, half-haughty stare, he added, with a bow, by
+way of explanation, "Von Sydow."
+
+The ladies bowed without finding it necessary to mention their names,
+and the younger said, with her bewitching voice and imperfection of
+speech, "You will greatly oblige us if you will be so kind as to take
+the trouble."
+
+And in fact it was a trouble. It is difficult to withstand the
+insistence of Italian droschky-drivers in fine weather, when one wishes
+to walk, but to find a droschky in bad weather, when one wishes to
+drive, is more difficult still.
+
+When he at last succeeded he feared to find that the ladies had left in
+despair at the delay; but no, there they were still, the companion in
+the striped waterproof with her face shining with the rain which had
+drenched it as she stretched her neck to see if he were coming, and her
+curls dangling limp in damp disorder; the girl more bewitching than
+ever, her cheeks slightly flushed by the fresh damp breeze, and
+evidently exhilarated in mind, flattered by her conquest. She had grown
+gracious, and she smiled her thanks, as she hurried into the carriage,
+lifting her skirts to avoid wetting them, and thereby displaying a pair
+of the prettiest little feet imaginable.
+
+"What address shall I give to the coachman?" he asked, after helping
+the ladies to ensconce themselves in the vehicle.
+
+"Hotel Washington."
+
+
+He had no umbrella; he was wet to the skin, and the day was cold. But
+that was of no consequence. Otto von Sydow had never felt so warm since
+he had been in Italy.
+
+That very evening he moved to the Hotel Washington from the Hotel de la
+Paix. Since the entire first floor was occupied by a banker from
+Vienna, and the hotel was overcrowded, the room assigned him was far
+from comfortable; but he did not mind that.
+
+And that very evening, before the _table-d'hote_ dinner, he found his
+fair one. She was in the reading-room, reading a Paris paper. He also
+learned who she was,--Princess Dorothea von Ilm.
+
+She was an orphan, and very poor. The family, originally distinguished,
+had degenerated sadly, principally through the dissipated habits of the
+Princess's two brothers, notably through the marriage of the elder to a
+French circus-rider. Since her installation in Castle Egerstein the
+Princess Dorothea had been homeless, and had been wandering about the
+world with very little means and a companion who was half instructress,
+half maid.
+
+This individual, whom Prince Ilm had hurriedly engaged for his sister
+through a newspaper advertisement, was named Alma Feistmantel, and came
+from Vienna, where she belonged to those aesthetic circles, the members
+of which interest themselves chiefly for artists and the drama. For ten
+years she had cherished a hopeless passion for Sonnenthal: her chief
+enthusiasms were for broad-shouldered men, Wagner's music, and novels
+which exalted "the sacred voice of nature."
+
+Under the protection of this lady the Princess Dorothea had for three
+years been completing her education in Vienna, Rome, and Paris
+successively.
+
+The Princess enlightened her admirer as to her affairs with the
+greatest candour, informing him that her brother had treated her
+shamefully, but that it was all the fault of the circus-rider, who
+could make him do just as she chose; and in spite of it all Willy was
+the most fascinating creature imaginable: he looked like a Spaniard.
+Sydow remembered him: he had served a year in the same regiment with
+him during his term of compulsory service.
+
+With equal frankness Princess Dorothea explained that she was often
+embarrassed pecuniarily; once she had been so pinched that she had sold
+her dog to an Englishman for three hundred francs; she had hated to
+part with him, for she never had loved any creature as she did that
+dog, but she needed a ball-dress to wear at an entertainment in Rome at
+the German embassy. Her aunt, Princess Nimbsch, had chaperoned her when
+she went into society: sometimes she went, and sometimes she did not;
+it depended upon her circumstances. In fact, she did not care much
+about going into society, it prevented you from doing so many amusing
+things; you could not go to the little theatres, where the funniest
+farces were played. Therefore she preferred to be in Paris, where not a
+soul knew her, and she and Feistmantel could go everywhere together.
+
+Feistmantel had frequently during these confessions admonished the
+Princess to greater discretion by a touch of her foot beneath the
+table: of one of these hints Sydow's boot had been the recipient. But
+when she found that she could thus make no impression upon her charge
+the Viennese interposed with some temper: "Pray, Baron Sydow, discount
+all this talk some fifty per cent. You must not believe that I would
+take any young girl intrusted to my care where it was not proper that
+she should go."
+
+"I know nothing about proper or improper: I only know what is amusing
+and what is tiresome," the Princess said, with a laugh, "and we went
+everywhere. Feistmantel is putting on airs because of my exalted
+family, but do not you believe her, Herr von Sydow. We saw 'Ma
+Camarade,' and 'Niniche,' and we even went one evening to the Cafe des
+Ambassadeurs. Eh?" And she pinched her companion's ear.
+
+"But, Baron Sydow, do not allow yourself to be imposed upon,"
+Feistmantel exclaimed, almost beside herself. "The Cafe des
+Ambassadeurs,--why, that is a _cafe chantant_. There is not a word of
+truth in all her nonsense."
+
+"Not true? oh, but it is," the Princess retorted, quite at her ease.
+"Of course it was a _cafe chantant_, and the singer sang '_Estelle, ou
+est ta flanelle?_'--it was too funny; but I can sing it just like her.
+I practised it that very evening. I must sing it to you some day, Herr
+von Sydow,--that is, when we are better acquainted. Oh, is there no
+_cafe chantant_ in Florence to which you could take us?"
+
+"But, Princess----!" exclaimed Feistmantel.
+
+"Why, a gentleman took us to the Cafe des Ambassadeurs, a man whose
+acquaintance we made in the hotel," Dorothea ran on. "He was an
+American,--a Mr. Higgs: he came from Connecticut, and dealt in cheeses.
+He was very rich, and he sent us tickets for the theatre. Afterwards he
+wanted to marry me: I liked him very well, and would have accepted him,
+but my brother said he was no match for me. Well, I did not break my
+heart, but I should have liked to marry him for all that. We Princesses
+Ilm have the right, it is true, to marry crowned heads, but I never
+mean to avail myself of it. If I were an Empress I should always travel
+incognito. As soon as I am of age I shall marry a chimney-sweeper--if
+he is a millionaire, or if I fall in love with him."
+
+"Both contingencies seem highly probable," Sydow observed, laughing. It
+was the only remark he allowed himself during the conversation,--a
+conversation which took place in the reading-room of the Washington
+Hotel on the first evening of his stay there.
+
+After the Princess had finished her confessions, she went to the
+window, and looked out upon the Arno. For a while she was perfectly
+silent; but when Alma Feistmantel, recovering from her dismay, began to
+invent all sorts of falsehoods with which to impress Sydow, Dorothea
+quietly turned to him and said, "Herr von Sydow, will you not take a
+walk with us? Florence is so lovely at night!"
+
+The next day he drove with the ladies to Fiesole. He sat on the front
+seat of a very uncomfortable droschky and felt as happy as a king.
+
+It was the middle of April, and an upright crest of white and purple
+iris crowned the white wall bordering the crooked road leading to the
+famous old town. Here and there the rose-bushes trailed their
+blossoming branches in the dust. Barefooted Italian children, with
+dishevelled hair and glowing eyes tossed nosegays into the carriage and
+offered their straw wares to the ladies with persistent entreaties to
+buy. How many liri and fifty-centesimi pieces Sydow threw away on that
+wonderful day! The more he gave the rein to his liberality the longer
+grew the train of children, laughing, gesticulating, all pretty, with
+light in their eyes and flowers in their hands. Suddenly the driver
+shouted to some one who would not get out of the way. Sydow sprang out
+of the droschky and saw creeping along the dusty road a pair of
+wretched beggars, old and bent, their weary feet wrapped in rags. The
+sight of anything so miserable on the lovely spring day cut him to the
+heart. He could do no less than toss them some money.
+
+Alma Feistmantel, as a member of the society for the suppression of
+mendicancy, lectured him for his lavish alms, and the Princess laughed
+at the beggars, whose misery struck her as comical. She flung a
+sneering "Baucis and Philemon!" after them. This shocked Sydow for an
+instant; the next he gave her a kindly glance, saying to himself, "Ah,
+she is but a child!" He was already incapable of finding any harm in
+her.
+
+The next morning the German clerk of the hotel came to him, and, after
+some circumlocution, asked him if he were intimately acquainted with
+the Princess. Quite confused, and without a suspicion of the clerk's
+motive in asking, he explained that his acquaintance with her was of
+the most superficial kind. The clerk suppressed a smile beneath his
+bearded lip. Sydow was sorely tempted to knock him down, and was
+restrained only by regard for the Princess's reputation. It appeared,
+however, that the clerk's question was not the result of impertinent
+curiosity; he had no interest in the young Prussian's relations to the
+fair Princess, he only wished to discover whether Sydow knew anything
+of her family,--if she were a genuine Princess, and if they were people
+of wealth. She was travelling without a maid, and had not paid her
+hotel bill for a month.
+
+Whereupon Sydow snubbed the clerk sharply, informing him that he need
+be under no anxiety, the Ilms were among the first families of Germany.
+The Princess had simply forgotten to pay, supposing it to be a matter
+of small importance. The clerk was profuse in apologies.
+
+Sydow spent three hours considering how he should offer his aid to the
+Princess. At last--it was raining, and the ladies were at home--he
+knocked at their door.
+
+"Who is it?" Feistmantel's harsh voice inquired.
+
+"Sydow."
+
+"Oh, pray come in," called the high voice of the Princess. He entered.
+
+It was a small room in the third story. Feistmantel was sitting by the
+window, mending some article of dress; the Princess was sitting on her
+bed, reading "Autour du Mariage," by Gyp.
+
+The Princess moved no farther than to offer him her hand with a
+charming smile; Feistmantel cleared off the articles from an arm-chair,
+that he might sit down.
+
+"Oh, what a dreary day! I am so glad you are come! We are nearly bored
+to death," said Dorothea, rubbing her eyes, and gathering her feet
+under her so that she sat cross-legged on the bed. "Can you give me a
+cigarette? mine are all gone."
+
+Feistmantel said something in disapproval of a lady's smoking, when
+Dorothea remarked, composedly, "Don't listen to her; she is putting on
+airs again because of my exalted family, when the fact is that it was
+from her that I learned to smoke. Oh, what a wretched world! 'Who but
+ducks and pumps can keep out of the dumps, in a world that is never
+dry?' Oh, I am so bored,--so bored!" She stretched herself slightly. "I
+should like at least to go to Doney's and get an ice, but we cannot; we
+have no money."
+
+Then Sydow blurted out the little speech he had composed with infinite
+pains, coming to a stand-still three times during the recital.
+
+He had heard that the ladies had been expecting remittances from
+Germany. Of course there was some mistake: would they permit him to
+relieve them--from--their temporary embarrassment?
+
+He paused in great confusion. Would they turn him out of the room? No!
+The Princess simply held out her hands and exclaimed, "You are an
+angel! I could really embrace you!" which of course she did not do, but
+which she could have done without thinking much of it.
+
+That same evening the Princess's bill was paid.
+
+Two days later Goswyn arrived in Florence. He surprised his brother at
+dinner with Dorothea and Feistmantel at a small table at the extreme
+end of a long close dining-room, beside a window looking out upon the
+Arno.
+
+The Princess was giggling and chatting in her clear high voice, which
+could be heard outside of the dining-hall; she wore a white dress, and
+a diamond ring sparkled upon her hand. At first Goswyn smiled at his
+brother's charming travelling acquaintances, but in a very little while
+the state of affairs made him grave. Of course he took his place at the
+table with the three. The Princess instantly began to flirt with him.
+First she congratulated herself that they were now a _partie carree_;
+it was very jolly; until then Herr von Sydow had cut but a sorry figure
+between two ladies, now they could be taken for two couples on a
+wedding-tour. Then, planting both elbows upon the table, she leaned
+across to Goswyn and asked, "Which of the gentlemen will appropriate
+Feistmantel?"
+
+"That is for the ladies to decide," Goswyn replied, laughing.
+
+"Then my guardian spirit shall fall to your lot," said Dorothea, "for I
+prefer your brother. I perceived the instant that you appeared that you
+are a very disagreeable fellow, Herr Goswyn von Sydow," pronouncing the
+name with mock pathos,--"yes, a thoroughly disagreeable fellow. I
+could not live with you three days; while I could endure a lifetime
+with your brother. He is such an honest, clumsy bear: I have always had
+a liking for bears. Look, he gave me this ring as a keepsake: is it not
+pretty?"
+
+Otto von Sydow long remembered the look which his brother gave the
+ring.
+
+That evening the brothers had a violent dispute.
+
+Goswyn admitted that the Princess was charming in spite of her wretched
+training and impossible behaviour; that there could not be a more
+amusing transient travelling acquaintance; that, finally, she certainly
+did come of very good stock, and was, in spite of her free and easy
+style of conversation, a pure-minded woman,--which should make it still
+more a matter of conscience with Otto not to compromise her as he was
+doing; for a marriage with her, even although her poor but haughty
+family could be brought to consent to the misalliance, was out of the
+question.
+
+The result of this conversation was that Otto at last hung his head and
+admitted that his wiser, stronger brother was right; he promised to
+leave Florence with Goswyn the next morning; but when the trunks were
+all piled on the coach for their departure he met the Princess Dorothea
+on the stairs, and did not leave, but stayed and was betrothed to her.
+
+It would be doing her injustice to say that she married him solely for
+his money. No, she really had a decided liking for "bears," and, as far
+as she could love any one, she loved her big, clumsy husband, just as
+she preferred brown bread and sour milk to all the delicacies of the
+table. During the honey-moon, which she spent with Otto upon his estate
+in Silesia, she developed an astonishing degree of tenderness, but she
+could not love anything for any length of time. Then, too, she was
+entirely unused to any regular life, and the dull routine at Kosnitz
+soon bored her to death. At first it delighted her to revel in her
+husband's wealth, to have dress after dress made, to adorn herself with
+all sorts of trinkets; but she soon found it tiresome and monotonous.
+Oh for a small room on the third floor of some hotel in Paris with
+Feistmantel, and poverty, and liberty, and a fresh conquest every day!
+how she longed for it all!
+
+At first in Berlin, in honour of her husband, she had assumed the
+conventional air of a great lady; but of that she soon became
+desperately tired: it was the most wearisome of all the weariness in
+her new life.
+
+In spite of all that evil tongues might say of her, she was as yet
+perfectly innocent: of that her husband was convinced.
+
+"She is utterly unsusceptible,--utterly," he said to himself, as he
+tramped home through the mud and wet. And with this poor consolation he
+was obliged to be content.
+
+But, slow-witted as he was, he was aware that women unsusceptible to
+temptation are apt to be equally unsusceptible to the disgrace of a
+fall. The matter is simply of no importance to them. Princess Dorothea
+would never be led astray through passion; but at the thought of the
+devouring, degrading ennui which was continually dragging her downward,
+Otto von Sydow shuddered.
+
+Suddenly his cheeks burned; he could have boxed his own ears for such
+thoughts with regard to his wife.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+A few days after the wicked fairy's successful Thursday two fresh
+pieces of news were circulated in Berlin: one was that Goswyn von Sydow
+had fought another duel in his sister-in-law's behalf, and the other
+stated that Countess Lenzdorff had given the fashionable artist Riedel
+permission to paint her grand-daughter as "Heather Blossom." The truth
+as to the duel was never fully discovered. Goswyn von Sydow certainly
+appeared for a while with his arm in a sling, but, as he stoutly
+maintained that he had sprained his wrist in a fall from his horse,
+people were forced to be satisfied with this explanation. If some very
+sharp-sighted men added that in certain cases it was a man's duty to
+lie, no matter how strict might be his ideas of truth,--why, that was
+their affair.
+
+As for the portrait, it was true that the old Countess had acceded to
+Riedel's request to be allowed to paint Erika as "Heather Blossom," of
+course not in the artist's studio, but in the Countess Lenzdorff's
+drawing-room, where Riedel worked away for a week, three hours daily,
+seated before a large easel, with colour-boxes beside him.
+
+The result of his well-meant efforts was a commonplace affair,
+something between Ary Scheffer's Mignon and Gabriel Max's "Gretchen at
+her Wheel."
+
+Naturally the Countess Lenzdorff was in no wise charmed by this
+picture, although in view of the ability of the artist in question she
+had not expected anything better.
+
+"A 'Book of Beauty' painter, that Riedel," she said of him: "he
+flatters every one alike, and is blind to wrinkles, scars, and what he
+calls defects of all kinds. Such fellows as he are sure to be a success
+in the present day, when truth is at a discount. They never dissipate a
+single illusion, and the world--the world of society--delights in
+them."
+
+She certainly took no pains not to dissipate illusions for the world to
+which she belonged: on the contrary, she delighted to destroy them,
+jeering _coram publico_ at the beautifying salve which the model
+members of society as well as her favourite artists and literary men
+plastered over every peculiarity of humanity, and which in life passes
+for 'kindly criticism' and in art for 'idealistic conception.' She
+spent her time in tearing down the rose-coloured curtains from the
+windows of her acquaintances, and naturally her acquaintances did not
+like it; they loved their rose-coloured curtains, which excluded the
+pitiless garish daylight, admitting only a becoming twilight in which
+all the sharp edges and dark stains of life faded into indistinctness.
+
+The Countess's rage for broad daylight seemed cruel to her
+acquaintances, while she in her turn called their love of twilight
+cowardly and when she alluded to the fashionable world usually
+designated it briefly as "Kapilavastu."
+
+Erika asked her grandmother the meaning of this word. Upon which the
+old lady shrugged her shoulders and replied, "Kapilavastu is the name
+of the town in which Buddha grew up, the town where his parents hoped
+to shield him forever from the sight of old age, death, and disease!"
+Then, with a quiet laugh, she added, as if to herself, "Oh, what a
+world it is!"
+
+All her life long she had sneered at the 'world of fashion,' which did
+not at all interfere with the fact that she would have greatly disliked
+being aught but 'a great lady.'
+
+
+When Riedel had completed his picture of "Heather Blossom" to his own
+satisfaction, and enriched it with his valuable signature, he laid it
+as a tribute at the feet of the Countess Lenzdorff, begging permission
+to exhibit his masterpiece at Schulte's, 'unter den Linden.'
+
+Permission was accorded him,--of course with the proviso that the name
+of the model should be strictly concealed.
+
+Whether the picture were the 'sentimental daub' which the old Countess
+dubbed it, or the exquisite work of art which Riedel's numerous
+admirers pronounced it, certain it is that it attracted a great deal of
+attention,--so much, indeed, that the Countess Anna was one day seized
+with a desire to witness for herself the effect produced by it upon a
+gaping public.
+
+It was a fair, sunshiny day in March when she walked to the end of the
+Thiergarten with Erika, slowly followed by her carriage. It was a
+pleasure to her to observe the undisguised admiration excited by her
+grand-daughter. And the girl was worthy of it. Tall, distinguished in
+air and bearing, faultlessly dressed in dark-gray cloth with a long boa
+of blue-fox fur and a black hat and feathers, she walked with an air
+and a bearing that a young queen might have envied.
+
+"Every one looks after you, as if you were the Empress herself," said
+her grandmother, with a laugh, as she espied a young officer of
+dragoons, who with his hand at his cap saluted the grandmother but
+looked at the grand-daughter.
+
+"Goswyn! this is lucky," she exclaimed, beckoning to him. "We are on
+our way to Schulte's to look at Erika's portrait. Will you come with
+us?"
+
+"If you will let me," he replied. "But you will probably not see the
+portrait," he went on, smiling,--"only a great crowd of people. At
+least that was almost all I could see the last time I was there."
+
+"Oh, you have been there?" said the old Countess, with a merry twinkle
+of her eye. "Then, of course, you do not care to go again."
+
+"No, certainly not to see the picture; but you cannot get rid of me
+now, Countess."
+
+Beneath the lindens on one side of the way stood a crippled boy with a
+huge hump, playing the accordion. The squeaking tones of the miserable
+instrument were but little in harmony with the splendour of the
+Thiergarten at this hour. A lady, as she passed the child, turned away
+with a shudder, and tears started in the boy's eyes and rolled down his
+pale, precocious face, as he retreated into still deeper shade.
+
+Without interrupting what he was saying to the old Countess, Goswyn
+gave the boy some money. On a sudden Countess Lenzdorff noticed that
+Erika was not beside her. "Where is the child?" she exclaimed, looking
+round. Erika had fallen behind to stroke the little cripple's thin
+cheeks.
+
+When she perceived that she was observed, she hastily left the child.
+Her own cheeks were flushed, and there were tears in her eyes.
+
+"Why, Erika!" her grandmother cried out, in dismay, "what are you
+about?"
+
+"I could not help it," the girl replied: "it was so hateful of that
+woman to show the boy her disgust at the sight of him." She could
+scarcely restrain her tears.
+
+"But, Erika,"--her grandmother put her hand on the girl's arm, and
+spoke very gently,--"you might catch some disease."
+
+"And if I did," Erika murmured, still under the influence of strong
+emotion, "I should not be half so wretched as that child. Why should I
+have everything and he nothing?"
+
+To this no reply could be made; even the Countess's talent for repartee
+failed her, and the three walked on together silently. The Countess
+Anna glanced towards Goswyn. Never before had she seen him so gravely
+impressed; and on a sudden the despair that had possessed her in view
+of the unjust arrangement of human affairs was converted into pride and
+joy.
+
+When they reached the picture-dealer's they found the portrait in an
+inner room, surrounded, in fact, by quite a crowd of people, although
+it was not great enough to satisfy the old Countess's pride: it could
+hardly have been that, indeed. Still, she did not express her
+disappointment in words, but ridiculed the assemblage.
+
+The words 'Heather Blossom' were carved in the very effective frame of
+the portrait, and on one side could be traced a coronet.
+
+"A beggar-girl and a coronet! nothing could appeal more strongly to
+these plebeians," the old lady exclaimed; and then she whispered to
+Erika, "Thank God, no one could recognize you from that daub, or we
+should have the whole rabble around us. What do you think of the
+picture, Goswyn?"
+
+"Miserable," Goswyn replied, with a frown. "Between ourselves, I cannot
+understand your allowing the fellow to exhibit it."
+
+"What could I do?" said the Countess, shrugging her shoulders: "he
+talked of the effect it would produce upon people generally, and in
+fact he seems to have been right. The Archduchess Geroldstein has
+already ordered her portrait of him. I cannot understand it. To me
+Riedel is absolutely uninteresting. If he has a really fine model he
+seems to lose even the power to flatter, upon which his reputation is
+chiefly based. Erika is ten times more beautiful than that picture."
+
+This was Goswyn's opinion also, but he remained silent, asking himself
+whether it could be that the absent old Countess had actually forgotten
+her granddaughter's presence. Such, however, was not the case. It
+simply had never occurred to her to regard Erika's beauty as a secret
+to be confided to all the world except to the girl herself: she would
+as soon have thought of concealing from her the amount of her yearly
+income.
+
+"I want you to look at a picture which has charmed me," Goswyn said,
+after a pause, desirous to change the subject, and as he spoke he
+pointed to a picture at sight of which the old lady uttered an
+exclamation of admiration, while Erika gazed at it pale and mute.
+
+The picture was called 'The Seeress,' and represented a peasant-girl
+standing wan and rapt, her eyes gazing into the unseen, her hand
+stretched out as if groping. On the right of the girl were a couple of
+willows in the midst of the level landscape, their trunks rugged and
+scarred and here and there tufted with wild flowers, while in the
+background a little trickling stream was spanned by a huge stone
+bridge, through the arches of which could be seen glimpses of a
+miserable village half obscured by rising mists.
+
+The Berlin public were too much spoiled by the mediocre artistic
+euphemism of the day to have the taste to appreciate this masterpiece.
+A couple of art critics passed it by with a shake of the head,
+muttering, "Unripe fruit."
+
+Countess Lenzdorff repeated the phrase as the wise-acres disappeared.
+"Unripe fruit!--Quite right, but a most noble specimen. I only trust it
+may ripen under favourable conditions. The thing is full of talent. 'A
+Seeress.' Apparently a Jeanne d'Arc."
+
+"Probably," said Goswyn. "It certainly is original in conception: there
+is nothing conventional in it. What inspiration there is in the pale
+face! what maidenly grace in the noble and yet almost emaciated figure!
+It is a most attractive picture."
+
+"The strange thing about it is that this Seeress in reality looks far
+more like Erika than does Riedel's 'Heather Blossom,'" exclaimed the
+old lady. "I must have this picture!"
+
+"You are too late, Countess," rejoined Goswyn.
+
+"Is it sold already? What was the price?"
+
+"It was very reasonable,--a beginner's price," Goswyn replied, with a
+slight blush.
+
+The old Countess laughed: she had no objection that Goswyn, with his
+limited means, should buy a picture just because it resembled her
+grand-daughter.
+
+Meanwhile, Erika was trembling in every limb. Who but _he_ could have
+painted the picture?--who else had seen Luzano,--Luzano, and herself?
+She felt proud of her _protege_. In the corner of the picture she read
+'Lozoncyi.' It pleased her that he had so fine-sounding a foreign name.
+
+"You shall find out for me where the young man lives," Countess
+Lenzdorff cried, eagerly: "he must paint Erika for me while his prices
+are still reasonable."
+
+Goswyn cleared his throat. "Much as I admire this young artist," he
+observed, "if I were you I would not have him paint Countess Erika."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because he has another picture on exhibition here, to see which an
+extra price of admission is asked."
+
+"Indeed!" cried the old lady. "Is it so very bad?"
+
+"The worst of it is the curtain that hides it from the public, and the
+extra price paid to look at it," Goswyn replied, half laughing. "It
+certainly is a powerful thing,--painted later than 'The Seeress,' and
+under a different inspiration. If you would like to see it, let me play
+the part of Countess Erika's chaperon for a few minutes: you go behind
+that curtain."
+
+The Countess Anna could not let such an opportunity slip. She was an
+old woman; no one--not even the over-scrupulous Goswyn--could object to
+her looking at the picture. So she blithely went her way.
+
+Meanwhile, Erika had grown very pale. She felt as if some dear old
+plaything, to which she had attached all sorts of pathetic memories,
+had fallen into the mire! It was gone; let it lie there: she would not
+stoop to pick it up and wipe it off.
+
+Goswyn, who was observing her narrowly, could not understand the sudden
+change in her face. He had often had occasion to notice the
+sensitiveness of her moral nature, but to-day the key to the riddle was
+lacking. What could it possibly matter to her whether or not an obscure
+artist painted an improper picture?
+
+He tried to begin a conversation with her, but had hardly done so when
+Countess Lenzdorff returned, walking slowly, with her head held
+haughtily erect, a sign with her of extreme indignation.
+
+"You seem more shocked, Countess, than I expected you to be," Goswyn
+remarked, as she appeared. "Do you think the picture so very bad?"
+
+"Nonsense!" the old lady replied, impatiently. "It was not painted for
+school-girls and boys: it did not shock me. It is not the picture that
+has made me angry, but--whom do you think I found in the room with her
+cousin Nimbsch and two or three other young men? Your sister-in-law
+Dorothea! So young a woman had better not look at a picture before
+which it is thought necessary to hang a curtain, but it is beyond a
+jest when she takes a train of young men with her to see it. If one is
+without principles,--good heavens! it is hard enough to hold on to
+principles in this philosophic age, when one is puzzled to know upon
+what to base them,--one ought at least to have some feeling of decency,
+some aesthetic sentiment."
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+For some time of late the loungers in Bellevue Street had enjoyed an
+interesting morning spectacle. Before the hotel the first story of
+which was occupied by Countess Anna Lenzdorff, three beautiful
+thoroughbred horses pawed the ground impatiently between the hours of
+eight and nine. A stable-boy in velveteens held two of the horses,
+while a groom in a tall hat and buckskin breeches reverently held the
+bridle of the third steed, which was provided with a lady's saddle. The
+groom was bow-legged and red-faced, very English in appearance,--in
+fact, an ideal groom.
+
+Before long a young lady would appear at the tall door of the house, a
+young lady in a close-fitting dark-blue riding-habit and a tall silk
+hat beneath which the knot of her gleaming hair showed in almost too
+great luxuriance, and close behind her would come a fair-haired officer
+of dragoons. After stroking her steed and feeding it with sugar, the
+young lady would place her foot in the willing hand of her tall escort
+and lightly leap into the saddle. Then there would be a slight
+arrangement of skirt and stirrup, and "Is it all right, Countess
+Erika?"
+
+"Yes, Herr von Sydow."
+
+And in an instant the officer and his groom would mount and the little
+cavalcade would wend its way with clattering hoofs to the adjacent
+Thiergarten.
+
+At the close of the season Countess Lenzdorff had declared that her
+grand-daughter looked ill and needed exercise.
+
+At first she prescribed a course of riding-lessons in the Imperial
+School; but Erika found this very irksome, and Goswyn was intrusted
+with the task of procuring her a riding horse and of teaching her to
+ride. Under his guidance she made astonishing progress, and then--she
+looked so lovely on horseback. When she began, the Thiergarten was cold
+and bare,--it was towards the end of March: now it was the end of
+April, and there was spring everywhere.
+
+On the tall old trees the foliage, young and tender, drenched with
+sunlight, showed golden green, gleaming brown, and rosy red, shading
+off into transparency in the gradations of colour native to early
+spring, and in the midst of this harmonious variety here and there a
+grave dark fir would show its dark boughs not yet decorated with the
+slender green fingers in the gift of May. Among the trees the smooth
+surface of a pond would reflect the myriad tones of colour of the
+spring; the long shadows of morning stretched dark across the level
+sunlit sward of the openings in the woodland. The air was fresh and
+filled with the fragrance of cool moist earth and young vegetation, but
+mingling with its invigorating breath there was suddenly wafted a
+languid odour, intoxicatingly sweet, but with something sickening in
+its essence, and as the riders looked for its source they perceived
+among the spring greenery, covered to the tip of every bough with
+gleaming white blossoms, the luxuriant wild cherry.
+
+Erika inhaled its heavy breath with eager delight, while Goswyn's
+dislike of it amounted almost to disgust.
+
+Every day they rode thus together along the avenues of the Thiergarten,
+until they became familiar with every pond, every statue,--yes, even
+with the appearance of every rider. At times they would meet a couple
+of cavalry officers and exchange greetings; or a few infantry officers,
+much-enduring warriors, who seemed to find riding the most difficult
+duty required of them; or some gentleman in trade testing upon a hired
+steed his skill in horsemanship and pale with terror if he happened to
+lose a stirrup. Squadrons of young girls under the guardianship of a
+riding-master would come cantering along the smooth drive, some
+overflowing with youthful vitality, others evidently taking the
+exercise by order of a physician.
+
+Of course Countess Lenzdorff had requested Goswyn's supervision for
+only the few first efforts in horsemanship made by her grand-daughter,
+never dreaming that he would sacrifice two hours of each day in
+trotting about the Thiergarten with the young girl. But week followed
+week and he was still riding daily with Erika. In themselves there
+could have been but little pleasure in these excursions always along
+the same familiar avenues,--longer flights into the surrounding country
+with only a groom as escort would have been thought indecorous,--and
+yet the two morning hours thus passed were more to the young dragoon
+than the whole day beside.
+
+The girl was in such harmony with the early, fresh nature about them.
+She was still but a child; but just as she was, with her unblunted
+sensibilities, her eager warm-heartedness, he would fain have clasped
+her in his arms, and have claimed the right to cherish and nurture to
+their glorious development all the fine qualities now dormant within
+her, before she should be wounded and sore from the thorns that beset
+her pathway.
+
+That her sentiments towards him bore no comparison with those he
+cherished for her he was perfectly aware; but what of that? Passion too
+easily aroused on her part would not have pleased him, and she frankly
+showed her preference for him among all the men of her acquaintance.
+
+The old Countess did all that she could to further his wooing: if he
+had not been in love he would have thought that she did too much. It
+was foolish to delay.
+
+The leaves had lost their first tender beauty and were full-grown,
+strong, and shining, as they rode one day along one of the narrowest
+bridle-paths in the Thiergarten,--a path where here and there a huge
+tree, which those who had laid out the park had not had the heart to
+sacrifice, almost obstructed the way. They trotted along briskly, like
+all beginners. Erika preferred a very swift pace, at which Goswyn
+sometimes demurred. On a sudden the girl's horse shied, violently
+startled by a wayfarer who had fallen asleep in the shade by the side
+of the path.
+
+Very calmly, with no thought of danger, Erika not only kept her seat in
+the saddle, but quickly succeeded in soothing her horse.
+
+All the more was Goswyn terrified, and no sooner was he convinced that
+Erika did not need his assistance than he turned angrily and soundly
+berated the unfortunate man, who was apparently intoxicated. Then,
+somewhat ashamed of his outburst, he rejoined Erika, who awaited him
+with a smile of surprise. He frowned; his cheeks were flushed. "Pardon
+me, Countess; I am very sorry," he said. "I could think of nothing but
+that you might have been thrown,---that tree--if you had lost your
+presence of mind----" He shuddered.
+
+She shrugged her shoulders. "And what if I had? You were by."
+
+At these words his face cleared. "Do you really feel such confidence in
+me?" he asked.
+
+"I?" She looked at him in utter surprise. Why should he ask a question
+to which the reply was so self-evident?
+
+His grave, manly face took on an expression of almost boyish
+embarrassment, and suddenly she became aware of his sentiments,--for
+the first time. She made a nervous effort to devise something that
+should hinder his confession, something that should spare him
+humiliation and herself pain: she could invent nothing. In vain did she
+search her mind for some, even the smallest, sensible evasive phrase,
+and at last she murmured, "The trees are very green for the time of
+year. Do you not think so?"
+
+He smiled in spite of his agitation and confusion, and then said, in
+the slightly hoarse tone which always with him betokened intense
+earnestness, "Countess Erika, beyond a certain point twilight, lovely
+as it is, becomes intolerable; one longs for light." He paused, looked
+full in her face, and cleared his throat. "You must long have been
+aware of how I regard you?"
+
+But she interrupted him hurriedly: "No, no; I have been aware of
+nothing,--nothing at all."
+
+She trembled violently, and turned into a broad road, where a gay
+cavalcade came cantering towards her,--the Princess Dorothea and her
+train of several gentlemen.
+
+"Turn to the right," called Goswyn, and the cavalcade passed, the dust
+raised by their horses enveloping everything like a misty cloud.
+
+Erika coughed slightly. "Good heavens! perhaps he understood, and will
+save me from replying," she thought.
+
+But no, he did not save her from replying.
+
+"Well, Countess Erika?" he began, after a short pause, gently, but very
+firmly.
+
+"Wha--what?" she stammered.
+
+"Will you be my wife?"
+
+She gasped for breath: never could she have believed that she should
+find it so hard to refuse an offer. But accept it--no; something within
+her rebelled against the thought--she could not.
+
+"N--no. I am very sorry," she stammered, every pulse throbbing wildly.
+She was terribly agitated as she glanced timidly up at him. Not a
+muscle in his face moved.
+
+"I was prepared for this," he murmured.
+
+"Thank God, he does not care very much!" she thought, taking a long
+breath; and the next moment--nay, even that very moment--she was vexed
+that he did 'not care very much.'
+
+They had reached the railway bridge, beneath which they were wont to
+turn into the grand avenue for a final gallop. For a moment she
+contemplated sacrificing to her rejected suitor this gallop, the crown
+and glory of their daily ride. She reined in her horse.
+
+"No gallop?" he asked, as if nothing had passed between them, except
+that his voice was still a little hoarse.
+
+"Oh, if you will. I only thought----" she stammered.
+
+He replied with the chivalric courtesy with which he always treated
+her, "I am entirely at your service."
+
+For a moment she hesitated; then, with a touch of the whip on her
+steed's right shoulder, she started.
+
+"Oh, how glorious!" she exclaimed, as they turned just before reaching
+the pavement. "Shall we not have one more?"
+
+And so they rode twice up and down the grand avenue. The air was clear
+and cool, and there was in it the fragrance of freshly-planed wood,
+coming from a large shed that was being erected on one side of the
+avenue for an exhibition of horses.
+
+Years afterwards Erika could never recall that ride and her miserable
+cruelty without again perceiving that peculiar fragrance.
+
+The young man was in direful plight. Whatever he might say, he had not
+been prepared for this. The last few days had been passed by him in a
+state of blissful agitation in which, try as he might, he could not
+torment himself with doubts. He had fallen from an immense height, and
+he was terribly bruised. In spite of all his self-control, he began to
+show it. Erika grew more and more depressed, glancing sympathizingly
+aside at him from time to time. Now she would far rather that he had
+not cared so much. Evidently she did not herself know what she really
+wished.
+
+They trotted along side by side; then just as they turned into Bellevue
+Street he heard a low distressed voice say,--
+
+"Herr von Sydow--I would not have you think that--that--I--intended to
+say that to you. I so value your friendship--I should be so very sorry
+to lose it--and--and----" She threw back her head slightly, and,
+looking him in the face from beneath the stiff brim of her riding-hat,
+she said, with a charming little smile, "Tell me that all shall be just
+as it has been between us."
+
+"As you please, Countess Erika," he replied, unable to restrain a smile
+at this novel way of treating a rejected suitor.
+
+When he lifted her from her horse shortly afterwards, he just touched
+her gray riding-glove with his lips; she looked kindly at him, and as
+he gazed after her from the hall as she ascended the staircase she
+turned her head to give him a friendly little nod.
+
+
+His heart grew lighter; he would not take too seriously her rejection
+of his suit; it was not final. "After all," he thought, "in spite of
+her precocious intelligence she is but a charming, innocent child; and
+that is what makes her so bewitching."
+
+The sunlight gleamed on the gilded tops of the iron railings of the
+front gardens in Bellevue Street, upon the leaves of the trees, and
+upon the long line of red-painted watering-carts stretching away in
+perspective like the beads of a huge rosary. The heat was already
+rather oppressive in Berlin. But Goswyn was robust, and sensitive
+neither to heat nor to cold. His ride with Erika was but the beginning
+of his daily exercise, and he trotted off to finish it.
+
+In the Charlottenburg Avenue he encountered the same cavalcade he had
+seen before in the Thiergarten in the midst of his declaration to
+Erika. Thanks to her agitation, the girl had recognized none of the
+party, but he had bowed to his sister-in-law and her esquires. Now she
+beckoned to him from a distance, and called, "Goswyn!"
+
+She was considerably taller and more slender than Erika, but she looked
+well in the saddle. Her gray-green eyes sparkled with malicious mockery
+from beneath the brim of her tall hat. "Goswyn," she cried, speaking
+with her accustomed rapidity in her high piercing voice and with her
+strange lisp, "you were just now made the subject of a wager."
+
+"But, Thea," Prince Nimbsch interrupted his cousin, "we none of us
+agreed to wager with you."
+
+"What was it about?" asked Goswyn, with a most uncomfortable
+presentiment that some annoyance threatened him.
+
+The three men with Dorothea looked at one another; Dorothea giggled. At
+last Prince Nimbsch said, "My cousin wished to wager that the Countess
+Erika would be wooed and won this spring."
+
+"Oh, no," Dorothea interrupted him; "that was not it at all. I wagered
+that you had been refused by Erika this morning in the Thiergarten,
+Gos. Helmy would not believe me; but I have sharp eyes."
+
+She said it still giggling, with the wayward insolence of a spoiled
+child, not consciously cruel, who for very wantonness pulls a beetle to
+pieces. "Am I not right?" she persisted.
+
+The men turned away as men of feeling would turn away from beholding an
+execution.
+
+There was a red cloud before Goswyn's eyes, but he maintained his
+outward composure perfectly. "Yes, Dorothea, I have been rejected," he
+said, and the words sounded oddly distinct in the midst of the absolute
+silence of the little group, surrounded as it was by the bustle and
+noise of the capital. "May I ask what possible interest this can have
+for you?"
+
+"Oh," she laughed still more insolently, ready as she always was to
+exaggerate her ill-breeding when she was tempted to be ashamed of
+it,--"oh, I only wanted to make sure I was right. Helmy contradicted
+me so positively, declaring that a man like you never could be
+rejected. Aha, Helmy! Well, the other Berlin men will be glad!"
+
+"And why?" Goswyn asked, with the unfortunate persistence in pursuing a
+disagreeable subject often shown by strong men who would fain establish
+their lack of sensitiveness.
+
+"Why? Because you are a dangerous rival, Goswyn," cried Dorothea. "Do
+you suppose that you are the only one to covet the hand of the
+heiress?"
+
+For a moment Goswyn felt as if a naming torch had been hurled in his
+face. He grew giddy, but, still maintaining his self-control, he simply
+rejoined, "Dorothea, there are circumstances in which your sex is an
+immense protection," and then, turning with a bow to the three men, he
+galloped off in an opposite direction.
+
+Dorothea still giggled, but she turned very pale; her companions, on
+the other hand, were scarlet.
+
+"Ride home with whomsoever you please: I am ashamed to be seen with
+you!" Prince Nimbsch said, angrily; and he hurried after Sydow. But
+when he overtook him the two men looked at each other and were silent.
+At last Nimbsch began, "I only wanted to say----"
+
+Goswyn interrupted him: "There is nothing to be said;" and there was a
+hoarse tone in his voice that pained the young Austrian. "I know you to
+be a gentleman, Prince, and that you consider me one. There is nothing
+to be said."
+
+Before the Prince could say another word, Goswyn was well-nigh out of
+sight.
+
+Two hours afterwards Goswyn von Sydow might have been seen on a horse
+covered with foam galloping over the sandy hilly tracts of land by
+which Berlin is surrounded. He had never bestowed a thought upon
+Erika's wealth: now he felt that he never could forget it. He had been
+robbed of all ease in her society. It was all over.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER X.
+
+
+If Erika could have known anything of the unpleasant scene in
+Charlottenburg Avenue, her warm-hearted indignation would immediately
+have developed into vigour the germ of affection for Goswyn that
+already, unknown to herself, slumbered in her heart. She would
+certainly have committed some exaggerated, irresponsible act, which
+would have overthrown at a blow Goswyn's rudely-aroused, tormenting
+pride. She never could have borne to have another inflict upon him pain
+or humiliation. The entire disagreeable complication would have come to
+a crisis in a most touching scene, and in the end two people absolutely
+made for each other would have been sitting hand clasped in hand on the
+lounge beneath the fan-palms in Countess Lenzdorff's drawing-room,
+conversing in low tones, and Erika would have arrived at the sensible
+and agreeable conviction that there could be nothing better in the
+world than to share the life of a strong, noble husband to whom she
+could implicitly confide her happiness. The problem of her life would
+have found its solution, and she would have been spared the perilous
+errors and hard trials awaiting her in the future.
+
+But the ugly story never reached her. The three men who had been
+auditors of Dorothea's coarse cruelty would have considered as a breach
+of honour any report of it, and the Princess Dorothea contented herself
+with a giggling declaration to all who chose to listen that her
+brother-in-law Goswyn had had the mitten from Erika Lenzdorff, without
+referring to the way in which her information had been procured.
+
+Thus Erika passed the rest of the day with a rather sore, compassionate
+feeling in her heart, never doubting that she should have her usual
+ride with Goswyn the next morning, when she promised herself to be
+particularly amiable. All would come right, she said to herself.
+
+But that same evening, when she was taking tea with her grandmother,
+old Luedecke brought his mistress a letter which she read with evident
+surprise and then laid down beside her plate. She did not eat another
+morsel, and scarcely spoke during the meal. Observing that Erika,
+distressed by her silence, had also ceased eating and was anxiously
+glancing towards her grandmother from time to time, she asked, "Have
+you finished?" Her voice was unusually stern. Erika was startled.
+"Yes," she stammered, and, trembling in every limb, she followed her
+grandmother out of the dining-room and into the Countess's cheerful,
+cosey boudoir. There the old lady began to pace thoughtfully to and
+fro: she looked very dignified and awe-inspiring. Erika had never
+before seen her thus, walking with short impatient steps, frowning
+brow, and a face that seemed hewn out of marble. She began to be
+frightfully uncomfortable in the presence of the angry old woman, and
+was trying to slip away unobserved, when her grandmother barred her way
+and said, harshly, "Stay here: I have something to say to you, Erika."
+
+"Yes, grandmother."
+
+"Sit down."
+
+Erika obeyed.
+
+The room looked very pleasant, with its light furniture revealed in the
+shaded brilliancy of coloured hanging lamps. One window was open; a low
+rustle of leaves was wafted in through the pale-green silken curtains
+upon the warm languorous breath of the spring night. Her grandmother
+seated herself in her favourite arm-chair beside her reading-table,
+with Erika opposite her on a frail-looking little chair, bolt upright,
+with her hands in her lap, and a very distressed expression of
+countenance.
+
+"This letter is from Goswyn," the old lady began, tapping the letter in
+her lap.
+
+"Yes, grandmother," murmured Erika.
+
+"You guessed it?" the old lady asked, in a hard, unnatural voice, and
+with an exaggerated distinctness of utterance, which were very strange
+to her granddaughter.
+
+"I know his handwriting."
+
+"H'm! You know what is in the letter?"
+
+"How should I?" Erika's pale cheeks flushed crimson.
+
+"How should you? Well, then, I must tell you"--she smoothed down her
+dress with an impatient gesture--"that you refused his offer to-day:
+that is what the letter contains. Surely you should know it. Such
+things are not done in sleep."
+
+"Ah, yes, I know that," Erika murmured, beginning to be irritated in
+her turn; "but how was I to suppose that he would write it to you? I
+cannot see what he does it for?"
+
+"What for? He informs me that he must deprive himself of all
+intercourse with us for a time, that he has obtained leave of absence
+and is going away from Berlin."
+
+"But why?" exclaimed Erika. "This is perfect nonsense! It was settled
+that we should ride together to-morrow as usual."
+
+"Indeed! You expected him to ride with you after you had rejected him?"
+
+"He was perfectly agreed," Erika eagerly declared: "we parted the best
+of friends. I do not want to marry him, but I prize his friendship
+immensely. I told him so. He has surely put that in the letter. He is
+never unjust; he must have told you that I was nice to him. How could I
+help being so, when I pitied him so much?" The girl's voice trembled.
+"You have missed something in the letter; you must have missed
+something," she persisted.
+
+Her grandmother opened the letter again, and read, first in an
+undertone, then aloud: "Yes, here it is: 'Never was man rejected more
+charmingly, with greater sweetness, than I by the Countess Erika; but
+it did me no good. I only thought her more bewitching than ever before
+in her tender kindliness,--yes, even in all her dear, child-like,
+awkward attempts to reconcile what in the very nature of things is
+irreconcilable.
+
+"'For a while I shall be very wretched; but you know me well enough to
+feel sure that I shall not go through life hanging my head, any more
+than I shall now butt that same head against the wall. I trust that the
+time will come when I shall be of some use to you, my dear old friend,
+and, it may be, to _her_; but at present I am good for nothing.
+
+"'It is best that I should retire into the background. To-morrow I
+leave Berlin. Forgive me for finding it impossible to take leave of you
+in person, and believe in the faithful devotion of yours always,
+
+ "'G. Von Sydow.'"
+
+
+After the old lady had finished the reading of the letter, not without
+a certain pathetic emphasis, she looked up. Erika's face was bathed in
+tears. Her grandmother was dismayed, and after a pause began again, but
+in a very different and a very gentle tone.
+
+"This affair annoys me excessively, Erika."
+
+The girl nodded.
+
+"The fact is,"--the grandmother laid her hand on Erika's arm,--"you are
+very inexperienced in such affairs. Another time you must not let
+matters go so far. One must do everything in one's power to spare an
+honourable gentleman such a humiliation. Your conduct would have given
+the most modest of men reason to suppose you cared for him. You misled
+me completely."
+
+"Misled!--cared for him!" Erika repeated, tapping the carpet nervously
+with her foot. "But I do like him very much."
+
+Her grandmother all but smiled. "My dear child, I do not quite
+understand you. Consider! Shall I write and tell Goswyn that you were a
+little unprepared, and that you are sorry,--there's no disgrace in
+admitting that,--and--Heaven knows I shall be glad enough to write the
+letter!" She rose to go to her writing-table, but Erika detained her,
+nervously clutching at her skirts.
+
+"No! no! oh, no, grandmother!" she almost screamed. "I do like him; I
+know how good he is; but I do not want to marry him, I am still so
+young. For God's sake do not force me to do so!" She had grown deadly
+pale, as she clasped her hands in entreaty.
+
+Her grandmother looked at her with a grave shake of the head. "As you
+please," she said, no longer stern, but depressed, worried,--a mood
+very rare with her. "Now go and lie down: rest will do you good; and I
+should like to be alone for a while."
+
+Far into the night did the old Countess pace restlessly to and fro in
+her boudoir, amidst all the graceful works of art which she had
+collected about her with such satisfaction and which gave her none at
+present. At last she seated herself at her writing-table, and before
+Goswyn left Berlin the next day he received the following letter:
+
+
+"My Dear Boy,--
+
+"This matter affects me more than you would think. I was so sure of my
+case. At first I was disposed to scold the girl; but there turned out
+to be no reason for doing so. Not a trace did she show of vulgar love
+of admiration, nor even of heartless thoughtlessness. Everything that
+she said to you is true: she likes you very much. I tried to set her
+right,--in vain! For the present there is nothing to be done with her.
+
+"In the course of conversation I perceived that there was nothing for
+which the child was to blame; the fault was all mine. Can you forgive
+me?
+
+"But that is a mere phrase. I know that it never will occur to you to
+blame me.
+
+"My words will not come as readily as usual, and I am very
+uncomfortable. I am writing to you not only to tell you how much I pity
+you, but also to relieve my anxiety somewhat by talking it over with
+you.
+
+"I have come to see that my grandchild, whom I so wrongly
+neglected--the words are not a mere phrase--for so long, and for whom I
+now have an affection such as I have never felt for any one in my life
+hitherto, will give me many an unhappy hour.
+
+"Her sad, dreary youth has left its shadow on her soul, and has
+exaggerated in her a perilous inborn sensitiveness.
+
+"There are depths in her character which I cannot fathom. She is good,
+tender-hearted, noble, beautiful, and rarely gifted; but there is with
+her in everything a tendency to exaggeration that frightens me. I
+forebode now that my long neglect of the child from mere selfish love
+of ease will be bitterly avenged upon me.
+
+"If I had watched her from childhood, I should now know her; but,
+fondly as I love her, I cannot but feel that I do not understand her,
+and the great difference in our ages makes any perfect intimacy between
+us impossible. Moreover, in spite of my trifle of sagacity, of which I
+have availed myself for my own pleasure and never for the benefit of
+others, I am an unpractical person, and shall make many a stupid
+mistake in my treatment of the child. And it is a pity; for I do not
+over-estimate her: she is bewitching!
+
+"Yet, withal, I cannot help thinking that you have not acted as wisely
+as I should have expected you to,--that with a little more heartfelt
+insistence you might have prevailed where my persuasion failed. In
+especial your sudden flight is a perfect riddle to me. I looked for
+more perseverance from you. But this is your affair.
+
+"I am very sorry not to see you again before your hurried departure. I
+shall miss you terribly, my dear boy, I have become so accustomed to
+refer to you in all my small perplexities. Still hoping, in spite of
+everything, that sooner or later all may be as it should be between
+Erika and yourself, I am your affectionate old friend,
+
+ "Anna Lenzdorff."
+
+
+Chafed and sore in heart as Goswyn was at the time, this letter did him
+good. After reading it through he murmured, "When she thus reveals her
+inmost soul, it is easy to understand how, with all her faults and
+follies, one cannot help loving the old Countess."
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+A Thread in the web of Erika's existence snapped with Goswyn's
+departure. The sudden separation from him without even a farewell she
+felt to be very sad, and long after he had gone the mere mention of his
+name would thrill her with a vague, restless pain, a nervous
+dissatisfaction with herself, with the world, with him, a dim sense
+that some error had crept into her life's reckoning and that the story
+ought to have turned out otherwise. In the depths of her heart she was
+bitterly disappointed when after a rather gay summer and autumn she
+heard upon her return to Berlin that young Sydow had been transferred
+to Breslau.
+
+Soon, indeed, she lacked the time for occupying her thoughts with her
+dear good friend but unwelcome suitor. Existence developed brilliantly
+for her, and the world's incense mounted to her head, and bewildered
+her, as it bewilders all, even the wisest and gravest, if they are
+exposed to its influence.
+
+She was presented at court, where she produced the most favourable
+impression, and was distinguished by the highest personages in the land
+in a manner to excite much envy.
+
+Of course she went out a great deal,--so much that her grandmother, who
+had always been characterized by a certain social indolence, grew weary
+of accompanying her, and, whenever she could, intrusted her to the
+chaperonage of her oldest friend, Frau von Norbin.
+
+But when Erika reached home at midnight or after it she had to recount
+her triumphs at her grandmother's bedside. The old Countess would
+scrutinize her closely, as she would have done a work of art, and once
+she said, "Yes, you are a rare creature, it cannot be denied: you are
+more lovely after a ball than before it. How life thrills through you!
+But I do not understand you. I know your mind, and your nerves, but I
+have never proved the depths of your heart." Then she shook her head,
+sighed, kissed the youthful beauty upon her eyelids, and sent her to
+bed.
+
+Yes, there was no end to the homage paid her. No young girl had ever
+been so admired and caressed as was Erika Lenzdorff in the first two
+years after her presentation. It fairly rained adorers and suitors.
+Then--not because her beauty began to fade; no, she had never been more
+beautiful, she had developed magnificently--her conquests decreased.
+Her admirers were capricious, returning to her at times, and then
+holding aloof again; and as for suitors, they entirely disappeared.
+
+One fact was too patent not to be acknowledged by even the girl's
+adoring grandmother. To the usual society man Erika was duller and more
+uninteresting than the rawest pink-and-white village girl whose natural
+coquetry taught her how to flatter his vanity and emphasize his
+superiority. She did not know how to talk to her admirers, and her
+admirers did not know how to talk to her. The men thought her 'queer.'
+She passed for a blue-stocking because she read serious books, and for
+'highfalutin' because she speculated upon matters quite uninteresting
+to young girls in general. Since with all her feminine refinement of
+mind she combined not an iota of worldly wisdom, she harboured
+the conviction that every one regarded life from her own serious
+stand-point, and would fearlessly propound the problems that occupied
+her to the most superficial dandy who happened to be her partner in the
+german.
+
+Her grandmother once said to her, "You scare away your admirers with
+your attempts to teach them to fly. Men do not wish to learn to fly:
+you would succeed far better if you should try to teach them to crawl
+on all fours. Most of them have a decided predilection for doing so,
+and those women who can furnish them with a plausible pretext for
+it--for crawling on all fours, I mean--are sure to be the most popular
+with them."
+
+In reply to such a declaration Erika would gaze at her grandmother with
+an expression 'so pathetically stupid' that the old Countess could not
+help drawing the girl towards her and kissing her.
+
+"It is a pity you would not have Goswyn," the old Countess generally
+concluded, with a sigh: "you are caviare for people in general, and
+Goswyn was the only one who knew how to value you. I cannot comprehend
+you, Erika. Goswyn is the very ideal of a husband; warm-hearted, brave,
+and true, there is real support in his stout arm, and his broad
+shoulders are just fitted to bear a burden that another would find too
+heavy. He is no genius, but instead is brimful of the noblest kind of
+sense. Understand me, Erika; there is a great difference between the
+noblest kind and the inferior article."
+
+But by the time she had reached this point in her eulogy of Goswyn,
+Erika was standing with her hand on the latch of the door, stammering,
+"Yes, yes, grandmother; but I--I have a letter to write."
+
+She liked to avoid any discussion of Goswyn: a sensation of unrest,
+always the same, never developing into any distinct desire, was sure to
+assail her heart at the mention of his name.
+
+
+The girls who had made their _debuts_ with her were now almost all
+married. Very commonplace girls, whom she had treated with
+condescending kindness, married her own former admirers: she was no
+longer wooed. At first she laughed at the airs of superiority which the
+young wives took on in her society; but the second winter she was
+annoyed by them. Meanwhile, a fresh bevy of beauties made their
+appearance, and many a girl was admired and feted, simply because she
+had not been seen as often as the Countess Erika.
+
+In the depths of her heart, she had no desire whatever to marry. In her
+thoughts marriage was simply a clumsy, inconvenient requirement of our
+social organization, compliance with which she would postpone as long
+as possible. Against 'all for love' her inmost being rebelled, and yet
+her lack of suitors vexed her.
+
+Then, when the first social feminine authorities of Berlin began to
+shake their heads over her as a 'critical case,' she suddenly startled
+society by the announcement of her betrothal to a very wealthy English
+peer, Percy, Earl of Langley.
+
+She became acquainted with him at Carlsbad, whither her grandmother had
+gone for the waters. For several days she noticed that an elderly,
+distinguished-looking man followed her with his eyes whenever she
+appeared. At last, one morning he approached the old Countess, and with
+a smile asked whether she had really forgotten him or whether it was
+her deliberate intention persistently to cut him.
+
+She offered him her hand courteously, and replied, "Lord Langley, on
+the Continent a gentleman is supposed to speak first to a lady.
+Moreover, if I had been willing to comply with your national custom, I
+should hardly have known whether it were well to present myself to
+you."
+
+He laughed, with half-closed eyes, and rejoined that her remark could
+bear reference only to a period of his life long since past; now he was
+an old man, etc. "I have sown my wild oats," he declared, adding, "I've
+taken a long time to sow them, haven't I? But it's all over now!"
+Whereupon he requested an introduction to the Countess's companion.
+
+From that time he devoted himself to the two ladies. Erika was
+flattered by his respectful admiration, and liked to talk with him. In
+fact, she had never conversed with so much pleasure with any other man.
+He had formerly belonged to the diplomatic corps, and had known
+personally all the people mentioned by Lord Malmesbury in his
+memoirs,--in short, everybody who during the past forty years had been
+either famous or notorious, from the Emperor Nicholas, for whom he had
+an enthusiasm, to Cora Pearl, concerning whom he whispered anecdotes in
+the old Countess's ear, and whose career he declared, with a shrug, was
+a riddle to him.
+
+He was the keenest observer and cleverest talker imaginable,
+distinguished in appearance, always well dressed, a perfect type of the
+Englishman who, casting aside British cant, leads a gay life on the
+Continent, without faith, without any moral ideal, saturated through
+and through with a refined, cynical, witty Epicureanism, gently
+suppressed when in the society of ladies, although from indolence he
+did not entirely disguise it.
+
+Two weeks after recalling himself to the Countess Lenzdorff's memory,
+he wrote her a letter asking for her grand-daughter's hand. The old
+lady, not without embarrassment, informed the young girl of his
+proposal. "It certainly is trying," she began. "I cannot see how it
+ever entered his head to think of you. A blooming young creature like
+you, and his sixty years! What shall I say to him?"
+
+Erika stood speechless for a moment. The old Englishman's proposal was
+an utter surprise to her, but, oddly enough, it did not produce so
+disagreeable an impression upon her as upon her grandmother. She had
+always wished to mingle in English society. Wealthy as she was, she was
+aware that her wealth bore no comparison to that of Lord Langley. And
+then the position of the wife of an English peer was very different
+from that of the wife of any Prussian nobleman. Her fatal inheritance
+of romantic enthusiasm had latterly found expression with her in a
+certain craving for distinction. What a field opened before her! She
+saw herself feted, admired, besieged with petitions, one of the
+political influences of Europe.
+
+"Well?" asked Countess Lenzdorff, who had meanwhile taken her seat at
+her writing-table.
+
+"Well?" Erika repeated, in some confusion.
+
+"What shall I say? That you will not have him, of course; but how shall
+I courteously give him to understand---- It is intolerable! Do not get
+me into such a scrape again. Although, poor child, you cannot help it."
+
+Erika was silent.
+
+Her grandmother had begun to write, when she heard a very low, rather
+timid voice just behind her say,--
+
+"Grandmother!"
+
+She turned round. "What is it, child?"
+
+"You see--if I must marry----"
+
+Her grandmother stared, then exclaimed, sharply, "You could be
+induced----?"
+
+Erika nodded.
+
+The old lady fairly bounded from her chair, tore up the letter she had
+begun, threw the pieces on the floor, and left the room. The door was
+closed behind her, when she opened it again to say, curtly, "Write to
+him yourself!"
+
+
+Two days after his betrothal, Lord Langley left Carlsbad to superintend
+the preparations at Eyre Castle for the reception of his bride, whom he
+hoped to take to England at the end of August.
+
+The lovers shed no tears at parting, and there was no other display of
+tenderness than a reverential kiss imprinted by Lord Langley upon his
+betrothed's hand. This respectful homage appeared to Erika highly
+satisfactory.
+
+
+After the old Countess had taken the cure at Carlsbad she betook
+herself with Erika to Franzensbad to complete it.
+
+At that time a great deal was said, in the sleepy, lounging life of
+Franzensbad, of the Bayreuth performances. 'Parsifal' was the topic of
+universal interest. The old Countess at first absolutely refused to
+listen to Erika's earnest request to go to Bayreuth; in fact, she had
+been in a bad humour ever since the betrothal, and her tenderness
+towards Erika had ostensibly diminished. She contradicted her
+frequently, was quite irritable, and would often reply to some
+perfectly innocent proposal of her grand-daughter's, "Wait until you
+are married." She would not hear of going to Bayreuth, maintaining that
+the bits of 'Parsifal' which she had heard played as duets had been
+quite enough for her,--she had no desire to hear the whole performance;
+moreover, she had had a headache--ever since Erika's betrothal.
+
+Her opposition lasted a good while, but at last curiosity triumphed,
+and she announced herself ready to sacrifice herself and go to Bayreuth
+with her granddaughter.
+
+Lord Langley's last letter had come from Munich, where one of his
+daughters (he was a widower, and had no son) was married to a young
+English diplomat. Grandmother and grand-daughter were to meet him
+there, and then all were to proceed to Castle Wetterstein in
+Westphalia, the family seat of Count Lenzdorff, a great-uncle of
+Erika's, where the marriage was to take place.
+
+Highly delighted at her grandmother's consent to her wishes, Erika
+wrote to Lord Langley asking him to meet them at Bayreuth instead of
+waiting for them at Munich, although, she added, he was to feel quite
+free to do as he pleased.
+
+Luedecke, the faithful, was sent to Bayreuth to arrange for lodgings and
+tickets, and a few days afterwards the old Countess, with Erika and her
+maid Marianne, left Franzensbad, with its waving white birches, its
+good bread and weak coffee, its symphony concerts, and its languishing,
+pale, consumptive beauties. The dew glistened on leaves and flowers as
+they drove to the station. After they had reached it, Marianne, the
+maid, was sent back to the hotel for a volume of 'Opera and Drama,' and
+a pamphlet upon 'the psychological significance of Kundry,' in the
+former of which the old Countess was absorbed during the journey to
+Bayreuth.
+
+They were received with genial enthusiasm by the fair, fresh wife of
+the baker, in whose house Luedecke had procured them lodgings, and they
+followed her up a bare damp staircase to the tile-paved landing upon
+which their rooms opened. They consisted of a spacious, low-ceilinged
+apartment, with a small island of carpet before the sofa in a sea of
+yellow varnished board floor, furnished with red plush chairs, two
+india-rubber trees, a bird in a painted cage, and a cupboard with
+glass doors, on either side of which were doors opening into the
+bedrooms,--everything comfortable, clean, and old-fashioned.
+
+After some refreshment the two ladies drove about the town, and out
+into the trim open country through beautiful, shady avenues, avenues
+such as usually lead to princely residences, and into the quiet
+deserted park, where there were few strangers besides themselves to be
+seen. Returning, they dined at 'the Sun,' at the same table with
+Austrian aristocrats, Berlin councillors of commerce, and numerous
+pilgrims to the festival from known and unknown lands. Then they
+sauntered about the dear old town, with its many-gabled architecture,
+and visited the Master's grave and the old theatre. The old Countess
+lost herself in speculations as to what the Margravine would have
+thought of the great German show that now wakes the lethargic old
+capital from its repose at least every other year; and Erika, laughing,
+called her grandmother's attention to the 'Parsifal slippers' and the
+'Nibelungen bonbons' in the unpretentious shop-windows.
+
+The sun was very low, and the shadows were creeping across the broad
+squares and down the narrow streets, when the old Countess proposed to
+go back to their rooms to refresh herself with a cup of tea. Erika
+accompanied her to the door of their lodgings, and then said, "I should
+like to look about for a volume of Tauchnitz. May I not go alone? This
+seems little more than a village."
+
+"If you choose," her grandmother, already halfway up the staircase,
+replied.
+
+With no thought of ill, Erika turned the corner of the nearest street.
+
+She walked slowly, gazing up at the antique house-fronts on either side
+of her. Suddenly she heard a voice behind her call "Rika! Rika!"
+
+She turned, and started as if stunned by a flash of lightning. Before
+her, his whiskers brushed straight out from his cheeks, rather more
+florid than of yore, in a very dandified plaid suit, with an eye-glass
+stuck in his eye, stood--Strachinsky.
+
+"Rika, my dear little Rika!" he cried, holding out his hand. "What a
+surprise, and what a pleasure, to find you here, and without the
+Cerberus who always has barred our meeting! Fate will yet avenge it
+upon her."
+
+Erika trembled with indignation, but her tongue clove to the roof of
+her mouth. Try as she might, she could not reply. A senseless, childish
+panic mastered her, as terrible as it would have been had this man
+still had power over her and been able to snatch her from her present
+surroundings and carry her back to the dreary life at Luzano.
+
+"You are quite speechless," he went on, having meanwhile seized her
+hand and carried it to his lips. "No wonder, it is so long since we
+have seen each other. That jealous old drag----"
+
+"I must beg you not to allude to my grandmother in that way!" she
+exclaimed, conscious of a benumbing, nervous pain at the remembrance of
+her terrible, sordid existence with this man.
+
+"You are under the old woman's influence," Strachinsky declared, "and
+nothing else was to be expected; but now all will be different: when
+you are once married, more cordial relations will be established
+between us. I bear no malice; I forgive everything: I was always too
+forgiving,--it was my only fault. My poor wife always called me an
+idealist, a Don Quixote,--my poor, idolized Emma,--I never can forget
+her." And he passed his hand over his eyes.
+
+"I must go home: my grandmother is expecting me," Erika murmured.
+
+"I should think you could consent to bestow a few minutes upon your old
+father, if only out of regard for your mother's memory," Strachinsky
+observed, assuming his loftiest expression.
+
+Regard for her mother's memory! Certainly, she would not let him starve
+or suffer absolute want. "Do you need anything?" she asked.
+
+"No," he replied, curtly, with a show of wounded feeling.
+
+Then followed a pause. She looked round, ignorant of where she was, for
+during this most unwelcome interview she had continued to walk on
+without observing whither she was going.
+
+"Will you show me the way to Maximilian Street?" she asked him.
+
+"To the left, here," he replied, laconically; then, with lifted
+eyebrows, he observed, "Unpractical idealist that I am, I was disposed
+to forget and forgive the outrageous ingratitude with which you have
+treated me in these latter years,--nay, always. I had even resolved to
+call upon your betrothed; although that would have been to reverse the
+order of affairs. But I perceive that your arrogance and pride are
+greater than ever. No matter! I only hope you may not be punished for
+them too severely!" With these words, he touched his hat with grotesque
+dignity and was gone before she could collect herself to reply.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+Meanwhile, the sky had become overcast; a keen wind began to blow, and
+large drops of rain were falling before Erika reached the door of the
+lodgings in Maximilian Street.
+
+As she mounted the staircase she heard her grandmother's voice in the
+drawing-room and recognized the cordial tone which she used when
+speaking to the few people in the world with whom she was in genuine
+sympathy. Nevertheless, agitated by her late interview, Erika inwardly
+deplored the arrangement of their apartments which made it impossible
+that she should reach her bedroom without passing through the
+drawing-room. She opened the door: her grandmother was seated on the
+sofa, and near her, in an arm-chair, with his back to the casement
+window, was a man in civilian's dress. He arose, looking so tall that
+it seemed to Erika he must strike his head against the low ceiling of
+the room. She did not instantly recognize him, as he stood with his
+back to the light, but before he had advanced a step she exclaimed,
+"Goswyn!" and ran to him with both hands extended. When, with rather
+formal courtesy, he kissed one of the hands thus held out as if seeking
+succour, and then dropped it without any very cordial pressure, she was
+assailed by a certain embarrassment: she remembered that she should
+have called him Herr von Sydow, and that it became her to receive
+her rejected suitor with a more measured dignity. But she was not
+self-possessed today. The shock of meeting her step-father had unstrung
+her nerves; the numbness which had of late paralyzed sensation began to
+depart; her youthful heart throbbed almost as loudly as it had done
+when she had first ascended the thickly-carpeted staircase in Bellevue
+Street, as strongly as upon that brilliant Thursday at the Countess
+Brock's, when, suddenly overcome by the memory of her unhappy mother,
+she had fled from the crowd of her admirers to sob out her misery in
+some lonely corner.
+
+Lord Langley's worldly-wise, self-possessed betrothed had vanished, and
+in her stead was a shy, emotional young person, oppressed by a sense of
+her exaggerated cordiality towards the guest. She now seated herself as
+far as possible from him in one of the red plush arm-chairs.
+
+"How long have you been in Bayreuth, Herr von Sydow?" she asked, in a
+timid little voice, which thrilled the young officer's heart like an
+echo of by-gone times.
+
+Erika, whose eyes had become accustomed to the darkened light of the
+room, noted that he smiled,--his old kind smile. His features looked
+more sharply chiselled than formerly; he had grown very thin, and had
+lost every trace of the slight clumsiness which had once characterized
+him.
+
+"I came several days ago: my musical feast is already a thing of the
+past," he replied.
+
+"Indeed! And what then keeps you in Bayreuth?" Erika asked.
+
+He laughed a little forced laugh, and then blushed after his old
+fashion, but replied, very quietly, "I learned from your factotum
+Luedecke, whom I met the day before yesterday, that you were coming, and
+so I determined to await your arrival."
+
+She longed to say something cordial and kind to him, but the words
+would not come. Instead her grandmother spoke.
+
+"It was kind of you to stay in this tiresome old hole just to see us. I
+call it very kind," she assured him, and Erika added, meekly, "So do
+I."
+
+A pause ensued, broken finally by Goswyn: "Let me offer you my best
+wishes on the occasion of your betrothal, Countess Erika." He uttered
+the words very bravely, but Erika could not respond: she suddenly felt
+that she had cause to be ashamed of herself, although what that cause
+was she did not know.
+
+"Are you acquainted with Lord Langley, Goswyn?" the old Countess asked,
+in the icy tone which she always assumed when any allusion was made to
+her grand-daughter's engagement.
+
+"No. You can imagine how eager I am to hear about him."
+
+"He is one of the most entertaining Englishmen I have ever met,--a very
+clever man," the Countess declared, as if discussing some one in whom
+she took no personal interest.
+
+"It was not to be supposed that the Countess Erika would sacrifice
+her freedom to any ordinary individual," said Goswyn, with admirable
+self-control.
+
+For all reply the Countess raised the clumsy teacup before her to her
+lips.
+
+With every word thus spoken Erika's sense of shame deepened, and she
+was seized with an intense desire to be frank with Goswyn, and to
+dispel any illusion he might entertain as to her betrothal. "Lord
+Langley is no longer young," she said, hurriedly. "I will show you his
+photograph."
+
+She went into the adjoining room and brought thence the photograph in
+its case, which she opened herself before handing it to Goswyn. He
+looked at the picture, then at her, and then again at the picture. His
+broad shoulders twitched; without a word he closed the case, and put it
+upon a table, beside which Erika had taken her seat.
+
+An embarrassing silence ensued. The sound of rolling vehicles was heard
+distinctly from below, and one stopped before the dark door-way. Soon
+afterwards the staircase creaked beneath a heavy tread. Luedecke opened
+the low door of the old-fashioned apartment, and announced, "Frau
+Countess Brock."
+
+The 'wicked fairy' unconsciously had a novel experience: her appearance
+was a relief.
+
+As usual, she bowed and nodded on all sides, but, as she was unable for
+the moment to find her eye-glass, she saw nobody, and fell into the
+error of supposing a tall india-rubber tree in a tub before a window to
+be her particular friend the chamberlain Langefeld. Not until Goswyn
+discovered the eye-glass hanging by its slender cord among the jet
+ornaments and fringes with which her mantle was trimmed and humanely
+handed it to her, did she find out her mistake. Goswyn was about to
+withdraw after having rendered her this service, but she tapped him
+reproachfully on the shoulder and begged him to stay a moment with his
+old aunt. He might have resisted her request; but when Countess
+Lenzdorff added that he would please her by remaining, he complied, and
+seated himself again, although with something of the awkwardness apt to
+be shown by an officer when in civilian's dress.
+
+The 'wicked fairy' established herself beside the Countess Anna upon
+the sofa behind the round table, and accepted from Erika's hand a cup
+of tea, which she drank in affected little sips. She was clad, as
+usual, in trailing mourning robes, although no one could have told for
+whom she wore them, and the Countess Anna's first question was, "Do you
+not dislike wandering about Bayreuth as the Queen of Night?"
+
+"On the contrary," replied the 'wicked fairy,' rubbing her hands,
+"I like it. Awhile ago one of my friends declared that I appeared
+in Bayreuth as the mourning ghost of classic music. Was it not
+charming?--but not at all appropriate, for I adore Wagner!" And she
+began to hum the air of the flower-girl scene, "trililili lilili----"
+
+"What do you think of 'Parsifal'?" Countess Anna asked, turning to
+Goswyn. "One of the greatest humbugs of the century, eh? They howl as
+if possessed by an evil spirit, and call it joy,--call it song!"
+
+"At the risk of falling greatly in your esteem, I must confess that
+'Parsifal' made a profound impression upon me, Countess," Goswyn
+replied.
+
+"Et tu, Brute!" his old friend exclaimed.
+
+"I do not entirely approve of it, if that is anything in my favour," he
+rejoined.
+
+"Ah, there is nothing like Wagner! there is but one God,--and one
+Wagner!" The 'wicked fairy' went on humming, closing her eyes, and
+waving her hands affectedly in the air.
+
+"The scene containing the air which you are humming is not one of my
+favourites," Goswyn remarked.
+
+"Oh, it charmed us most of all,--Dorothea and me," the 'wicked fairy'
+declared. "Those hovering little temptresses, so seductive, and
+Parsifal, the chaste, in their midst!" She clasped her hands in an
+ecstasy. "The other evening at Frau Wagner's we met Van Dyck. He is
+rather strong in his mode of speech. Dorothea seemed much entertained
+by him, but afterwards she thought him shocking."
+
+"Your niece seems to have a positive mania just now for thinking
+everything 'shocking,'" Countess Anna said, dryly. "She sings no more
+music-hall ditties, and casts down her eyes modestly when she sees a
+French novel in a book-shop. Such a transformation is, to say the
+least, startling. Oh, I beg pardon, Goswyn; I always forget that
+Dorothea is your sister-in-law."
+
+"No need to remember it while we are among ourselves," Goswyn rejoined.
+"_Coram publico_, I would beg you to modify your expressions, for my
+poor brother's sake."
+
+"He cannot endure Thea," Countess Brock said, laughing, as she shook
+her forefinger at him; "but I know why that is so. Look how he
+blushes!" In fact, Goswyn had changed colour. "He fell in love with her
+in Florence. She told me all about it--aha!"
+
+"Does she really fancy so, or has she invented the story for her own
+amusement?" Goswyn murmured, as if to himself.
+
+The 'fairy' continued to giggle and writhe about in the corner of the
+sofa.
+
+"You must have been much with Dorothea of late," the Countess Anna
+remarked, quietly: "you have acquired all her airs and graces. Is the
+lady in question in Bayreuth at present?"
+
+"No; she left early this morning, for Berlin, where she has various
+matters to attend to before she goes to Heiligendamm. But we have been
+together for some time. We were in Schlangenbad for six weeks. Oh, we
+enjoyed ourselves excessively,--made all sorts of acquaintances whom we
+should never have spoken to at home. But--I came to see you, Anna,
+for a special purpose,--two purposes, I might say. One concerns
+Hedwig Norbin's birthday,--her seventieth,--and the other--yes, the
+other--guess whom I met in Schlangenbad?" She threw back her head and
+folded her arms across her breast, the very impersonation of
+anticipated enjoyment in a disagreeable announcement.
+
+"How can I?"
+
+"Your grand-daughter's step-father: yes," nodding emphatically.
+
+Erika started. Countess Lenzdorff said, calmly, "Indeed! I pity you
+from my heart; but, since I had no share in bringing such a misfortune
+upon you, I owe you no further reparation."
+
+"H'm! you need not pity me. He interested me extremely. You and your
+grand-daughter have seen fit simply to ignore him; but you do not know
+what people say."
+
+"Nor does it interest me in the least."
+
+"Well, you may not care about the verdict of society, but it is
+comfortable to stand well with one's conscience, as Dorothea said to me
+the other day."
+
+"Indeed! did she say that to you?" Countess Anna murmured in an
+undertone.
+
+"Yes, and she was indignant at the way in which you have treated the
+poor man."
+
+"Is it any affair of hers?" Countess Lenzdorff asked, sharply.
+
+"Oh, she is quite right; I am entirely of her opinion," the 'fairy'
+went on; then, turning to Erika, "I cannot help remonstrating with you.
+He certainly cared for you like a father until you were seventeen. He
+was a man whom your mother loved passionately."
+
+Erika sat as if turned to marble: every word spoken by the old 'fairy'
+was like a blow in the face to her.
+
+The Countess Lenzdorff's eyes flashed angrily. "Do not meddle with what
+you do not in the least understand, Elise!" she exclaimed. "As for my
+daughter-in-law's passion for that stupid weakling, it was made up of
+pity on the one hand for a man whom she came to know wounded and ill,
+and on the other hand of antagonism towards me. The fact is, I provoked
+her; the marriage would never have taken place if I had not most
+injudiciously set myself in opposition to Emma's betrothal to the Pole.
+Her second marriage was a tragedy, the result of obstinacy, not of
+love."
+
+"My dearest Anna, that is entirely your own idea," the Countess Brock
+asserted. "Every one knows that you cannot appreciate any tenderness of
+affection because your own heart is clad in armour, but you can never
+convince me that your daughter-in-law did not love the Pole
+passionately. In the first place, her passion for him was the only
+possible motive for her marriage; how else could it have occurred to
+her?--bah!--nonsense! and in the second place, Strachinsky read me her
+letters,--letters written soon after their marriage. He carries these
+proofs everywhere with him: his devotion to his dead wife is most
+touching. Poor man! he wept when he read the letters to us, and we wept
+too. I had invited a few friends, and he spent two evenings in reading
+them aloud to us. When he had finished he kissed the letters, and said,
+with a deep sigh, 'This is all that is left to me of my poor, adored
+Emma,' and then he told us of the tender relations that had existed
+between himself and his step-daughter, until she, when a brilliant lot
+fell to her share, had cast him aside--like an old shoe-string, as he
+expressed it. I do not say that such a connection is the most
+desirable, but _on choisit ses amis, on subit ses parents_. Certain
+duties must be conscientiously fulfilled, and, my dear Erika, be sure
+that I advise you for your good when I beg you to be friends with your
+step-father: you owe him a certain amount of filial affection. He is
+here in Bayreuth, and has requested me to effect a reconciliation
+between you and him."
+
+Erika made no reply. She sat motionless, speechless. The 'fairy' played
+her last trump. "People are talking about your unjustifiable treatment
+of him," she said; "but that can all be arranged. May I tell him that
+you are ready to receive him, Anna?"
+
+The Countess Lenzdorff rose to her feet. "Indeed!" she exclaimed, with
+an outburst of indignation; "you wish me to receive a man who, for the
+sake of exciting sympathy, reads aloud to your invited guests the
+letters of his dead wife? What do you take me for? I will have him
+turned out of doors if he dares to show his face here! And I have no
+more time at present to listen to you, Elise: I am going to pay a visit
+to Hedwig Norbin. Will you come with me?"
+
+"With the greatest pleasure!" cried the 'wicked fairy,' decidedly
+cowed.
+
+"Bring me my bonnet and gloves from my room, my child," her grandmother
+said to Erika, and when the girl brought them to her she kissed her on
+the cheek.
+
+Goswyn had risen to depart with the two ladies. Erika looked after him
+dully as, after taking a formal leave of her, he had reached the door
+of the room. Then she suddenly followed him. "Goswyn," she murmured,
+"stay for one moment!"
+
+He stayed; the door closed after the others, and they were alone.
+
+What did she want of him? He did not know: she herself did not know. He
+would advise her, rid her of the weight upon her heart: her old habit
+of appealing to him in all difficulties returned to her in full force.
+The time was past for her when she could relieve herself in any
+distressing agitation by a burst of tears: she sat there white and
+silent, plucking at the folds of her black lace dress.
+
+At last, passing her hand across her forehead once or twice, she began
+in a forced monotone, "You know that I idolized my mother; I have told
+you about her; perhaps you remember----"
+
+"I do not think I have forgotten much that you have ever told me," he
+interrupted her.
+
+The words were kind, but something in his tone pained her. Something
+interposed between them. It had seemed so natural to turn to him for
+sympathy, but she suddenly felt shy. What was her distress to him?
+
+"Forgive me," she murmured. "I longed to pour out my heart to some one.
+I have no one to go to, and I suffer so! You cannot imagine what this
+last quarter of an hour has been to me. My poor mother's marriage was a
+tragedy; my grandmother was right. No one who did not live with her can
+dream of all that she suffered for years. Her last request to me when
+she was dying was that I would not let him come to her. And now that
+wretch is boasting to strangers--oh, I cannot endure it! Can you
+understand what it all is to me? Can you understand?"
+
+The question was superfluous. She knew very well that he understood,
+but she repeated the words mechanically again and again. Why did he sit
+there so straight and silent? She was pouring out her soul to him,
+revealing to him all that was most sacred, and he had not one word of
+sympathy for her. A kind of anger took possession of her, and, with all
+the self-control which she could summon up, she said, more calmly, "I
+know I have no right to burden you with my misery----"
+
+"Countess Erika!" he exclaimed, with a sudden unconscious movement of
+his hand, which chanced to strike the case containing Lord Langley's
+photograph. It fell on the floor; Goswyn picked it up and tossed it
+contemptuously upon the table, while his face grew hard and stern.
+
+He was the first to break the silence that followed. "Is this
+Strachinsky staying in Bayreuth?"
+
+"Yes. I met him to-day."
+
+"Do you know his address?"
+
+"No. Why do you ask?"
+
+"For the simplest reason in the world: I wish to procure your mother's
+letters for you."
+
+"The letters!" she exclaimed. "Oh, if that were possible! But upon what
+pretext could you demand them of him? they belong to him; we have no
+right to them."
+
+"Might is right with such a fellow as that," Goswyn said, as he rose to
+go.
+
+She offered him her hand; he took it courteously, but there was no
+cordial pressure on his part, nor did he carry it to his lips.
+
+In a moment he was gone. She stood gazing as if spell-bound at the door
+which closed behind him. She did not understand. He was the same, but
+in his eyes she was no longer what she had been. This conviction
+flashed upon her. He was, as ever, ready to help her, but the tender
+warmth of sympathy of former days had gone, as had the reverence with
+which the strong man had been wont to regard her weakness: she was
+neither so dear nor so sacred to him as she had been.
+
+In the midst of the pain caused her by the 'wicked fairy's' malicious
+speeches she was aware of a paralyzing consciousness that she had sunk
+in the esteem of the one human being in the world whom she prized most
+highly.
+
+When the Countess Lenzdorff returned at the end of an hour, her
+grand-daughter was still sitting where she had left her, in the dark.
+When Erika heard her grandmother coming, she slipped into her own room.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+The next forenoon Erika was sitting in the low-ceilinged drawing-room.
+She was alone in the house. Lord Langley had announced his arrival
+during the forenoon, and the Countess Anna had gone out, to avoid being
+present at the meeting of the betrothed couple. The young girl's pulses
+throbbed to her fingertips; her eyes burned, her whole body felt sore
+and bruised, as if she had had a fall. For an hour she sat listening
+breathlessly. Would Goswyn come before Lord Langley arrived? Should she
+have a moment in which to speak to him? Ah, how she longed for it! She
+wanted to explain to him---- At last she heard a step on the stair: of
+course it was Lord Langley. No, no! Lord Langley's step was neither so
+quick nor so light: it was Goswyn; she could hear him speaking with
+Luedecke, and the old servant, with the garrulous want of tact at which
+she had so often laughed, was explaining to him that her Excellency had
+gone out, but that the Countess Erika had stayed at home to receive
+Lord Langley.
+
+Erika listened, and heard Goswyn say, in a clear, cold tone, "In that
+case I will not disturb the Countess. Tell her----"
+
+She could endure it no longer, but, opening the door, called, "Goswyn!"
+
+"Countess!" He bowed formally.
+
+"Come in for one moment, I entreat you," she begged, involuntarily
+clasping her hands. Of course he could not but obey.
+
+They confronted each other, she trembling in every limb, he erect and
+unbending as she had never before seen him. In his hand he held a small
+packet.
+
+"There, Countess," he said, "I am convinced that these are all the
+letters which this Herr von Strachinsky ever received from your mother:
+some of the epistles with which he edified my amiable aunt and her
+guests were the productions of his own pen. But you may rest assured
+that while I live he will not be guilty of any further indiscretion in
+that direction." There was such a look of determination in his eyes as
+he spoke that Erika easily guessed by what means he had contrived to
+intimidate Strachinsky.
+
+She was filled with the warmest gratitude towards him, but there was
+something so repellent in his air that, instead of any extravagant
+expression of it, she stood before him without being able to utter a
+word of thanks. Instead, she fingered in an embarrassed way the packet
+which he had given her, a very little packet, wrapped in a sheet of
+paper and sealed with a huge coat of arms. In her confusion she fixed
+her eyes upon this seal.
+
+"The arms of the Barons von Strachinsky," Goswyn explained. "Pray
+observe the delicacy with which the very letters read aloud for the
+entertainment of Heaven only knows how many gossiping old women are
+sealed up carefully lest I should read them."
+
+Erika smiled faintly. "It is hardly necessary that you should be
+understood by Strachinsky," she said. "Men always judge from their own
+point of view. You judged me by yourself, and consequently estimated me
+more highly than I deserved. Sit down for a moment, I pray you."
+
+"I do not wish to intrude," he said, bluntly, almost discourteously.
+
+"How could you intrude? You never can intrude."
+
+"Not even when you are expecting your betrothed?" He looked her full in
+the face.
+
+She blushed scarlet; a burning desire to regain his esteem took
+possession of her.
+
+"You take an entirely false view of my position," she exclaimed. "Mine
+is not the betrothal of a sentimental school-girl. I--I" and she burst
+into a short, nervous laugh that shocked even herself--"I do not marry
+Lord Langley for love."
+
+There was a pause. Goswyn bowed his head; then, suddenly raising it, he
+looked straight into Erika's eyes in a way which made her very
+uncomfortable, and said, "I guessed that; but why, then, do you marry
+him,--you, a young, pure, gifted girl, and a man with such a past as
+Lord Langley's? I know that no man is worthy of such a girl as you are;
+but, good God, there is some difference---- Why, why do you marry him?"
+
+"Why? why?" She tried to collect herself and to answer him truly. "I
+marry him because the position he offers me suits me,--because one is
+condemned to marry at a certain age, if one would not be sneered at and
+ridiculed; I marry him because he is an old man and will not require of
+me any warmth of affection, and because I have determined that there
+shall be nothing romantic in my marriage. Ah," with a glance at the
+small packet in her hand, "after all that you know of my wretched
+experience, you ought to understand why I do not choose to marry for
+love."
+
+A long silence followed. He looked at her as he had never hitherto
+done, searchingly, inquiringly. Suddenly his glance grew tender: it
+expressed intense pity. "I understand that you talk of love and
+marriage as a blind man talks of colours," he said, slowly. "I
+understand that you unwittingly contemplate the commission of a crime
+against yourself, and that you should be prevented from it."
+
+He ceased speaking on a sudden, and bit his lip. A voice was heard in
+the hall,--the characteristic voice of an old English _bon viveur_ with
+a Continental training. "Is the Countess at home?"
+
+"What am I doing here?" Goswyn exclaimed, and, without touching the
+hand extended to him, he turned on his heel and was gone.
+
+Outside the door stood an old gentleman with a tall white hat and a
+dark-blue cravat spotted with white. One glance of rage and curiosity
+Goswyn darted at the correct florid profile and white whiskers, and
+then he rushed down-stairs like one possessed.
+
+Yes, he had not been mistaken. It was the same Englishman whom he had
+once seen at Monaco with a most disreputable train. Then he was
+travelling under an assumed name,--Mr. Steyne: his English regard for
+appearances forbade him in such society to profane his title and his
+social dignity.
+
+Goswyn's blood fairly boiled in his veins.
+
+
+When, some time afterwards, Countess Lenzdorff entered the
+drawing-room, after her walk, Lord Langley, rather redder in the face
+than usual, and with a baffled, puzzled expression of countenance, was
+sitting in an arm-chair; Erika, very pale, with sparkling eyes and very
+red lips, strikingly beautiful, and evidently tingling in every nerve,
+was in another on the other side of a table between the pair, upon
+which was an open jewel-case containing a diamond necklace. The
+Countess suspected that some kind of disagreement had arisen between
+the couple, and, as soon as she had returned Lord Langley's greeting,
+asked, carelessly, what it had been.
+
+"Oh, nothing to speak of," he replied. "My queen was a little
+ungracious; but even that has a charm. A perfectly docile woman is as
+tiresome as a quiet horse: there is no pleasure in either unless there
+is some caprice to subdue."
+
+Erika's grandmother bestowed a keen, observant glance, first upon the
+speaker, and then upon her grand-daughter, after which she remarked,
+dryly, "If we wish for any dinner we had better betake ourselves to
+'The Sun.'"
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+The sleepy afternoon quiet is broken by a sudden stir and excitement.
+It is time to go to the theatre, and the Lenzdorffs in a rattling,
+clumsy, four-seated hired carriage join the endless train of vehicles
+of all descriptions that wind through the narrow street of the little
+town and beyond it, until upon an eminence in the midst of a very green
+meadow they reach the ugly red structure looking something like a
+gasometer with various mysterious protuberances,--the temple of modern
+art.
+
+The Lenzdorffs are among the last to arrive, but they are in time:
+unpunctuality is not tolerated at Bayreuth.
+
+Summoned by a blast of trumpets, the public ascend a steep short flight
+of steps to a large, undecorated auditorium. The Countess Lenzdorff and
+her granddaughter have seats on the bench farthest back, just in front
+of the royal boxes.
+
+At a given signal all the ladies present take off their hats. It
+suddenly grows dark,--so very dark that until the eye becomes
+accustomed to it nothing can be discovered in the gloom. Gradually row
+upon row of human heads are perceived stretching away in what seems
+endless perspective: such is the auditorium of the theatre at Bayreuth.
+
+The most brilliant toilette and the meanest attire are alike
+indistinguishable; here is positively no food for idle curiosity,
+nothing to distract the attention from the stage.
+
+Agitated as Erika already was, and consequently sensitively alive to
+impressions, the first sound of the trumpets thrilled her every nerve,
+and before the last note of the prelude had died away she had reached a
+condition of ecstasy closely allied to pain, and could with difficulty
+restrain her tears.
+
+All the woe of sinning humanity wailed in those tones,--the mortal
+anguish of that humanity which in its longings for the imperishable,
+the supernatural, beats and bruises itself against the barriers that it
+cannot pass,--that humanity which, dragged down by the burden of its
+animal nature, grovels on the earth when it would fain soar to the
+starry heavens.
+
+Just when the music wailed the loudest, she suddenly started: some one
+in a seat in front of her turned round,--a handsome Southern type of
+man, with sharply-cut features, short hair, and a pointed beard; in the
+gray twilight she encountered his glance, a strange searching look
+fixed upon her face, affecting her as did Wagner's music. At the same
+time a tall, fair woman at his side also turned her head. "_Voyons,
+qu'est-ce qu'il y a?_" she asked, discontentedly. "_Ce n'est rien; une
+ressemblance qui me frappe_," he replied, in the weary tone of
+annoyance often to be observed in men who are under the domination of
+jealous women.
+
+A couple of young Italian musicians blinding their eyes in the darkness
+by the study of an open score exclaimed, angrily, "Hush!" and the
+stranger riveted his eyes upon the stage, where the curtain was just
+rolling up.
+
+Erika shivered slightly: some secret chord of her soul--a chord of
+which she had hitherto been unaware--vibrated. Where had she seen those
+dark, searching eyes before?
+
+The musical drama pursued its course, and at first it seemed as if the
+enthusiasm produced in Erika's mind by the prelude was destined to fade
+utterly: the painted scenes were too much like other painted scenes;
+she had heard them extolled too highly not to be disappointed in them;
+the music, to her ignorant ears, was confused, inconsequent, a tangle
+of shrill involved discords, in the midst of which there were now and
+then musical phrases of noble and poetic beauty.
+
+The effect was not to be compared with the impression produced upon the
+girl by the prelude,--when suddenly she seemed to hear as from another
+world a voice calling her, arousing her,--something unearthly,
+mystical, interrupted by the same shuddering, alluring wail of anguish,
+and when the nerves, strung to the last degree of tension, seemed on
+the point of giving way, there came rippling from above like cooling
+dew upon sun-parched flowers with promise of redemption the mystic
+purity of the boy-chorus,--
+
+
+ "Made wise by pity,
+ The pure in heart----"
+
+
+"No one shall ever induce me to come again. I am fairly consumed with
+nervous fever. No one has a right under the pretence of art to stretch
+his fellow-creatures thus on the rack! Parsifal is altogether too fat.
+Wagner should have cut his Parsifal out of Donatello," exclaims
+Countess Lenzdorff, as she leaves the theatre at the close of the first
+act.
+
+"I don't quite understand the plot," Lord Langley confesses. "The
+leading idea seems to me unpractical. I must say I feel rather
+confused." He then speaks of Kundry as 'a very unpleasant young woman,'
+and asks Erika if she does not agree with him; but Erika shrugs her
+shoulders and makes no reply.
+
+"She is very ungracious to-day," his lordship remarks, with a rather
+embarrassed laugh. "Shall I take offence, Countess?" (This to the
+Countess Anna.) "No, she is too beautiful ever to give offence. Only
+look! She is creating quite a sensation.--Every one is staring after
+you, Erika."
+
+The theatre is empty. The audience is streaming across the grass
+towards the restaurant to refresh itself.
+
+Close behind the Lenzdorffs walks the Russian Princess B----, who hires
+an entire suite of rooms for every season and attends every
+representation. She is dressed in embroidered muslin, and from the
+broad brim of her white straw hat hangs a Brussels lace veil partially
+concealing her face, which was once very handsome.
+
+She addresses the old Countess: "_Etes-vous touchee de la grace, ma
+chere Anne?_"
+
+Countess Anna shakes her head emphatically: "No; the music is too
+highly spiced and peppered for me. It bas made me quite thirsty. I long
+for a draught of prosaic beer and some Mozart."
+
+The Russian smiles, and immediately begins to tell of how she had once
+reproved Rubinstein when he ventured to say something derogatory with
+regard to Wagner.
+
+A stout tradesman, whose poetically-inclined wife has apparently
+brought him to Bayreuth against his will, exclaims, "What a humbug it
+is!" to which his wife rejoins, "You cannot understand it the first
+time: you must hear 'Parsifal' frequently." "Very possibly," he
+declares; "but I shall never hear it again."
+
+The Lenzdorffs and Lord Langley take their seats at a table in the airy
+balcony of the restaurant, to drink a cup of tea: table and tea have
+been reserved for them by Luedecke's watchful care. The greater part of
+the assemblage can scarcely find a chair upon which to sit down, or a
+glass of lemonade for refreshment. The consequence is that there is
+much unseemly pushing and crowding.
+
+Erika eats nothing. Lord Langley complains, as do all Englishmen, of
+the German food, and the old Countess complains of the shrill music.
+
+Meanwhile, a tall, striking woman advances to the table where the three
+are sitting, and where there is a fourth chair, unoccupied. "_Vous
+pardonnez!_" she exclaims: "_je tombe de fatigue!_"
+
+Erika gazes at her: it is the companion of the man who had turned to
+look at her in the theatre during the prelude. A disgust for which she
+cannot account possesses her: it is as if she were aware of the
+presence of something impure, repulsive; and yet she could not possibly
+explain why the stranger should excite such a sensation: she is
+undeniably handsome, well formed, with regularly-chiselled features,
+and fair hair dressed with great care and knotted behind beneath the
+brim of her broad Leghorn hat. A red veil is tied tightly over her
+face. There is nothing else to excite disapproval in her dress, and
+inexperienced mortals would pronounce her age to be scarcely thirty. It
+would require great familiarity with Parisian arts of the toilette to
+perceive that her whole face is painted and that she is at least forty
+years old. Everything about her is exquisitely fresh and neat, and from
+her person is wafted the peculiar aroma of those women whose chief
+occupation in life is to take care of their bodies. Her air is
+respectable, and somewhat affected.
+
+Lord Langley, to whom her unbidden presence seems especially annoying,
+is about to intimate this to her, when her escort approaches, and,
+hastily whispering to her, obliges her to leave her place, which she
+does unwillingly and even crossly. Courteously lifting his hat, the
+young man utters an embarrassed "Excuse me," and retires. She can be
+heard reproaching him petulantly as they walk away, and their places in
+the theatre remain unoccupied during the other acts of the drama.
+
+"Disgusting!" mutters Lord Langley. "Do you know who it was?" he asks,
+turning to the Countess Anna. "Lozoncyi, the young artist who created
+such a sensation a couple of years ago. She was his mistress. I
+remember her in Rome."
+
+Although upon Erika's account the words are spoken in an undertone, she
+hears them, and the blood rushes to her cheeks.
+
+And now 'Parsifal' is over, the second act, with its fluttering
+flower-girl scene, in rather frivolous contrast with the serious motive
+of the work, its crude inharmonious decorations, and its wonderful
+dramatic finale; the third act too is over, with its sadly-sweet
+sunrise melody, its Good Friday spell resolving itself into the angelic
+music of the spheres.
+
+With the hovering harp-arpeggio of the final scene still thrilling in
+their souls, Erika and her grandmother with Lord Langley drive back to
+town, leaving behind them the melancholy rustle of the forest, and
+hearing around them the rolling of wheels, the cracking of whips, and
+the footsteps of hundreds of pedestrians.
+
+Life throbs in Erika's veins more warmly than it is wont to do; she is
+filled with a vague foreboding unknown to her hitherto. She seems to
+herself to be confronting the solution of a great secret, beside which
+she has pursued her thoughtless way, and around which the entire world
+circles.
+
+
+At the door of their lodgings Lord Langley takes his leave of the
+ladies: with a lover's tenderness he slips down the glove from his
+betrothed's white wrist and imprints upon it two ardent kisses, as he
+whispers, "I trust that my charming Erika will be in a more gracious
+mood to morrow."
+
+The disagreeable sensation caused by his warm breath upon her cheek was
+persistent; she could not rid herself of it.
+
+She sent away her maid, and whilst she was undressing took from her
+pocket the packet of letters which Goswyn had left with her. She had
+carried it with her all day long, without finding a moment in which to
+destroy the papers. Now she removed their outside envelope, merely to
+assure herself that they were her mother's letters. Yes, she recognized
+the handwriting,--not the strong, almost masculine characters which had
+distinguished her mother's writing in the latter years of her life, but
+the long, slanting, faded hand which Erika could remember in the old
+exercise-books of her school-days. Nothing could have tempted the girl
+to read these letters: she kissed the poor yellow sheets twice, sadly
+and reverentially, and then she held them one by one in the flame of
+her candle.
+
+Her heart was very heavy; a yearning for tenderness, for sympathy,
+possessed her, and she felt sore and discouraged. The wailing music,
+the shuddering alluring strains of sinful worldly desire, still haunted
+her soul with the glance of the stranger who seemed to her no stranger.
+
+She felt a choking sensation at the thought of his companion. Never
+before had she come in contact with anything of the kind.
+
+She lay down, but could not sleep. How sultry, even stifling, was the
+atmosphere! The windows of the little room were wide open, but the air
+that came in from without was heavy and inodorous: it brought no
+refreshment.
+
+The tread of a belated pedestrian echoed in the street below, and there
+was the sound of laughter and song from some inn in the neighbourhood.
+Suddenly the door opened, and the old Countess entered, in a white
+dressing-gown and lace night-cap. She had a small lamp in her hand,
+which she put down on a table, and then, seating herself on the edge of
+the bed, she scanned the young girl with penetrating eyes.
+
+"Is anything troubling you, my child?" she began, after a while.
+
+Erika tried to say no, but the word would not pass her lips. Instead of
+replying, she turned away her face.
+
+"What was the difficulty between Lord Langley and yourself to-day?" the
+grandmother went on to ask.
+
+Erika was mute.
+
+"Tell me the simple truth," the old Countess insisted. "Did you not
+have some dispute this morning?"
+
+"Oh, it was nothing," Erika replied, impatiently; "only--he attempted
+to play the lover, and I thought it quite unnecessary. Such folly is
+very unbecoming in a man of his age; and, besides, I cannot endure
+anything of the kind."
+
+A strange expression appeared upon the grandmother's face,--the same
+that Goswyn had worn when his indignation had suddenly been transformed
+into pity for the girl. She cleared her throat once or twice, and then
+remarked, dryly, "How then do you propose to live with Lord Langley?"
+
+Erika stared at her in dismay. "Good heavens! I have thought very
+little about it. You know well that I do not wish to marry for love.
+That is why I accepted an old man instead of a young one,--because I
+supposed he would refrain from all lover-like folly. You have always
+told me that you married my grandfather without love, and that it
+turned out very well."
+
+Her grandmother was silent for a while before she rejoined, "In the
+first place, constituted as you are, I should wish for you a less
+prosaic companion for life than your grandfather; but, at the same
+time, the torture which, with your exaggerated sensitiveness, awaits
+you in marrying Lord Langley bears no comparison with the simple tedium
+of my married life. We married in compliance with a family arrangement;
+and if I did so with but a small amount of esteem for him, he for his
+part brought to the match no devouring passion for me,--which I should
+have found most annoying. But the case is entirely different with Lord
+Langley. He is as desperately in love with you as an old fool can be
+whose passion is stimulated by the consciousness of his age."
+
+Something in the horrified face of the inexperienced young girl must
+have intensified the old Countess's pity for her. "My poor child, I had
+no idea of your innocence and inexperience. I have lived on from day to
+day without in the least comprehending the young creature beside me."
+
+She kissed the girl with infinite tenderness, put out the light, and
+left her alone, her burning face buried in the pillows and sobbing
+convulsively, a picture of despair.
+
+The next day Erika broke her engagement to Lord Langley.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+Erika's betrothal to Lord Langley had produced a sensation in society,
+but it had been regarded as a very sensible arrangement. The girl had
+been envied, and all had declared that her ambition had achieved its
+aim in a marriage with an English peer. Malice had not been silent: she
+had been credited with heartlessness,--but then she had done vastly
+well for herself. The announcement that the engagement was dissolved
+gave rise to all sorts of reports. No one knew the real reason of the
+breach, and had it been known it would not have been credited.
+
+The belief steadily gained ground that Lord Langley had been the first
+to withdraw, dismayed by the discovery of Erika's objectionable
+relative Strachinsky, and shocked by the girl's heartless treatment of
+him.
+
+Countess Brock furnished the material for this report, the Princess
+Dorothea detailed it with various additions, and in the eyes of Berlin
+society Erika was nothing more than an ambitious blunderer who had
+experienced a tremendous rebuff. It was edifying to hear Dorothea
+descant upon this theme, winding up her remarks with, "I do not pity
+Erika,--I never liked her,--but poor old Countess Lenzdorff. She has
+always been one of Aunt Brock's friends."
+
+There had been an apparent change in the Princess Dorothea from the day
+when she had publicly insulted Goswyn von Sydow in Charlottenburg
+Avenue. The story had been told greatly to her discredit, and not only
+had her cousin Prince Helmy forsworn his allegiance to her, but the
+other men who had been present at that memorable interview had since
+held aloof from her. She found herself compelled to attract a fresh
+circle of admirers,--which she did at the sacrifice of every remnant of
+good taste which she yet possessed.
+
+After this for a while she pursued her madly gay career; but for a year
+past there had been a change. The number of her admirers had greatly
+diminished,--was reduced, indeed, to a Prince Orbanoff, who was now her
+shadow. She boasted of her good resolutions, went to church every
+Sunday, was shocked at the women who read French novels, and was
+altogether rather a prudish character.
+
+Society held itself on the defensive, and did not put much faith in her
+boasted virtue. But when she calumniated Erika society believed her; at
+least this was the case with the society of envious young beauties whom
+she met every Friday at the 'wicked fairy's,' where they made clothes
+for the poor.
+
+
+When, late in the autumn, the Lenzdorffs returned to Berlin, supposing
+that the little episode of Erika's betrothal was already forgotten by
+society, they were met on all sides by a malicious show of sympathy.
+
+Erika regarded all this with utter indifference, and withdrew from all
+gaiety as far as she could, but the old Countess fretted and fumed with
+indignation.
+
+She could not comprehend why all the world could not view Erika from
+her own point of view; and her exaggerated defence of the girl
+contributed to make Erika's position still more disagreeable. Moreover,
+age was beginning to cast its first shadows over the Countess's clear
+mind. She was especially annoyed, also, by Goswyn's holding aloof. He
+had replied courteously, but with extreme reserve, to the Countess's
+letter informing him, not without exultation, of the breaking of
+Erika's engagement. This was as it should be; but when the answer to a
+second letter written much later was quite as reserved, the old
+Countess was vexed and impatient. Erika insisted upon reading this
+second epistle herself. Her hands trembled as she held it, and when she
+had finished it she laid it on the table without a word, and left the
+room as pale as ashes.
+
+To the grandmother, whose heart was filled with tenderness, all the
+more intense because it had been first aroused in her old age, her
+grand-daughter's evident pain was intolerable. After a while she went
+to her in her room. The girl was sitting at the window, erect and pale.
+She had a book in her hand, and the Countess observed that she held it
+upside down.
+
+"Erika," she said, tenderly laying her hand on the girl's shoulder, "I
+only wanted to tell you----"
+
+Erika arose, cold and courteous. "You wanted to tell me--what?" she
+asked, as she laid aside her book.
+
+"That--that----" Erika's dry manner embarrassed her a little, but after
+a pause she went on: "I wanted to tell you not to take any fancies into
+your head with regard to Goswyn."
+
+"Fancies? Of what kind?" Erika asked, calmly, becoming absorbed in the
+contemplation of her almond-shaped nails.
+
+"You would do him great injustice by supposing that his regard for you
+is one whit less than it ever was."
+
+"Indeed! I should do him injustice?" Erika questioned in the same
+unnaturally quiet tone. "I think not. It is not my fashion to deceive
+myself. I know perfectly well that--that I have sunk in Goswyn's
+esteem; it is a very unpleasant conviction, I confess; and, to be
+frank, I would rather you did not mention the subject again."
+
+"But, Erika, if you would only listen," the old Countess persisted. "He
+adores you. His pride alone keeps him from you: you are too wealthy;
+your social position is too brilliant."
+
+Erika waved aside this explanation of affairs. "Say no more," she
+cried. "I know what I know! But you must not waste your pity upon me:
+my vanity is wounded, not my heart. I value Goswyn highly, and it
+troubles me that he no longer admires me as he did, but, I assure you,
+I have not the slightest desire to marry him. I pray you to believe
+this: at least it may prevent you, perhaps, from throwing me at his
+head a second time, without my knowledge. If you do it, I declare to
+you, I will reject him." As she uttered the last words, the girl's
+self-command forsook her, her voice had a hard metallic ring in it, and
+her eyes flashed angrily.
+
+Her grandmother turned and left the room with bowed head.
+
+Scarcely had the sound of her footsteps died away when Erika locked her
+door, threw herself upon her bed, buried her face in the pillows, and
+burst into tears.
+
+What she had declared to her grandmother was in a measure true: she
+herself supposed it to be entirely true. She really had no wish to
+marry, and there was in her heart no trace of passionate sentiment for
+Goswyn, but she was bruised and sore, and she longed for the tender
+sympathy he had always shown her. At times she would fain have fled to
+him from the cold judgment and scrutiny of the world.
+
+After she had relieved herself by tears, she understood herself more
+clearly. Sitting on the edge of her bed, her handkerchief crushed into
+a ball in her hand, she said, half aloud, "I have lied to my
+grandmother. If he had come I would have married him,--yes, without
+loving him; but it would have been wrong: no one has a right to marry
+such a man as Goswyn out of sheer despair because one does not know in
+what direction to throw away one's life. But why think of it? He does
+not care for me. Why, why did my grandmother write to him? I cannot
+bear it!"
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+A few days afterwards the Lenzdorffs left Berlin, to spend the winter
+in Rome, where Erika, incited thereto by her grandmother, went into
+society perpetually, without taking the least pleasure in it. And she
+made no secret of her indifference, her discontent. The bark of her
+existence, once so safe and sure in its course, seemed to have lost its
+bearings: she saw no aim in life worthy the effort to pursue it.
+
+She indulged in fits of causeless melancholy; yet all the while her
+beauty bloomed out into fuller perfection, and all unconsciously to
+herself life throbbed within her and demanded its right. The old
+Countess, who did not understand her condition, looked upon it as a
+morbid crisis in the girl's life; but she never dreamed how fraught
+with danger the crisis was.
+
+Thus she utterly failed to appreciate or to sympathize with her
+grand-daughter; and, whether because of her exaggerated admiration for
+her, or because her age was beginning to tell upon her powers of
+perception, she did not suspect the slow approach of the fever which
+had begun to undermine the young creature's existence.
+
+
+Towards the end of February, just at the close of the Carnival, Erika
+told her grandmother that she was heartily tired of Rome, and wished to
+see Italy from some other point of view.
+
+After much deliberation, Venice was chosen for their next abode; and
+here the old Countess refused to follow the usual custom of foreigners
+and rent a palazzo: she declared that in Venice true comfort was to be
+found only in a hotel. So a suite of rooms was hired in the Hotel
+Britannia,--four airy apartments, in which their predecessor had been a
+crowned head, and two of which looked out upon the church of Santa
+Maria della Salute, whilst the other two had a view of the small garden
+of the hotel, and, across its low wall, of the Grand Canal.
+
+Of course they had a gondola for their own private use; but Erika was
+not fond of availing herself of it. The rocking motion, the monotonous
+plash of the water, excited still further her irritated nerves; she
+preferred taking long walks,--at first, out of deference to her
+grandmother's wishes, accompanied by the maid Marianne. She soon tired,
+however, of such uncongenial companionship, and induced her grandmother
+to allow her to pursue alone her investigations of the corners and
+by-ways of Venice. She explored the curiosity-shops, spent whole days
+in the galleries, and made wonderful discoveries in the way of bargains
+in old stuffs and artistic antiquities, until her little salon became a
+museum of such treasures. In one corner stood a grand piano, seated at
+which at times she poured out her soul in all that is most beautiful
+and most tragic in music.
+
+The old Countess left her to pursue her own path, and occupied herself
+very differently.
+
+In spite of her original and independent view of life, and her
+readiness to criticise frankly all that was artificial and
+conventional, she loved _les chemins battus_. She went the way of the
+multitude,--saw nothing of Venetian by-ways, but devoted her time to
+museums and works of art, being indefatigable in her daily round of
+sight-seeing. And yet, although her health seemed as robust as
+ever, and she could apparently endure far more fatigue than her
+grand-daughter, she was no longer what she had been.
+
+Her extraordinary memory began to fail, and the interest which formerly
+had been excited only by affairs of some moment was now ready to be
+aroused in petty concerns. She took pleasure in gossip, allowed
+Marianne to detail to her scraps of the Venetian _chronique
+scandaleuse_ picked up from the couriers in the hotel, and, worst of
+all, the fine edge of her moral sentiment seemed in a degree blunted.
+
+She would repeat to Erika, without the slightest idea of the pain she
+was inflicting, stories and reports of a nature to offend the girl's
+sense of morality and delicacy.
+
+Nothing any longer shocked her: love and hatred of her kind seemed
+blunted under the influence of a low estimate of human nature which she
+called a philosophic view of life.
+
+She simply never observed how Erika's cheeks burned when she suddenly
+disclosed to her the lapse from virtue, hidden from the superficial
+world, of some woman whom they had met in society; she never perceived
+the girl's feverish agitation upon hearing her grandmother calmly
+advance all sorts of excuses for the so-called indiscretion. She did
+not suppose her revelations could affect Erika disagreeably; although
+Erika did not always allow her to talk on without interruption; she
+would sometimes bluntly declare that she could not believe what her
+grandmother thus told her.
+
+Then the old Countess would reply, "I really cannot see what reason you
+have to disbelieve it. You cannot alter human nature by shutting your
+eyes to its defects."
+
+Whereupon Erika would say, with annihilating emphasis, "If human nature
+really is what you describe it, I cannot understand your pleasure in
+frequenting society, since you must despise unutterably those who
+compose it."
+
+"Despise!" her grandmother repeated, shaking her head. "I despise no
+one. Knowing, as I do, how mankind struggles under the burden of animal
+instincts, I wonder to see it ever rise above them, and I am forced to
+esteem men in spite of everything."
+
+Erika only repeated, angrily, "Esteem! esteem!" Her grandmother's mode
+of esteeming mankind was certainly extraordinary.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+The Princess Dorothea was pacing her salon restlessly to and fro. From
+time to time she gazed out of the window into the dreary Berlin March
+weather, upon the heaps of dirty snow shovelled up on each side of the
+street and slowly melting beneath the falling rain.
+
+The Princess was annoyed. She had been left out in the invitation to a
+court ball. Usually she would have ascribed the omission to an
+oversight of the authorities, but to-day the matter disturbed her:
+instead of an oversight she suspected the omission to have been an
+intentional slight, and her steps as she walked to and fro were short
+and impatient.
+
+Why were they so frightfully moral in Berlin, so aggressively moral?
+she asked herself. Everywhere else people might do as they chose, if
+only appearances were preserved.
+
+What had she done, after all? Long ago in Florence Feistmantel had
+explained to her that marriage, as arranged in civilized countries, was
+entirely unnatural. The Princess, still pure, in spite of the
+degradation about her, had laughed aloud at the philosophic view thus
+advanced by her companion and guide. Years afterwards she had recalled
+this theory that it might serve to justify herself to herself; and
+lately--only yesterday--Feistmantel, who was established in Berlin and
+gave music-lessons in the most aristocratic circles, had enunciated the
+same views at a breakfast to which Dorothea had invited her, and the
+Princess had contradicted her positively, had been rude to her, had
+nearly turned her out of doors, but at the last moment had apologized
+almost humbly and had finally dismissed her with a handsome present.
+
+She had suspected behind Feistmantel's assertion of her philosophic
+view a mean attempt to ingratiate herself with her hostess. "As if
+Feistmantel could suspect anything! No human being can suspect
+anything," she repeated several times. "And, after all, there is
+scarcely a woman, beautiful and admired, who is not worse than I."
+
+In the midst of all her superficiality and moral recklessness, she had
+always been characterized by a certain frankness, which at times had
+passed the bounds of decorum; now she writhed under a burden of
+hypocrisy which weighed most heavily upon her.
+
+And why was this so?
+
+It had all been the gradual result of the tedium of the life she led. A
+man more coarse and rough than any of her other admirers had paid court
+to her in a way that flattered her vanity; he amused her, he brought
+some variety into her life; his lavishness was astounding. Once when he
+had lost a wager to her he brought her a diamond necklace in an Easter
+egg.
+
+She knew that this was wrong, but she had been wont as a girl to accept
+presents from men, and then she had an almost morbid delight in
+diamonds. And what stones these were!--a chain of dew-drops glittering
+in the morning sun! And he had so careless a way of throwing the costly
+gift into her lap, as if it had been the merest trifle.
+
+She could not resist wearing the necklace once at the next court
+ball,--explaining to her husband, who understood nothing of such
+things, that she had purchased it for a mere song at a sale of old
+jewelry.
+
+She intended to return it; but she did not return it. From that moment
+he had her in his power. He lured her on as a serpent lures a bird,
+extorting from her one innocent concession after another, until one
+day---- Good God! if she could but obliterate the memory of that day!
+
+To call the torment which she suffered from that time stings of
+conscience would be to invest it with ideality. No, she felt no stings
+of conscience; her moral sense was entirely blunted; but she was
+enraged with herself for having fallen into the snare; her pride was
+humbled in the dust, and she was in mortal dread of discovery. She was
+a coward to the core. What would she not have given to be free? She
+would have broken with her lover ten times, but that she feared him
+more than she did her husband.
+
+He was a Russian, fabulously wealthy, and notorious in the Parisian
+demi-monde which he habitually frequented. Orbanoff was his name, and
+outside of his own country he was credited with princely rank to which
+he had no title,--a man with no moral sense, brutal on occasion, with
+no idea of the laws of honour prevailing in Western Europe, but of an
+undoubted physical courage, which helped him to maintain his present
+position.
+
+Princess Dorothea was convinced that should she break with him he would
+commit some reckless, impossible crime.
+
+Oh, if he would only release her! She began to build castles in the
+air. Never, never again would she be concerned in such an adventure.
+All the romances that she had read were lies: there was nothing in the
+world more hateful than just this. Only once in her life had she been
+conscious of any real preference for a man, and that had been for her
+cousin Helmy; now of all men her own clumsy, thoroughly honourable and
+intensely good-natured husband was the dearest. He was at present on
+his estate in Silesia, where he was much happier than in the society of
+the capital. Dorothea had made him so uncomfortable in Berlin that he
+always stayed as long as possible in Silesia.
+
+To-day she longed for him; she wanted him to take her on his knee and
+soothe her like a tired child, and then to have him carry her in his
+strong arms down the broad staircase of his old castle in Kossnitz, as
+he used to do when they were first married. Yes, she longed for his
+strong supporting arm.
+
+Ah, if she were only free! She would turn her back on Berlin and go
+with him to Kossnitz. She positively hungered for Kossnitz,--for the
+odour of stone and whitewash in the broad corridors, for the airy, bare
+rooms, for the farm-yard with the brown farm-buildings. How picturesque
+it must all look now in the snow!--for the snow was still deep in
+Silesia. They would go sleighing: oh, how delicious it would be to rush
+along, warmly wrapped up, with only her face exposed to the fresh
+wintry breeze, the sleigh-bells ringing merrily, the horses mad with
+their exciting gallop, the snow-clad forest gleaming silvery white
+around them!
+
+And how delicious would be the supper when they got home!--she would
+have done with all fashionable division of the day: they would dine at
+one, and she would have potatoes in their skins at supper-time,--she
+had not had them since she was a child,--and black bread, and sour
+milk:--how she liked sour milk!
+
+One hope she had. Was it not Orbanoff whom she had seen last night in
+the background of the box of a young actress? It was not his habit to
+conceal himself on such occasions: probably he had been thus discreet
+on her account. An idea suddenly occurred to her. What an opportunity
+this might afford her to recover her freedom! All she had to do was to
+feign furious jealousy, and break with her dangerous lover without
+wounding his vanity.
+
+On the instant she felt relieved, and even gay, in the light of this
+hope.
+
+The clock struck five,--the hour of her appointment with Orbanoff.
+Without ringing for her maid, she dressed herself in the plainest of
+walking-costumes and left the house. She walked for some distance, then
+hired a droschky and was driven to a shop in Potsdam Street, where she
+dismissed the vehicle, bought some trifle, and walked on still farther
+before hiring another conveyance.
+
+
+At about eight o'clock of the same day, Goswyn von Sydow, who had
+lately been transferred to Berlin, where he was acting as adjutant to
+an exalted personage, issued from the low door of a small house in a
+side-street where he had attended the baptism of the first-born son of
+one of his early friends, a young fellow of decided talent, who had
+married a girl without a fortune, and who did not at all regret his
+choice. The home was modest enough, but was so unmistakably the abode
+of the truest happiness that Sydow could not but envy his friend his
+lot in life. How pleasant it had all been!
+
+He lighted a cigar, but held it idly between his fingers without
+smoking it, and reflected upon his own requirements in a
+wife,--requirements which one woman alone could fulfil, and she----
+
+Could he forget his pride, and try his fortune once more? His heart
+throbbed. No! under the circumstances, he could not. He never could
+forget that he had been taunted with Erika's wealth. Even if he could
+win her love, their marriage would begin with a discord.
+
+If she were but poor!
+
+The blood tingled rapturously in his veins at the thought of how, if
+trial or misfortune should befall her, he might take her to his arms
+and soothe and cheer her, making her rich with his devotion and
+tenderness. He suddenly stood still, as if some obstacle lay in his
+path. Had he really been capable of selfishly invoking trouble and
+trial upon Erika's head? He looked about him like one awaking from a
+dream.
+
+Just at his elbow a young woman glided out of a large house with
+several doors. He scarcely noticed her at first, but all at once he
+drew a long breath. How strange that he should perceive that peculiar
+fragrance, the rare perfume used by his sister-in-law, Dorothea! He
+could have sworn that Dorothea was near. He looked around: there was no
+one to be seen save the girl who had just slipped by him, a poorly-clad
+girl carrying a bundle.
+
+He had not fairly looked at her before, but now--it was strange--in the
+distance she resembled his sister-in-law: it was certainly she.
+
+He was on the point of hurrying after her to make sure, but second
+thoughts told him that it really mattered nothing to him whether it
+were she or not: it was not his part to play the spy upon her.
+
+He turned and walked back in the opposite direction, that he might not
+see her. As he passed the house whence she had come, a man muffled in
+furs issued from the same door-way. The two men looked each other in
+the face. Goswyn recognized Orbanoff.
+
+For a moment each maintained what seemed an embarrassed silence. The
+Russian was the first to recover himself. "_Mais bon soir_," he
+exclaimed, with great cordiality. "_Je ne vous remettais pas_."
+
+Goswyn touched his cap and passed on. He no longer doubted.
+
+
+The next morning Dorothea von Sydow awaked, after a sound refreshing
+sleep, with a very light heart. She was free! All had gone well. She
+had first regaled Orbanoff with a frightfully jealous scene to spare
+his vanity, but in the end they had resolved upon a separation _a
+l'aimable_, and the Princess Dorothea had then made merry, declaring
+that their love should have a gay funeral; whereupon she had partaken
+of the champagne supper that had been prepared for her, had chatted
+gaily with Orbanoff, had listened to his stories, and they had parted
+forever with a laugh.
+
+Now she was sitting by the fire in her dressing-room, comfortably
+ensconced in an arm-chair, dressed in a gray dressing-gown trimmed with
+fur, looking excessively pretty, and sipping chocolate from an
+exquisite cup of Berlin porcelain. "Thank God, it is over!" she said to
+herself again and again.
+
+But, superficial as she was, she could not quite convince herself that
+her relations with Orbanoff were of no more consequence than a bad
+dream.
+
+She felt no remorse, but a gnawing discontent: she would have given
+much to be able to obliterate her worse than folly. She sighed; then
+she yawned.
+
+She still longed for her husband and Kossnitz: she would leave
+Berlin this very evening for Silesia and surprise him. How delighted he
+would be! She clapped her hands like a child. Suddenly--it was
+intolerable--again she was conscious of that gnawing discontent. Could
+she never forget? And all for what she had never cared for in the
+least. She thrust both her hands among her short curls and began
+to sob violently. Just then the door of the room opened; a tall,
+broad-shouldered man with a kindly, florid face entered. She looked up,
+startled as by a thunderclap. The new arrival gazed at her tearful
+face, and, hastening towards her, exclaimed, "My dear little Thea, what
+in heaven's name is the matter?"
+
+She clasped her arms about his neck as she had never done before. He
+pressed his lips to hers.
+
+
+Goswyn was sitting at his writing-table,--an enormous piece of
+furniture, somewhat in disarray,--trying to read. But it would not do;
+and at last he gave it up. He was distressed, disgusted beyond measure,
+at his discovery with regard to Dorothea. The Sydows had hitherto
+prided themselves upon the purity of their women as upon the honour of
+their men. Nothing like that which he had discovered had ever happened
+in the family. He had suspected the mischief before; since yesterday he
+had been sure.
+
+Must he look calmly on? What else could he do? To open his brother's
+eyes, to play the accuser, was impossible. Yes, he must look on calmly.
+He clinched his fist. At that moment he heard a familiar deep voice
+outside the room, questioning his servant. "Otto! What is he doing in
+Berlin?" he asked himself; "and he seems in a merry mood." He sprang
+up. The door opened, and Otto rushed in, rough, clumsy as usual, but
+beaming with happiness. He laid his broad hand upon his brother's
+shoulder, and cried,--
+
+"How are you, old fellow? Why, you look down in the dumps. Anything
+gone wrong?"
+
+"Nothing," Goswyn declared, doing his best to look delighted.
+
+"Is everything all right?"
+
+"Everything."
+
+"That's as it should be. I suppose you are surprised to see me drop
+down from the skies in this fashion."
+
+"I am indeed."
+
+"'Tis quite a story. But I say, Gos, how comfortable you are here!" and
+he began to stride to and fro in the bachelor apartment; "although you
+don't waste much time or money in decoration, old fellow: not a pretty
+woman on the walls. H'm! my room looked rather different in my bachelor
+days. What have you done with your gallery of beauties, Gos?"
+
+"I bequeathed all my youthful follies to my cousin Brock, who got his
+lieutenancy six weeks ago," said Goswyn, to whom his brother's chatter
+was especially distasteful to-day.
+
+"H'm! h'm! you're right: you're getting quite too old for such
+nonsense." And Otto stooped to examine two or three photographs that
+adorned his brother's writing-table. "That's a capital picture of old
+Countess Lenzdorff," he exclaimed,--"capital! Here is our father when
+he was young,--I look like him,--and here is Uncle Goswyn, our famous
+hero, killed in a duel at thirty years of age. They say old Countess
+Lenzdorff was in love with him. As if she could ever have been in love!
+And you look like him: our mother always said so. Oh, here is our
+mother!" He took the faded picture, in its old-fashioned frame, to the
+window to examine it. "This is the best picture there is of her," he
+said. "Think of your ever being that pretty little rogue in a white
+frock in her arms, and I that boy in breeches by her side! Comical, but
+very attractive, such a picture of a young mother with her children.
+How she clasps you in her arms! She always loved you best. Where did
+you get this picture?"
+
+"My mother gave it to me when I was quite young. She brought it to me
+when she came to see me in my first garrison, shortly before her
+death," said Goswyn.
+
+"I remember; you had been wounded in your first duel."
+
+"Yes; she came to nurse me."
+
+"Ah, you've a deal on your conscience. No one would believe you were
+worse than I; but"--with a look at the picture--"I'd give a great deal
+for such a little fellow as that." And he put the picture back in its
+place with a care that was unlike him, and that touched Goswyn.
+
+With his usual want of tact, Otto proceeded to efface the pleasant
+impression he had produced. "Have you no picture of the Lenzdorff
+girl?" he asked, looking round the room.
+
+"I may have one somewhere," Goswyn replied, evasively. Indeed, he had a
+charming picture of her in the first bloom of her maiden loveliness;
+but he kept it behind lock and key, that no profane eye might rest upon
+his treasure.
+
+"What a tone you take!" Otto rejoined. "Why, she was a flame of yours.
+A capital girl, only rather too full of crotchets: she was always a
+little too high up in the sky for me, but she would have suited you. I
+cannot understand why you did not seize your chance----"
+
+"Now you are going too far," Goswyn said, with some irritation. "Do not
+pretend that you do not know that Erika Lenzdorff rejected me."
+
+"What!" exclaimed Otto, in some dismay. "True, I remember hearing
+something of the kind; but that was a hundred years ago. Forgive me,
+Gos: the 'no' of a girl of eighteen who looks at one as the young
+Countess looked at you ought not to be taken seriously. Why don't you
+try your luck a second time? You cannot attach any importance to that
+intermezzo with the Englishman! Why, you are made for each other; and
+she is quite wealthy, too----"
+
+"Otto, for God's sake stop marching up and down the room like a lion in
+a cage," cried Goswyn, unable to bear it any longer; "do sit down like
+a reasonable creature and tell me how you come to appear so
+unexpectedly in Berlin."
+
+Otto lit a cigar and obediently seated himself in an arm-chair opposite
+his brother. "'Tis quite a story," he began, just as he had a quarter
+of an hour before.
+
+"You've told me that already."
+
+"Now, don't be so impatient. I know I am rather slow at explanations.
+You see, Gos, of late matters have not gone quite right between Thea
+and myself. There is sure to be fault on both sides in such cases: I
+could not be satisfied with the stupid life here in town, and she did
+not care for Silesia, so we agreed that I should stay at home, while
+she diverted herself for a while in town, and perhaps she would come
+back to me and be more contented in the end. I know that certain people
+disapproved of my course; but I had my reasons. There's no good in
+fretting a nervous horse: better give it the rein. But the time seemed
+long to me, she wrote so seldom and her letters were so incoherent. In
+short,"--he suddenly began to be embarrassed,--"I got some foolish
+notions into my head, and so, without letting her know, I appeared in
+Berlin this morning. And how do you think I found poor Thea? Sitting
+crying by the fire. Just think of it, Gos! Of course I was frightened,
+and did all that I could to comfort her, and when she was calm I asked
+her what was the matter. Homesickness, Gos! Yes, a longing for the old
+home and for the clumsy bear who is, after all, nearer to her than any
+other human being. She reproached me for neglecting her,--said I had
+not even expressed a wish in my letters to see her, and she was just on
+the point of starting for Kossnitz; and she was jealous too,--poor
+little goose! In short, there were all sorts of a misunderstanding, and
+the end of it all was that she begged me--begged me like a child--to
+carry her back to Kossnitz. I wish you could have heard her describe
+our life together there! She would not hear of my going a few days
+before to make ready for her, but clung to me as if we had been but
+just married. What is the matter with you, Gos?" for his brother had
+walked to a window, where he stood with his back turned to Otto,
+looking out.
+
+"What could be the matter?" Goswyn forced himself to reply.
+
+"Then why do you stand looking out of the window as if you took not the
+least interest in what I am telling you?"
+
+"Forgive me: there is a crowd in the street about a horse that has
+fallen down."
+
+"Very well: if every broken-down hack in the street can interest you
+more than what is next my heart, there is no use in my talking. But I
+know what it is; you were always unjust to Thea; you never understood
+her. Adieu!" And Otto took his hat and walked towards the door.
+
+Goswyn conquered himself. What affair was it of his if his brother was
+happy in an illusion? he ought to do all that he could to prevent his
+eyes from being opened.
+
+He laid his hand upon Otto's arm and said, kindly, "Forgive me, Otto;
+you must not take it ill if such a confirmed old bachelor as I does not
+share as he should in your happiness; it all seems so foreign to such a
+life as mine."
+
+Otto's brow cleared. "I was silly," he confessed. "I ought not to have
+been so irritable. Poor Gos! But indeed I should rejoice from my heart
+if you could marry. There is nothing like it in the world. You need not
+frown: I never will mention the subject to any one else."
+
+"Yes, yes, Otto. And when are you going home?"
+
+"To-morrow. We are going to spend a few weeks at Kossnitz, and then we
+are to take a trip together. I came to ask you if you would not lunch
+with us to-day, that we might see something of you in comfort. This
+room of yours is decidedly cold. Do you never have it any warmer?
+Dorothea especially begs you to come,--at one o'clock."
+
+"Indeed! does Dorothea want me?"
+
+"Gos!"
+
+"I will come. I have one or two things to attend to, but I will be with
+you in half an hour." And the brothers parted.
+
+
+A few hours have passed. Goswyn had appeared punctually at lunch, and
+had done his best not to be a spoil-sport. They were now sitting by the
+fire in the little _salon_ in which they had taken coffee, Goswyn and
+his brother. The early twilight began to make itself felt, but no
+object was as yet indistinct.
+
+Dorothea had gone out to inform her aunt Brock of her projected
+departure and to ask her to make a few farewell calls for her. She had
+met Goswyn with such gay indifference that he had been puzzled indeed,
+and had finally begun to believe that he had been mistaken,--that the
+person whom he had supposed to be Dorothea Sydow was not she at all.
+
+Something had happened in her life, however; of that he was convinced.
+Never had Dorothea been so simply charming. She gave him her hand in
+token of reconciliation, alluded, not without regret, to her defective
+education, told an anecdote or two with much grace and in a softened
+tone of voice, and clung to Otto like an ailing child.
+
+"We are going to begin all over again,--all over again," she repeated,
+adding, "And when Gos has forgotten what a bad creature I used to be,
+and that he could not bear me, he will come and see us at Kossnitz:
+won't you, Gos? You shall see how pleasant I will make it for you
+there. You have absolutely hated me; or perhaps you thought me not
+worth hating,--you only detested me as one detests a caterpillar or a
+spider. I confess, I hated you. I always felt as if I ought to be
+ashamed in your presence; and that is not a pleasant sensation." She
+laughed, the old giggling silvery laugh, but there was a pathetic tone
+in it as she brushed away the tears from her eyes, and left the room,
+to return in a few moments, fresh and smiling, equipped for her walk.
+She kissed her husband by way of farewell, and held out her hand to
+Goswyn. "Shall I find you here when I return, Gos?" she asked, just
+before the door closed behind her.
+
+"There is no one like her!" murmured Otto. "And to think that I could
+ever fancy a bachelor existence a pleasant one! But all is different
+now." The good fellow's eyes were moist as he passed his hand over
+them.
+
+Shortly afterwards they heard a ring at the outside door. "Some
+visitor,--the deuce!" growled Otto. Goswyn looked about for his sabre,
+which he had stood in a corner.
+
+But it was no visitor. Dorothea's maid entered. "A package has come for
+her Excellency," she announced. "Perhaps the Herr Baron will sign the
+receipt."
+
+"Give it to me, Jenny."
+
+Sydow signed it, and then said, "And give me the package. I will hand
+it to your mistress."
+
+The maid gave it to him: it was a thick sealed envelope.
+
+A dreadful suspicion flashed upon Goswyn's mind: in an instant he
+guessed the truth. What if it should occur to his brother to open the
+envelope? Apparently he had no thought of doing so: he simply laid it
+upon Dorothea's writing-table, a pretty, useless piece of furniture,
+much carved and decorated. Goswyn felt relieved. He suddenly became
+garrulous, talked of the latest political complication, told the last
+story of the intense piety of the Countess Waldersee, as narrated by
+the Prince at a recent supper-party, and described the four magnificent
+horses sent by the Sultan to the Emperor.
+
+Otto sat with his back to the ominous packet. It did not escape Goswyn
+that he became very monosyllabic and did not show much interest in his
+brother's conversation.
+
+"If she would only return!" Goswyn thought to himself. He was convinced
+that the packet contained Dorothea's letters to Orbanoff. He had not
+been mistaken the previous evening: it had been Dorothea who had passed
+him, evidently returning to her home from a last interview. The affair,
+odious as it was, was at an end: Dorothea was relieved that it was so.
+She was not fitted to engage in a dangerous intrigue.
+
+Suddenly Otto began to sniff, as if perceiving some odour in the air.
+"'Tis odd," he said. "Don't you perceive a peculiar fragrance? If it
+were not too silly, I should say that it smells like Dorothea."
+
+"That would not be odd," his brother rejoined, "since she left the room
+only half an hour ago."
+
+"But I did not perceive it before," Otto said; and then, with sudden
+irritability, turning towards the writing-table, he added, "It is that
+confounded packet!"
+
+"It probably contains something of Dorothea's which she has
+accidentally left at a friend's."
+
+But Otto had taken the packet from the table. He turned it over. "I
+know the seal,--a die with the motto _va banque_: it is Orbanoff's
+seal!" His breath came quick. "What can Orbanoff have sent her?"
+
+"Probably some political treatise. I do not see how it can interest
+you," said Goswyn.
+
+Once more Otto turned the packet over in his hands. He seemed about to
+lay it down on the writing-table again; then, at the last moment,
+before Goswyn could bethink himself, he opened it hastily. About a
+dozen short notes, in Dorothea's childish handwriting, fell out, then a
+note of Orbanoff's. Otto's eyes were riveted upon it with a glassy
+stare; he could not yet comprehend. Then with a sudden cry he crushed
+the note together, tossed it to Goswyn, and buried his face in his
+hands.
+
+A dull, brooding silence followed. Goswyn held the note in his hand,
+without reading it: it was not for him to pry curiously into his
+brother's anguish and disgrace.
+
+After a while Otto raised his head. "What have you to say?" he
+exclaimed, bitterly. "That such another idiot as I does not live upon
+the earth? Say it! Ah, you have not read the note, Goswyn. Why do you
+look at me so? Could you have known---- Oh, my God! my God!" The strong
+man buried his face in his hands again, and sobbed hoarsely.
+
+Goswyn was terribly distressed. He had never known his brother to weep
+since his childhood. He would far rather have had him fall into a fury.
+But no; he was weeping: the sense of disgrace was drowned in agony.
+
+Before long he collected himself, ashamed of his weakness, and there
+was the quiet of despair in the face he lifted to Goswyn.
+
+"You knew it--since when?"
+
+"I know nothing," Goswyn replied.
+
+"No, you know nothing,--good God! who ever knows anything in such
+affairs?--but you suspected, did you not?"
+
+Goswyn was silent.
+
+"Perhaps you can tell me how many people in Berlin--suspect it?"
+
+Goswyn bit his lip. What reply could he make? after a while he began:
+"Otto, I would have given anything in the world to prevent you from
+learning it."
+
+"Indeed!" Otto interrupted him. "You would have let me go through life
+grinning amiably, ridiculously, with a stain on my name at which people
+would point contemptuously, and you never would have told me of that
+stain? Goswyn!" He started up; Goswyn also arose, and the brothers
+confronted each other beside the hearth, upon which the fire had fallen
+into glowing embers and ashes.
+
+"I ought certainly to have given Dorothea opportunity to expiate her
+fault. She was in the right path," said Goswyn. "The result of her
+frivolity had caused her a panic of terror: the entire affair had been
+a burden to her from the beginning, as you can see by her relief that
+it is at an end. One must take her as she is. All this has less
+significance for Dorothea than for any other woman whom I know. It has
+not entered into her soul. It has left nothing behind it but a horror
+of it all from beginning to end."
+
+Otto looked suspiciously at his brother. Was this Goswyn who talked
+thus?--Goswyn the strict,--Goswyn, so uncompromising where honour was
+concerned?
+
+Yes, it was Goswyn; there was no denying it.
+
+"And you think that I should--I should--forgive?" murmured Otto,
+hoarsely, as if ashamed to utter the words.
+
+"If you can so far conquer yourself."
+
+Otto stooped and picked up the letters that had fallen upon the floor.
+He glanced through one of them. "There is not much tenderness in these
+lines, I must say." And he dropped at his side the hand holding the
+packet.
+
+"One piece of advice I must give you," said Goswyn, with a coldness in
+his tone which he could not quite disguise. "If you forgive, you must
+have the strength of soul to forgive absolutely. If you forgive, throw
+those letters into the fire: Dorothea must never learn that you know
+anything."
+
+"Yes," Otto said, dully. Suddenly he went close to Goswyn, and, looking
+him full in the eye, said, between his teeth, "Would you forgive?"
+
+Goswyn started. He had no answer ready. "I--I never should have married
+Dorothea," he said, evasively.
+
+"I understand," Otto said, in the same hoarse whisper. "You never would
+have forgiven; but it is all right for stupid Otto."
+
+Again there was a distressing pause. Otto had turned away from his
+brother, with an inarticulate exclamation of pain. Goswyn gave him some
+moments in which to recover himself; then, laying his hand on his
+brother's arm, he said, "Do not take it so ill of me, Otto; I have no
+doubt I talk foolishly. I cannot decide; I am confused."
+
+"No wonder," groaned Otto. "The position is a novel one for you: there
+has never been anything like it in our family. Oh, God!" he struck his
+forehead with his clinched fist; "I cannot believe it! I used to be
+jealous at times, but of no special person. Never, never could I have
+believed,--never!"
+
+"Otto."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Since you cannot bring yourself to forgive----"
+
+"Since I cannot bring myself to forgive----" Otto repeated, with bowed
+head.
+
+"You must at least look the matter boldly in the face and decide what
+to do."
+
+"Decide--what--to do----"
+
+"Are you going to procure a divorce?"
+
+Otto stood motionless. Goswyn laid his hand upon his shoulder; Otto
+shrank from his touch. "Leave me, Gos!" he gasped. "I beg you, go!"
+
+The clock on Dorothea's writing-table struck: the tone was almost like
+that of Dorothea's voice. Goswyn looked round. Six o'clock. At seven he
+was invited to dine with a great personage,--an invitation tantamount
+to a command: he could not be absent. It was high time for him to go
+home to dress, but he could not bear to leave Otto alone.
+
+"I must go," he said, "but I entreat you to come with me; you must not
+see Dorothea just now, and the fresh air will do you good and clear
+your thoughts."
+
+"Why should they be clearer than they are?" Otto said, wearily and with
+intense bitterness. "I see more than you think. But go,--go: in a few
+minutes she will be here, and it would be more terrible to me than I
+can tell you to see her before you. No need to say more: I know that
+you will stand by me through thick and thin! There, give me your hand.
+I will do nothing unworthy of us, I promise you. Now go!"
+
+Goswyn had gone, but Dorothea had not yet returned. Otto sat alone
+beside the dying fire. He could not comprehend what had befallen him.
+He must rid himself of this terrible oppression, but how? Some way must
+be found,--some solution of the problem: he sought for it in vain.
+
+"Forgive!" The word rang in his ears, and his cheeks burned. How had
+Goswyn dared to suggest such a thing? No, it was impossible. Be
+divorced,--have her name dragged in the mire, and his shame published
+in all the newspapers? He stamped his foot. "No! no!"
+
+What then?
+
+He could challenge Orbanoff, and send Dorothea adrift in the world, a
+wife, not divorced, but separated from her husband. This was what the
+world would expect of him. He shivered as with fever. Send her adrift
+into the world without protection, without support, without moral
+strength, beautiful as she was,--expose her to insult from women, to
+sneering homage from men: she would sink to the lowest depths, not from
+depravity, but from despair. He wiped the moisture from his forehead.
+That would be the correct thing to do,--only---- Suddenly a sound that
+was half laughter, half sob, burst from his lips: he knew perfectly
+well that, while she lived, sooner or later the moment would come when
+he could no longer endure life without her; and then--then he should
+follow her, Heaven only knew whither, and take her in his arms, even
+were she far, far more lost than now.
+
+And again there rang through his soul, "Forgive!" and again his whole
+being revolted. The packet of letters which he had thrust into his
+breast weighed him down. It was all very well for Goswyn to say that
+Dorothea must never know that the packet had fallen into his hands.
+Why, she would ask for it. Ah,--he bit his lip,--he could not think of
+it! He could not forgive!
+
+His burden grew heavier every moment. On a sudden he felt very
+tired,--overcome with drowsiness. What was that? The rustle of a gown.
+The door opened. Framed by the folds of the portiere, indistinct in the
+gathering twilight, appeared Dorothea's tall, lithe figure.
+
+She had come, and he had determined upon nothing,--nothing.
+
+He did not stir.
+
+"Gos not here?" she asked, in her high, twittering voice. He tried to
+summon up his anger against her; he told himself that he ought to
+strike her,--kill her. But he was as if paralyzed; he could not stir;
+he trembled in every limb. She did not perceive it, and she could not
+distinguish his features in the darkness.
+
+"So much the better!" she exclaimed. "I am so glad of a quiet cosy
+evening with you. Do you want to please me, Otto? Come with me now to
+Uhl's and dine, and then let us go to the theatre. Will you?"
+
+She came up to him. He had arisen, and the fresh sweetness of her
+feminine nature seemed to envelop him. She put both her hands on his
+shoulders and nestled close to him. "Will you?" she murmured again.
+
+He put his arms around her and kissed her twice as he never had kissed
+her before, with a tenderness in which there was a mixture of rage and
+glowing, frantic passion. Twice he kissed her, and then he suddenly
+became aware of what he was doing. He thrust her away.
+
+"What is the matter?" she asked, startled.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"But something is the matter."
+
+"I tell you no!" He hurled the words in her face as it were, and
+stamped his foot. "Go--get ready!"
+
+She lingered for a moment, and then left the room. He looked after her.
+
+
+Goswyn's state of mind was indescribable. He hastily changed his
+uniform and made ready for the dinner. His nerves were quivering with a
+dread that he could not explain. "He never can bring himself to get a
+divorce," he said to himself; "and if he forgives----"
+
+Disgust seemed fairly to choke him; he took shame to himself for having
+suggested such a course to Otto for a moment. He had no right to
+despise Otto. The old family affection for his brother revived in him
+in full force.
+
+As soon as he was dressed he belied his usual Spartan habits by sending
+for a droschky. It would give him time to stop for a moment at
+Dorothea's lodgings to see what was going on there. The monotonous
+jogging of the vehicle soothed his nerves: his thoughts began to stray.
+As it turned into Moltke Street the droschky moderated its speed, and
+at the same instant a dull sound as of the excited voices of a crowd
+struck upon his ear. He looked out of the carriage window, upon a close
+throng of human beings. The vehicle stopped; he sprang out.
+
+There was a crowd before the house occupied by his sister-in-law.
+Shoulder to shoulder men were pushing eagerly forward. A smothered
+murmur made itself heard; now and then a cynical speech fell distinctly
+on the ear, or a burst of laughter that died away without an echo,
+mingled with the curses of coachmen who could not make their way
+through the mass of humanity crowding there in the pale March twilight,
+through which the glare of the lanterns shone yellow and dreary. At
+first he could not get to the house; but the crowd soon made way for
+his officer's uniform.
+
+He rang the bell loudly. Some time passed before the door was opened
+for him. Measures had evidently been taken to baffle the curiosity of
+the crowd.
+
+The door of Dorothea's apartments, however, was open. He hurried
+onward, finding at first no one to detain him or to give him any
+information.
+
+In the cosy little room, now brilliantly lighted, where he had left his
+brother, stood Dorothea, evidently dressed to go out, in a gray gown,
+and a bonnet trimmed with pale pink roses, her cheeks ashy pale, her
+face hard and set in a frightful, unnatural smile.
+
+"What has happened?" cried Goswyn.
+
+She tried to reply, but the words would not come. The smile grew
+broader, and her eyes glowed. Her face recalled to him the evening at
+the Countess Brock's, when she looked around after her song and found
+herself the only woman in the room.
+
+One or two persons had made their way into the room. Goswyn ordered
+them out, with an imperious air of command. "Where is he?" he asked,
+hoarsely. She pointed mutely to a door. He entered. It was her
+sleeping-room, airy, bright, luxurious; and there, at the foot of the
+bed, lay a dark figure, face downward, with outstretched arms.
+
+Two officials, one of whom was writing something in a note-book, were
+in the room.
+
+The servant told him it had been entirely unexpected. When her
+Excellency came home, she had exchanged a few words with the Herr
+Baron, and had then gone to dress for the theatre. The Herr Baron had
+gone into the other room to write a note, and then--while her
+Excellency was in the _salon_ putting on her gloves they had heard--a
+shot. Her Excellency had been the first to find him.
+
+On the table lay two notes, one to Goswyn, the other to Dorothea.
+
+The contents of Dorothea's Goswyn never knew: in his own note there was
+nothing save
+
+
+ "Dear Gos,--
+
+ "I have forgiven.
+
+ "Otto."
+
+
+Yes, he had forgiven, but his life had paid the forfeit.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+The news of Otto von Sydow's sudden tragic death produced a profound
+impression upon old Countess Lenzdorff.
+
+She immediately wrote a long letter to Goswyn,--eight pages of
+affectionate and sincere sympathy. Erika said very little about the
+matter, but she looked forward eagerly to Goswyn's reply.
+
+When it came it was dry, almost formal,--the reply of a man crushed to
+the earth, who is not wont to discourse about his emotions and is shy
+of expressing himself with regard to them.
+
+Thus the Countess Lenzdorff understood it. Her sympathy for the young
+officer increased after reading his brief note. Erika, on the other
+hand, after perusing the epistle, which her grandmother handed to her
+with a sigh, showed an unaccountable degree of irritability.
+
+"Surely he might have written you more cordially!" she exclaimed. "Such
+a letter as this means nothing! It is simply a receipt for your
+sympathy,--nothing more."
+
+Her grandmother shook her head, and tried to set her right. But Erika
+would not listen. She had greatly changed of late: her state of mind
+was growing more and more distressing. She ate and slept but little.
+Her sentiment was searching for a new stay; her life lacked a purpose.
+At any risk she would gladly have fled from the chill brilliance which
+characterized her grandmother's philosophy of life to take refuge in
+some inspiration of the heart, even although it might perhaps lead her
+astray. Religion had been taken from her, and even the sacred nimbus of
+morality had been frayed by her grandmother's cynicism. When her God
+had been taken from her she had at first wept hot, bitter tears, but
+she had aroused herself anew, and faith had been born within her in a
+transfigured form: it was no longer the conventional belief, expressed
+in worn-out formulas, with which the multitude satisfy themselves in
+view of the mysteries of creation, but an apprehension, however faulty,
+of an order of affairs, incomprehensible to her finite intellect,
+lifting her above that part of us which is of the earth, earthy,--a
+faith which may bring with it but little consolation, but which is
+certainly elevating. When her grandmother first attacked in her
+presence what she called the 'by God's grace principle' of morality,
+and coldly proved that all morals culminated in a number of laws not
+founded in nature,--nay, even at variance with nature,--which had been
+illogically framed by society for its preservation, she did not weep,
+but her whole being was poisoned by a discontent which she could not
+away with. If her grandmother had had the least idea of the effect upon
+the girl of her cold reasoning, she would have kept to herself the
+aphorisms which she was so fond of handing about like little
+delicately-prepared tidbits. Her nature, however, was a thoroughly
+sound and rather cold one, which took no pleasure in overwrought
+emotion, and which was absolutely free from the devouring thirst which
+glowed in Erika's soul. How could she understand the young creature, or
+know how to protect her from herself?
+
+
+But if, on the one hand, the old Countess had but a poor opinion of
+mankind, on the other it was impossible for her to forego society.
+Although she had promised Erika to resist its temptations in Venice,
+she not only yielded to them herself, but did all that she could to
+induce the girl to accompany her. Her efforts were, however, of no
+avail, in view of Erika's misanthropic and unamiable mood; and thus it
+came to pass that society witnessed the unusual spectacle of a
+venerable matron of seventy appearing with indefatigable enjoyment
+at one afternoon tea after another, while her beautiful young
+grand-daughter at home confused her mind with the study of metaphysical
+works or visited the poor abroad. This last had of late been her
+favourite occupation: she had a long list of beneficiaries, whom she
+befriended with enthusiastic zeal, and of whom she had learned from the
+kindly hostess at the hotel and from the doctor when he came to visit
+his patients there.
+
+It was on a cloudy afternoon towards the end of March, after her
+grandmother had parted from her with a sigh of compassion, that Erika
+set out on foot, as was her wont, to visit a poor music-teacher.
+
+The way to the modest lodgings where Fraeulein Horst resided led Erika
+far from the busy Riva by a narrow alley to the quiet Piazza San
+Zacharie, where grass was growing between the stones. Thence the road
+grew more difficult to find, and it was not without some pride that she
+threaded accurately the labyrinth of narrow streets and reached the
+small dwelling in question without having been obliged to inquire her
+way.
+
+She found the poor woman in bed in a wretchedly-furnished room. A table
+beside her served to hold her various bottles of medicine, and a green
+screen before the window shut out the light. In the midst of this
+poverty the music-teacher lay reading "Consuelo," and--was happy.
+
+A wave of compassion--a compassion that brought the tears to her
+eyes--overwhelmed Erika. She leaned over the invalid and kissed her
+throbbing temples. Then, with the graceful kindliness which
+characterized her in the presence of sickness or misery, she adorned
+the room with the flowers she had with her, cleared away the grim
+witnesses from the table, had a cup of tea made and brought, and set
+out various little dainties from her basket, talking the while so
+cheerfully that the invalid forgot her pain. The poor music-teacher
+followed her every movement in a kind of ecstasy; at last, taking the
+girl's hand and pressing her feverish lips upon it, she exclaimed, "How
+could I ever dream that the beautiful Countess Lenzdorff, whom I have
+admired at the theatre and at concerts, would ever come to drink a cup
+of tea with me! Ah, what a pleasure it is!"
+
+"I am so glad," Erika replied, stroking the thin hand held out to her.
+"I will come often, since you really like to have me."
+
+"One never ought to despair, while life lasts," said the sick woman.
+"Just now I received a letter from an old school-mate, Sophy Lange.
+When she was a poor girl she fell in love with a gentleman. Of course
+their union was not to be thought of. Now, after many years, she writes
+me that she has reached the goal of her desires: she is married,--she
+is his wife,--and she is almost crazy with delight."
+
+"Sophy Lange!" Erika cried, with peculiar interest. "That was the name
+of our governess. She must be forty years old."
+
+"About that," the woman replied, smiling to herself. "A truly loving
+heart keeps young even at forty years of age."
+
+"And what is her husband's name?" asked Erika, smitten by a strange
+suspicion.
+
+"Baron Strachinsky," replied Fraeulein Horst. "He is of ancient Polish
+lineage, not very wealthy, but dear Sophy does not mind that, for a
+rich old gentleman whom she took care of during his ten-years' illness
+has left her all his property."
+
+"And she is happy?" Erika asked, in a kind of terror.
+
+"Oh, how happy! I am so glad!--so glad! A little romance is so
+refreshing in these prosaic days. They met each other again on the
+Rigi, at sunrise,--just think, Countess! and Sophy is not at all
+pretty,--only dear and kind. Now they are in Naples; but she tells me
+that in the course of the spring she and her husband may come to
+Venice. She has had a hard life, but at last--at last--it is good to
+hear of so happy an end to her troubles."
+
+At this point an attack of coughing interrupted her. Ah, how terrible
+it was! The handkerchief she held to her lips was crimsoned. Erika did
+all that she could for her, supported her in her arms, and bade her
+take courage. When the invalid was more comfortable, she left her,
+promising to come again on the morrow.
+
+"God bless you, Countess!" the poor woman murmured, faintly.
+
+It was late, and it had begun to grow dark. Before leaving the house
+Erika had a short interview with the woman who rented the lodgings, and
+deposited with her a sum of money, that the poor music-teacher might be
+supplied with every comfort possible. Then, with a friendly nod, she
+departed.
+
+Her heart felt lighter than it had done for some time, and it was not
+until she had started on her homeward way that she noticed the
+gathering gloom.
+
+She was half inclined to summon a gondola, but decided that it was not
+worth the trouble; and, moreover, she detested the swampy odour of the
+lagoons. And just here the air was so sweet: a spring fragrance was
+wafted about her from the grassy deserted Campo.
+
+"What mysteries people are!" the girl reflected, her thoughts
+reverting to her grandmother's comments upon the late elopement, with a
+lover, of the lovely young wife of an old German diplomat. "This is
+love,--Countess Ada on the one hand, poor Sophy on the other,--the one
+criminal, the other ridiculous. Good heavens!"
+
+Around her breathed the sweet, drowsy air of spring; there was a
+distant sound of bells and of plashing water, and over all brooded
+something like a dim foreboding, an expectant yearning.
+
+Erika suddenly awoke from her dreamy mood, to find that she had lost
+her way. She walked on to the nearest corner in hopes of finding
+it,--in vain! Not without a certain tremor, she resolved to go straight
+on: she could not but reach some familiar square or canal. She walked
+hurriedly, impatiently. The air was no longer fragrant, and she found
+herself in a narrow, poverty-stricken alley running between rows of
+tall, evil-looking, and ruinous houses, in which the windows showed
+like deep, hollow eyes. The gray mist was rising above the roofs, and
+the walls of the houses, as well as the stones underfoot, were slimy
+with moisture.
+
+Erika had much ado to keep her footing, so slippery was the pathway. If
+she walked in the middle of the street she had to wade through mud and
+filth; and if she pressed near to the walls the green slime soiled her
+dress.
+
+Darker and darker grew the night, when suddenly a rude noise broke the
+forlorn silence,--songs issuing from rough throats, mingled with the
+shrill, coarse laughter of women.
+
+Poor Erika hastened her pace, but utter weariness so assailed her that
+she felt almost unable to stand upright. In an unlucky moment a drunken
+sailor staggered out of the wretched drinking-place whence the noise
+proceeded. He was a young, stalwart man, and before the girl could pass
+him he had stretched out his arms and barred her way.
+
+Beside herself with terror, she screamed,--when, as if rising from the
+earth, a man stepped in front of her, seized the sailor by the collar,
+and flung him against the wall. She trembled in every limb with disgust
+and fear as she looked up at her rescuer, whose features she could
+barely distinguish, although she could see his eyes,--dark,
+compassionate eyes.
+
+Where had she already seen those eyes? Before she could recall where,
+he said, lifting his hat, "You have evidently lost your way: will you
+tell me where you live, that I may guide you out of this labyrinth?" He
+spoke in English, but with a foreign accent: apparently he took her for
+an Englishwoman.
+
+His proposal was an unusual one; and this seemed to strike him, for
+before she could reply he added, "Of course it is disagreeable to trust
+to a stranger's escort, but under the circumstances it is the only
+thing to do. I cannot leave you here without a protector: this is no
+place for a lady."
+
+So dismayed was she by this knowledge that she could find no courteous
+word of thanks, and all she said in reply was to mention the name of
+her hotel.
+
+"To the left," he said, motioning in the given direction. His voice,
+too, seemed familiar.
+
+They passed together through the net-work of narrow streets and over a
+high arched bridge upon which a red lantern was burning and beneath
+which the sluggish water flowed slowly.
+
+"Of whom does he remind me?" thought Erika. Suddenly her heart beat so
+as almost to deprive her of breath. Bayreuth--Lozoncyi!
+
+And at the same moment she recalled also his fair companion.
+
+Meanwhile, they had reached a large, airy square.
+
+"Piazza San Zacharie. I know where I am now," she said, very coldly, as
+she took leave of him.
+
+He stood still, evidently wounded by her tone, and looked after her
+with a frown.
+
+Without thanking him, she hurried on. Suddenly she paused, unable to
+resist the impulse to look back. He was still standing looking after
+her. She half turned to retrace her steps and thank him, when
+indignation seemed to paralyze her. What had she to say to a man who
+without the least shame could appear in public with---- Without further
+hesitation she returned to the hotel.
+
+She slept badly that night. Her teeth chattered with fear at the
+thought of her adventure. And then--then, in spite of herself, she was
+vexed that she had said no friendly word to Lozoncyi: he had deserved
+some such at her hands. What was his private life to her? She recalled
+the handsome half-starved lad whom she had fed beside the gurgling
+brook. She longed to see him again. Half asleep, she turned her head
+uneasily on her pillow. The plashing of the water beneath her window
+sounded like a low, trembling sigh, and the sigh became a song. Nearer
+and nearer it sounded, insinuatingly sweet,--a song of Tosti's then in
+fashion. She heard only the refrain:
+
+
+ "Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie,
+ Toi, qui n'as pas d'amour?"
+
+
+She sprang out of bed and threw open the window. Along the Grand Canal,
+illuminated by gay little lanterns, glided a gondola whence the song
+proceeded.
+
+She leaned forward, but almost before she was aware of it the gondola
+had passed out of sight: it was nothing more in the distance than a
+shadow with a little dash of colour, and the sweet melody only a sigh
+slowly absorbed by the rippling waves.
+
+She still stood at the window when all was silent again. All gone! all
+silent! Where the gondola had passed there lay a broad moon-glade upon
+the black water, and mingling with the swampy odour of the lagoon Erika
+could perceive the breath of spring.
+
+She closed the window, and no longer heard even the plash of the water,
+or aught save the beating of her own heart.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+The next morning after breakfast Erika stood again at her window,
+looking out upon the magnificence of the palaces bordering the Grand
+Canal, and upon the dark, sluggish water. She seemed to be looking for
+the spot where the gondola the previous night had passed through the
+silvery radiance of the moonlight. The burden of the plaintive song
+still rang in her ears, in her nerves, in her soul:
+
+
+ "Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie,
+ Toi, qui n'as pas d'amour?"
+
+
+Her grandmother entered, ready to go out, an opera-glass in her hand,
+and asked her, "Erika, will you not come with me to the exhibition in
+the Circolo artistico? There is a picture there of which all Venice is
+talking,--a wonder of a picture, they say."
+
+"Whom is it by?"
+
+"By Lozoncyi."
+
+"Ah!" Erika turned away from her grandmother, and gazed out of the
+window into the broad Southern sunlight, until black specks danced
+before her eyes.
+
+"What an indignant exclamation!" her grandmother said, with a laugh.
+"Your 'Ah!' sounded as if Lozoncyi were your mortal enemy. Perhaps you
+resent his being in Bayreuth with--with a companion. You must not be so
+strict with an artist: the society which these gentlemen, in pursuance
+of their calling, are obliged to frequent, is apt to blunt their
+sensibilities in that direction. Besides, he was just from Paris: such
+things are usual there. We are rather more strict in our notions. It is
+all the same. For my part, it is a matter of entire indifference to me
+how this Herr Lozoncyi arranges his domestic affairs. Years ago I
+prophesied a brilliant future for him, when our best Berlin critics
+condemned his efforts as unripe fruit. Of course I feel flattered at
+having been right. The vanity of being in the right is the last to die
+in the human breast. At all events, he seems to have painted a really
+great picture, and I thought---- But if you do not want to come with
+me, you prejudiced young lady, I will go alone. Adieu, my child." She
+stroked the cheek of the young girl, who had now turned away from the
+window, and went towards the door.
+
+But before she had reached it, Erika called after her: "But,
+grandmother, do not be in such haste. I--I should like to take a little
+walk with you, and I do not care where we go."
+
+"Very well: I will wait."
+
+Shortly afterwards grandmother and grand-daughter walked across the
+little square behind the hotel, decorated in honour of the spring with
+orange-trees and laurels in tubs, towards the Piazza San Stefano. The
+day was lovely, and the streets were filled with people. Erika wore a
+dark-green cloth walking-suit, that became her well. Although she gave
+but little thought to her dress, with her good taste was instinctive:
+she always looked like a picture, and to-day like an uncommonly
+handsome picture.
+
+"Everybody turns to look at you," her grandmother whispered to her;
+"and I must confess that it is worth the trouble."
+
+This sounded like old times. The compliment had no effect upon Erika,
+but the tenderness that prompted it did the girl good. She smiled
+affectionately, but shook her forefinger at the old lady.
+
+"What? I am to take care not to spoil you?" the old Countess said, with
+a laugh. "I'll answer for that. If flattered vanity could spoil, you
+would be quite ruined by this time. Good heavens! I would rather you
+were a little spoiled,--just a little,--and happy, instead of being as
+you are, an angel,--sometimes an insufferable one, but still an
+angel,--with no sunshine in your heart." She looked askance, almost
+timidly, at the young girl, as if to see if she were not a little
+merrier to-day than usual. No, Erika did not look merry: she looked
+touched, but not merry.
+
+"If I only knew what you want!" the grandmother sighed, half aloud.
+
+Erika moved closer to her side. "I want nothing. I have too much," she
+whispered. "You spoil me."
+
+"How can I help it? I am seventy-two years old: how much time is left
+me to delight in you? It may be all over for me to-day or to-morrow,
+and then----" But when she looked again at Erika the tears were rolling
+down the girl's cheeks. "Foolish child!" exclaimed the grandmother. "In
+all probability I shall not die so very soon: you need not spoil your
+fine eyes with crying, beforehand; but one ought to be prepared for
+everything, and of course I should like to see you married to a good
+husband."
+
+She had rested her hand on Erika's arm, and hitherto the young girl in
+a child-like caressing way had pressed it close to her side, but now
+she extricated herself from the old lady's clasp; her lips quivered.
+"Whom shall I marry?" she exclaimed, with bitter emphasis.
+
+Then both were silent. The grandmother was conscious of the blunder she
+had committed, and was furious with herself; which nevertheless would
+not in the least prevent her from making another of the same kind
+whenever an opportunity offered.
+
+Erika walked stiff and haughty beside her without looking at her again.
+
+When they reached the Circolo, after a long walk, they wandered through
+the splendid, spacious rooms for some time without discovering the
+object of their expedition. The spring exhibition at the Circolo was
+sparsely attended: strangers had no time for modern art in Venice, and
+the natives preferred a walk in such fine weather. Consequently the
+pictures signed by famous modern names hung for the most part upon the
+walls merely for the satisfaction of their originators. Bezzy's
+landscapes the old Countess pronounced to be masterpieces, and she
+became so absorbed in a sirocco by that artist that she quite forgot
+the purpose for which she had come hither.
+
+It looked almost as if Erika took more interest than her grandmother in
+Lozoncyi's picture. She looked about her in search of it. From the next
+room came the sound of voices, now suppressed, then loud in talk. Her
+heart began to beat fast, and she directed her steps thither.
+
+A group of six or seven men were standing in front of a large picture
+which hung alone on one side of the room, probably because no other
+artist had ventured to provoke comparison with it. The men standing
+before it--Erika suspected, from their remarks, that they were all
+artists by profession--spoke of it in low tones, as of something
+sacred, which the picture was not,--far from it; but it was a
+magnificent revelation of genius, and as such was something divine.
+
+'Francesca da Rimini' was engraved upon the frame. The old subject
+was strangely treated. Trees in full leaf were cut short by the
+frame so that only their luxuriant foliage and blossom-laden boughs
+were visible, and above them against a background of dull, gloomy
+storm-clouds floated two forms closely intertwined.
+
+Never had Erika seen two such figures living, as it were, upon canvas;
+never had she seen writhing despair so revealed in every limb and
+muscle. Her first sensation was one of almost angry repulsion for the
+artist.
+
+"What do you say to it?" the old Countess, who had followed Erika,
+asked, rather loudly, as was her wont. "A masterpiece, is it not?"
+
+Erika turned away. She was very pale, and she trembled from head to
+foot.
+
+"It is wonderfully beautiful," she murmured, in a low voice, "but it is
+unpleasant. I feel as if it were a sin to look at it."
+
+
+As they crossed the Piazza San Stefano on their way home, at the foot
+of Manin's statue stood a group of five street-singers, two men and
+three women, all over fifty, both men blind, one of the women one-eyed,
+another hump-backed, and the third so corpulent that she looked like a
+caricature.
+
+These five monsters, the women with guitars, the men with violins, were
+accompanying themselves in a love-song, their mouths wide open, and the
+drawling notes issuing thence echoed from one end to the other of the
+spacious Piazza. The burden of the ditty was,--
+
+
+ "Tu m'hai bagnato il seno mio di lagrime,
+ T'amo d'immenso amor."
+
+
+The old Countess, with a laugh and the easy grace of a great lady,
+tossed the singers a coin half-way across the Piazza. Erika frowned. A
+feverish indignation possessed her. Good heavens! did the whole world
+circle about one and the same thing? Must she hear it even from the
+lips of these wretched cripples? She bit her lip: from the distance
+came the drawling wail,--
+
+
+ "T'amo d'immenso amor."
+
+
+"Erika, look there!"
+
+The words are spoken by old Countess Lenzdorff in the library
+of the monastery of San Lazaro, and as she speaks she plucks her
+grand-daughter's sleeve.
+
+The monastery is the same in which Lord Byron, more than half a century
+ago, was taught by long-bearded monks; and the Lenzdorffs, taking
+advantage of the fine weather, had been rowed over to it on the
+afternoon of the day on which they had visited the exhibition at the
+Circolo.
+
+The monk who acted as their cicerone had conducted them to the library
+to show them Lord Byron's signature and his portrait, a small,
+authentic likeness. In addition he showed them many likenesses of his
+lordship which were by no means authentic, but which represented him in
+various costumes and at various periods of his existence, and which it
+was hoped romantic tourists might be tempted to purchase as _souvenirs
+de Venise_.
+
+Two gentlemen are standing laughing and criticising one of these
+pictures, and it is to these gentlemen that the Countess directs her
+grand-daughter's attention. One of them is standing with his back
+turned to the ladies, but his faultlessly-fitting English overcoat, his
+gray gaiters, his way of balancing himself with legs slightly apart,
+the distinction and gray-haired worthlessness that characterize him,
+leave Erika in no doubt as to his identity. It is Count Hans
+Treurenberg, an old Austrian friend of her grandmother's. The other,
+whose profile is turned towards the ladies, is a man of middle height,
+delicately built, well dressed, although his clothes have not the
+English _cachet_ that distinguishes Count Treurenberg's, and with a
+frank, attractive bearing and a clear-cut dark face. Taken all in all,
+he might be supposed to be a man of the world,--some young relative of
+the Count's,--were it not for his eyes, strange, gleaming eyes,
+which after a brief glance at the grandmother are riveted upon the
+grand-daughter. No mere man of the world ever had such eyes. Meanwhile,
+Count Treurenberg has turned round.
+
+"Ladies, I kiss your hands!" he exclaims. "You too have employed this
+fine weather in an excursion: you could not do better."
+
+The old Countess was about to reply, when Treurenberg's companion
+whispered a few words to him.
+
+"Permit me to present Herr von Lozoncyi," said the Count,--whereupon
+the old Countess, before Lozoncyi had quite finished his formal
+obeisance, called out, "I am delighted to know you. I belong among your
+oldest admirers. Do not misunderstand me: I do not, of course, refer to
+my own age, but to that of my admiration."
+
+"I am immensely flattered, Frau Countess," Lozoncyi replied, in the
+gentle, agreeable voice of a Viennese of mixed descent and doubtful
+nationality. "Might I ask when first I had the good fortune to arouse
+your interest?"
+
+"How long ago is it, Erika?--five or six years?" asked the old lady.
+"You will know."
+
+"Six years ago, I think, grandmother."
+
+"Six years ago, then," the Countess went on. "It was in Berlin, where
+you were exhibiting two pictures, one before a curtain, the other
+behind a curtain. I saw both; and I have believed in your talent ever
+since,--which has not, however, prevented me from being surprised by
+your last picture in the Circolo artistico."
+
+"You are very kind."
+
+"One thing I should like to know: do you fancy there are trees in full
+leaf in hell?"
+
+"What?--in hell?" asked the artist, lifting his eyebrows. "So far as I
+can tell, I have never pictured hell to myself; although I have more
+than once felt as if I had been there."
+
+"Why, then, did you paint Francesca da Rimini after that fashion?"
+
+"Francesca da Rimini?" Again he looked at her in surprise.
+
+"The picture in the Circolo," the old lady persisted. "But"--and her
+tone was much cooler--"perhaps I am mistaken, and the picture is not
+yours?"
+
+"No, no," he replied, laughing. "The picture to which you refer is
+certainly mine, Countess, but my picture-dealer invented the title for
+it. I never for a moment intended to paint that most attractive of all
+sinning women."
+
+"What did your picture mean, then?"
+
+"To tell you the truth, I do not know." He said it with an odd smile in
+which there was some annoyance. "I want to paint a series of pictures
+under the title of 'Mes Cauchemars,'--' Evil Dreams,'--and the thing in
+the Circolo was to be number one. If I could have dared to challenge
+comparison with Botticelli,--which I could not,--I should perhaps have
+called the picture 'Spring.'"
+
+As he spoke, his eyes had continually strayed towards Erika: at last
+they rested upon her with so uncivilized a stare that she turned away,
+annoyed, and Count Treurenberg held up his hand as a screen, saying,
+with a laugh, "Spare your eyes, my dear Lozoncyi: what sort of way is
+that to gaze upon the sun?"
+
+"You are right, Count," the painter said, rather bluntly; then, turning
+again to the young girl, he said, in a very different tone, "I am not
+recalling our meeting in the Calle San Giacomo. If I do not mistake,--I
+can hardly believe it, but if I do not,--our acquaintance dates from
+much farther back. Have you a step-father called Strachinsky?"
+
+"Unfortunately, yes," her grandmother replied, dolefully.
+
+"Well, then," he said, eagerly, "I----" He made a sudden pause. "How
+foolish I am! You must long ago have forgotten what I am remembering."
+
+"No, I have forgotten nothing," Erika replied, lifting her eyes to his
+with a strange expression of mingled pride and reproach. "I recognized
+you long ago; but it was not for me to tell you so."
+
+"Countess! Allow me to kiss your hand, in memory of the dear little
+fairy who brought me good fortune."
+
+"What's all this?" Count Treurenberg asked, inquisitively, and the old
+Countess as curiously inquired, "Where did you make each other's
+acquaintance?"
+
+Erika hesitates: a sudden shyness makes her uncertain how to begin the
+story. Lozoncyi comes to her aid. His narrative is a little masterpiece
+of pathos and humour. He tells everything; how the Baron--he describes
+him perfectly in a single phrase--sent him off with an alms,--two
+kreutzers,--his own indignation, his despair, his hunger, the sudden
+appearance of the little girl; he describes her sweet little face, her
+faded gown, her long thin legs in their red stockings, and the basket
+of food decorated with asters; he describes the landscape, the little
+brook creeping shyly beneath the huge bridge,--a bridge about as
+suitable, he declares, as the tomb of Cecilia Metella would be as a
+monument for a dead dog; he repeats the little fairy's every word, and
+tells how, finally, she slipped the five guilders into his pocket,
+assuring him that she knew how terrible it was to be without money.
+
+The old lady and Treurenberg laugh; Erika listens eagerly and with
+emotion. The story lacks something. Yes, in spite of its minute
+details, something is missing. Is he keeping it for the conclusion, or
+does he think it necessary to suppress this detail altogether? Erika is
+indignant at such discretion. When he has finished, she says, calmly,
+"You have forgotten one trifling incident, Herr Lozoncyi: you set a
+price upon your picture of me----" She pauses, and then, coolly
+surveying her listeners, she goes on, "I had to promise Herr Lozoncyi
+to give him a kiss for my portrait."
+
+"And may I ask if you kept your word, Countess?" asks Count
+Treurenberg, laughing.
+
+"Yes," Erika replies, curtly.
+
+"Charming!" exclaims Count Treurenberg. "And, between ourselves, I
+would not have believed it of you, Countess! You were a lucky fellow,
+Lozoncyi."
+
+Erika is visibly embarrassed, but Lozoncyi steps a little nearer to
+her, and says, with a very kindly smile, "What a gloomy face! Ah,
+Countess, can you regret the alms bestowed upon a poor lad by an infant
+nine years old? If you only knew how often the memory of your childish
+kindness has strengthened and encouraged me, you would not grudge it."
+
+The matter could not have been adjusted with more amiable tact, and
+Erika begins to laugh, and confesses that she has been foolish,--a fact
+which her grandmother confirms gaily. The old lady is delighted with
+the little story: the part played therein by Strachinsky gives it an
+additional relish. She is charmed with Lozoncyi.
+
+They leave the damp, musty library, and go out into the cloisters that
+encircle the garden of the monastery. The scent of roses is in the air,
+and from the monastery kitchen comes the odour of freshly-roasted
+coffee. Count Treurenberg is glad of the opportunity to cover his bald
+head with his English gray felt hat, and as he does so anathematizes
+the Western idea of courtesy which makes it necessary for a gentleman
+to catch cold in his head so frequently. He walks in front with the old
+Countess, and Erika and Lozoncyi follow. The two old people talk
+incessantly; the younger couple scarcely speak.
+
+Lozoncyi is the first to break the silence. "Strange, that chance
+should have brought us together again," he says.
+
+She clears her throat and seems about to speak, but is mute.
+
+"You were saying, Countess----?" he asks, smiling.
+
+"I said nothing."
+
+"You were thinking, then----?"
+
+"Yes, I was thinking, in fact, that it is strange that you should have
+left it to chance to bring about our meeting." The words are amiable
+enough, but they sound cold and constrained as Erika utters them.
+
+"Do you imagine that I have made no attempt to find you again,
+Countess?"
+
+"I imagine that if you had seriously desired to find me it would not
+have been difficult."
+
+He does not speak for a moment, and then he begins afresh: "You are
+right,--and you do me injustice. When I learned that my dear little
+poorly-clad princess had become a great lady, I did, it is true, make
+no attempt to approach her; but before then---- Do you care to hear of
+my unfortunate pilgrimage?"
+
+"Most assuredly I do."
+
+"Well, eight years after our childish interview I had my first couple
+of hundred marks in my pocket. I bought a new suit of clothes--yes,
+smile if yon choose,--a new suit, which I admired exceedingly--and
+journeyed to Bohemia. I found the village, the brook, and the
+bridge, and likewise the castle; but all had gone who had once lived
+there,--even the amiable Herr von Strachinsky,--and no one knew
+anything of my little princess. I was very sad,--too sad for a fellow
+of three-and-twenty."
+
+He pauses.
+
+"And was that the end of your efforts?" asks the old Countess, whose
+sharp ears have lost nothing of the story, and who now turns to the
+pair with a laugh. "You showed no amount of persistence to boast of."
+
+"When, overtaken by the rain, I took refuge in the parsonage of the
+nearest village," he continues, "I made inquiries there for my little
+friend. The priest gave me more information than I had been able to
+procure elsewhere. He told me that one fine day some one had come from
+Berlin to carry little Rika away,--that she was now a very grand
+lady----"
+
+"And then----?" the old lady persists.
+
+"I sought no further: the bridge between my sphere in life and that of
+my princess was destroyed. I quietly returned to Munich. I was very
+unhappy: the goal to which I had looked forward seemed to have been
+suddenly snatched from me."
+
+"Oho!" exclaims the old Countess, "you can be sentimental too, then?
+You are truly many-sided."
+
+"That was years ago. I have changed very much since then."
+
+After which Count Treurenberg contrives to interest the old lady in the
+latest piece of Venetian gossip.
+
+"You understand now why I did not appear before you, Countess Erika?"
+
+But Erika shook her head: "I do not understand at all. I think you were
+excessively foolish to avoid me for such a reason."
+
+"Erika is quite right," the grandmother called back over her shoulder
+in the midst of one of Count Treurenberg's most interesting anecdotes.
+"Your failing to seek us out only proves that you must have thought us
+a couple of geese; otherwise you would have been quite sure of a
+friendly reception."
+
+"No, it proves only that I had been hardly treated by fate, that I was
+a well-whipped young dog," said Lozoncyi. "Now I have no doubt that I
+should have been graciously received by both of you; but it would not
+have amounted to much. You would soon have tired of me. A very young
+artist is sadly out of place in a drawing-room; I was like all the rest
+of the race."
+
+"That I find hard to believe," the old Countess said, kindly, still
+over her shoulder; then, turning again to Count Treurenberg, "Go on,
+Count. You were saying----"
+
+"I shall say nothing more," Treurenberg exclaimed, provoked. "I have
+had enough of this: at the most interesting part of my story you turn
+and listen to what Lozoncyi is saying to your grand-daughter. The fact
+is that when Lozoncyi is present no one else can claim a lady's
+attention." The words were spoken half in jest, half in irritation.
+
+"Count Treurenberg is skilled in rendering me obnoxious in society,"
+Lozoncyi murmurs.
+
+"Oh, I never pay any attention to him," the old Countess assures him.
+"I should like to know what you did after you learned that Erika
+had----"
+
+"Had become a grand lady?" Lozoncyi interrupts her. "Oh, I packed up my
+belongings and went to Rome."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"There I had an attack of Roman fever," he says, slowly, and his face
+grows dark. He looks around for Erika, but she is no longer at his
+side: she has lingered behind, and has fallen into conversation with a
+tall, dignified monk. She now calls out to the rest, "Has no one any
+desire to see the tree beneath which Lord Byron used to write poems?"
+
+They all follow her as the monk leads the way to the very shore of the
+island and there with pride points to a table beneath a tree, where he
+assures them Lord Byron used often to sit and write.
+
+His hospitality culminates at last in regaling his guests with fragrant
+black coffee, after which he leaves them.
+
+They sit and sip their coffee under the famous tree. Lozoncyi expresses
+a modest doubt as to the identity of the table. Count Treurenberg
+relates an anecdote, at which Erika frowns, and gazes up into the blue
+sky showing here and there among the branches of the old tree.
+
+Suddenly an affected voice is heard to say, "_Enfin le voila_."
+
+They look up, and see two ladies: one is no other than Frau von
+Geroldstein, very affected, and looking about, as usual, for fine
+acquaintances; the other is very much dressed, rouged, and very pretty.
+Frau von Geroldstein is enthusiastically glad to see her Berlin
+friends, and presents her companion,--the Princess Gregoriewitsch.
+
+The old Countess, however, is not very amiably disposed towards the
+new-comers. "Do not let us keep you from your friends," she says to the
+artist: "it is late, and we must go. Adieu. I should be glad if you
+could find time to come and see us."
+
+Count Treurenberg conducts the grandmother and grand-daughter to their
+gondola. Lozoncyi remains with his two admirers.
+
+"Who was that queer Princess?" Countess Anna asks of Count Treurenberg,
+in a rather depreciative tone, just before they reach their gondola.
+
+"Oh, one of Lozoncyi's thousand adorers. She has a huge palace and
+entertains a great deal. A pretty woman, but terribly stupid. Lozoncyi
+is tied to a different apron-string every day."
+
+
+The _table-d'hote_ is long past: the Lenzdorffs are dining in a small
+island of light at one end of the large dining-hall.
+
+They are unusually late to-night. After their return from the Armenian
+monastery both ladies have dressed for the evening, before coming to
+table. At the old Countess's entreaty, Erika has consented to go into
+society this evening,--that is, to the Countess Muehlberg, who has been
+legally separated from her husband for some time and is living very
+quietly at Venice, where she receives a few friends every Wednesday.
+The old Countess is unusually gay; Erika scarcely speaks.
+
+The glass door leading from the dining-hall into the garden has been
+left open for their special benefit. The warm air brings in an odour of
+fresh earth, mossy stones, and the faintly impure breath of the
+lagoons, which haunts all the poetic beauty of Venice like an unclean
+spirit. The soft plash of the water against the walls of the old
+palaces, the creaking of the gondolas tied to their posts, a monotonous
+stroke of oars, the distant echo of a street song, are the mingled
+sounds that fall upon the ear.
+
+When the meal is ended the old Countess calls for pen and ink, and
+writes a note at the table where they have just dined. Erika walks out
+into the garden. With head bare and a light wrap about her shoulders,
+she strolls along the gravel path, past the monthly roses that have
+scarcely ceased to bloom throughout the winter, past the taller
+rose-trees in which the life of spring is stirring. From time to time
+she turns her head to catch the distant melody more clearly, but it
+comes no nearer. Above her arches the sky, no longer pale as it had
+been to-day amid the boughs of the historic tree, but dark blue, and
+twinkling with countless stars.
+
+She has walked several times up and down the garden as far as the
+breast-work that separates it from the Grand Canal. Now as she nears
+the dining-room she hears voices: her grandmother is no longer alone;
+beside the table at which she is writing stands Count Treurenberg. He
+is speaking: "'Tis a pity! he really is a very clever fellow with men,
+but the women spoil him. Just now he is the plaything of all the women
+who think themselves art-critics in Venice."
+
+Erika pauses to listen. "Indeed! Well, it does not surprise me," her
+grandmother rejoins, indifferently, and Treurenberg goes on: "He is the
+very deuce of a fellow: with all his fine feeling, he combines just
+enough cynicism and honest contempt for women to make him irresistible
+to the other sex."
+
+"You are complimentary, Count!" Erika calls into the dining-hall.
+
+He looks up. She is standing in the door-way; the wrap has fallen back
+from her shoulders, revealing the dazzling whiteness of her neck and
+arms, her left hand rests against the door-post, and she is looking
+full at the speaker.
+
+Old Treurenberg, who has just taken a seat beside the Countess, springs
+up, gazes admiringly at the girl, bows low, and says, "Pray remember
+that any uncomplimentary remarks I may make in your presence with
+regard to the weaker sex have no reference to you. When I talk of your
+sex in general I never think of you: you are an exception."
+
+"We have both known that for a long while: have we not, Erika?" her
+grandmother says, laughing.
+
+"But what is the cause of all this splendour, Countess Erika?" asks
+Treurenberg, changing the subject. "It is the first time that I have
+had the pleasure of seeing you in full dress."
+
+"Erika is beginning to go out a little to please me," the old Countess
+explains. "I told her that, thanks to her passion for retirement, it
+would shortly be reported that she was either out of her mind or
+suffering from a disappointment in love. As this does not seem to her
+desirable, she has consented to go with me to Constance Muehlberg."
+
+"I should have gone to Constance Muehlberg at all events, only I should
+not have chosen her reception-day for my visit," Erika declares, taking
+a seat beside her grandmother, leaning her white elbows upon the table,
+and resting her chin on her clasped hands.
+
+Connoisseur in beauty that he is, the old Count cannot take his eyes
+off her. "When a woman is so thoroughly formed for society as you are,
+Countess Erika, she has no right to retire from it," he declares.
+
+She makes no reply, and her grandmother asks, "Shall we see you at
+Countess Muehlberg's, Count?"
+
+"Not to-night. I must go to-night to the Rambouillet of Venice."
+
+"Oh! to the Neerwinden?"
+
+"Yes. Why do you ladies never go there?"
+
+"To speak frankly, I had no idea that one ought to go," the Countess
+says, laughing.
+
+"Why not? Because of the Countess's reputation? Let me assure you that
+all ruins are the fashion in Venice. You are quite wrong to stay away
+from the Salon Neerwinden: it is an historical curiosity, and, to me,
+more interesting than the Doge's palace."
+
+"But even if I should go to the Neerwinden I could not take this child
+with me!"
+
+"Why not? The Salon Neerwinden is by no means such a pest-house of
+infectious moral disease as you seem to think. And then nothing could
+harm the Countess Erika: her life is a charmed one."
+
+At this moment a thick-set, gray-bearded individual enters the
+dining-hall, very affected, and very anxious to induce his eye-glass
+to fit into the hollow of his right eye. He is a Viennese banker,
+Schmidt--he spells it Schmytt--von Werdenthal. Bowing with ease to the
+ladies, he approaches Treurenberg. "Do I intrude, Hans?" he asks.
+
+"You always intrude."
+
+The banker smiles at the jest: awkward as he may be, he displays a
+certain agility in ignoring a rude remark. "You know, Hans, we must go
+first to the Gregoriewitsch; and we shall be late."
+
+"Confound the fellow!" murmurs the Count; nevertheless he rises to
+follow Schmytt, and kisses the fingertips of each lady in token of
+farewell. "Countess Erika," he says, with a final glance of admiration,
+"if I were but thirty years younger!--Ah, you think it would have been
+of no use," he adds, turning to the grandmother; "but there's no
+knowing. If I am not mistaken, the Countess Erika is zealous in the
+conversion of sinners, and I should have been so easily converted in
+view of the reward. But do me the favour to leave a card upon the
+Neerwinden: you will not repent it. One is never so well entertained as
+at her evenings; and if you would like to see Lozoncyi in all his
+glory----"
+
+"But, Hans, the Princess will be waiting," Schmytt interposes.
+
+"I am coming." And Count Treurenberg vanishes. The old Countess looks
+after him with a smile.
+
+"I cannot help it, but I have a slight weakness for that old sinner,"
+she says. "He is so typical,--a genuine Austrian cavalier,--_fin de
+siecle_, witty without depth, good-natured with no heart, aristocrat to
+his finger-tips, without one single unprejudiced conviction. How you
+impressed him to-night! I do not wonder. Lozoncyi ought to see you now:
+what a splendid portrait he would make of you! H'm! do you know I
+really should like to go to a Neerwinden evening?"
+
+"That you may have the pleasure of seeing Herr von Lozoncyi in all his
+glory?" asks Erika.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+Curiosity carried the day. The Countess Lenzdorff left her card at the
+Palazzo Luzani, and as a consequence the Baroness Neerwinden called
+upon both ladies and left a written invitation for them which informed
+them that "my dear friend Minona von Rattenfels will delight us by
+reading aloud her latest, and unpublished, work."
+
+To her grandmother's surprise, Erika seemed quite willing to go to this
+one of the Baroness Neerwinden's entertainments, and Constance Muehlberg
+accompanied them. The party was full of laughing expectation, much as
+if the pleasure in prospect had been a masquerade.
+
+Expectation on this occasion did not much exceed reality: the old
+Countess and Constance Muehlberg were extremely entertained. And
+Erika----? Well, they arrived at a tolerably early hour, ten o'clock,
+and found the three immense rooms in which the Neerwinden was wont to
+receive almost empty.
+
+The lady of the house, when they entered, was seated on a small divan,
+beneath a kind of canopy of antique stuffs in the remotest of these
+rooms. Her black eyes were still fine; her features were not ignoble,
+but were hard and unattractive.
+
+She received the Countess Lenzdorff with effusive cordiality, referred
+to several youthful reminiscences which they possessed in common, and
+was quite gracious to both the younger ladies. After several
+commonplace remarks, she dashed boldly into a discourse upon the final
+destiny of the earth and the adjacent stars.
+
+She had just informed her guests that she was privately engaged upon
+the improvement of the electric light, and should soon have completed a
+system of universal religion, when a sudden influx of guests caused her
+to stop in the middle of a sentence, leaving her hearers in doubt as to
+whether the catechism of the new faith was to be printed in Volapuek or
+in French, in which latter language most of the Baroness's intellectual
+efforts were given to the world.
+
+Erika was obliged to leave her place beside the hostess and to mingle
+in the crowd that now rapidly filled the three reception-rooms.
+
+She found very few acquaintances, and made the rather annoying
+discovery that, with the exception of a couple of flat-chested English
+girls, she was the only young girl present. If Count Treurenberg had
+not made his appearance to play cicerone, she must have utterly failed
+to understand what was going on around her.
+
+The masculine element was the more strongly represented, but the
+feminine contingent was undoubtedly the more aristocratic. It consisted
+chiefly of very beautiful and distinguished women of rank who almost
+without exception had by some fatality rendered their reception at
+court impossible. Most of them were divorced, although upon what
+grounds was not clear.
+
+The strictly orthodox Venetian and Austrian families avoided these
+entertainments, not so much upon moral grounds as because it was
+embarrassing to meet _declassees_ of their own rank, and because,
+besides, they believed this salon to be a hotbed of the rankest
+radicalism, both in morals and in politics.
+
+In this they were not altogether wrong. There was nothing here of the
+Kapilavastu system of which the old Countess was wont to complain in
+Berlin; no, every imaginable topic was discussed, and after the most
+heterogeneous fashion. Consequently the salon was in its way an amusing
+one, its tiresome side being the determination on the part of the
+hostess not to allow her guests to amuse themselves, but always to
+offer them a _plat de resistance_ in some shape or other.
+
+On this evening this _plat_ was Fraeulein Minona von Rattenfels; and in
+the midst of Count Treurenberg's most amusing witticisms the guests
+were all bidden to assemble for the reading in the largest of the three
+rooms.
+
+Here she sat, with her manuscript already open, and the conventional
+glass of water on a spindle-legged table beside her.
+
+She was about fifty years old, large-boned, stout, and very florid,
+dressed in a red gown shot with black, which gave her the appearance of
+a half-boiled lobster, and with strings of false coin around her neck
+and in her hair.
+
+Before the performance began, the electric lights were turned off, and
+the only illumination proceeded from two wax candles with pink shades
+on the table beside Minona. The literary essay was preceded by a
+musical prologue rendered by the pianist G----, who happened to be in
+Venice at the time.
+
+He played a paraphrase of Siegmund's and Sieglinda's love-duet,
+gradually gliding into the motive of Isolde's death, all of which
+naturally increased the receptive capacity of the audience for the
+coming treat. The last tone died away. Minona von Rattenfels cleared
+her throat.
+
+"Tombs!" She hurled the word, as it were, in a very deep voice into the
+midst of her audience. This was the pleasing title of her latest
+collection of love-songs.
+
+It consisted of two parts, 'Love-Life' and 'Love-Death.' In the first
+part there was a great deal said about Dawn and Dew-drops, and in the
+second part quite as much about Worms and Withered Flowers, while in
+both there was such an amount of ardent passion that one could not but
+be grateful to the Baroness for her Bayreuth fashion of darkening the
+auditorium, thus veiling the blushes of certain sensitive ladies, as
+well as the sneering looks of others.
+
+Of course Minona's delivery was highly dramatic. She screamed until her
+voice failed her, she rolled her eyes until she fairly squinted, and
+Count Treurenberg offered to wager an entire set of her works that one
+of her eyes was glass.
+
+In most of her verses the lover was cold, hard, or faithless, but now
+and then she revelled in an 'oasis in the desert of life.' Then she
+became unutterably grotesque, the only distinguishable word in a
+languishing murmur being "L--o--ve!"
+
+Suddenly in the midst of this extraordinary performance was heard the
+clicking of a couple of steel knitting needles, and shortly afterwards
+the reading came to an end.
+
+
+Again the room was flooded with light. In the silence that reigned the
+clicking needles made the only sound. Erika looked to see whence the
+noise proceeded, and perceived an elderly lady with gray hair brushed
+smoothly over her temples, and a shrewd--almost masculine--face,
+sitting very erect, and dressed in a charming old-fashioned gown. Her
+brows were lifted, and her face showed unmistakably her decided
+disapproval of the performance. In the midst of the heated atmosphere
+she produced the impression of a stainless block of ice.
+
+"Who is that?" Erika asked the Countess Muehlberg, who sat beside her.
+
+"Fraeulein Agatha von Horn. Shall I present you?"
+
+Erika assented, and the Countess led her to the lady in question, who,
+still knitting, was seated on a sofa with three young, very shy
+artists, and overshadowed by a tall fan-palm.
+
+The Countess presented Erika. The artists rose, and the two ladies took
+their seats on the sofa beside Fraeulein von Horn.
+
+The Fraeulein sighed, and conversation began.
+
+"If I am not mistaken, you are a dear friend of the gifted lady whom we
+have to thank this evening for so much pleasure," said Constance
+Muehlberg.
+
+"We travel together, because it is cheaper," Fraeulein von Horn replied,
+calmly, "but; as with certain married couples, we have nothing in
+common save our means of living."
+
+"Indeed?" said Constance. "I am glad to hear it; for in that case we
+can express our sentiments freely with regard to the poetess."
+
+"Quite freely."
+
+Just then Count Treurenberg joined the group, and informed the ladies
+that he had been congratulating Minona upon her magnificent success.
+
+"What did you say to her?" the truth-loving Agatha asked, almost
+angrily.
+
+"'In you I hail our modern Sappho.' That is what I told her."
+
+"And she replied----?" asked Constance Muehlberg.
+
+The Count fanned himself with his opera-hat with a languishing air, and
+lisped, "'_Ah, oui, Sappho; c'est bien Sappho, toujours la meme
+histoire_, after more than two thousand years.'"
+
+"Poor Minona! and to think that she cudgels it all out of her
+imagination!" Fraeulein Agatha remarked, ironically. "She has no more
+personal experience than--well, than I."
+
+"'Sh!--not so loud," Constance whispered, laughing. "She never would
+forgive you for betraying her thus."
+
+"I have known her from a child," Fraeulein von Horn continued,
+composedly. "She once exchanged love-letters with her brother's tutor,
+and since then she has always played the game with a dummy."
+
+The dry way in which she imparted this piece of information was
+irresistibly comical, but in the midst of the laughter which it
+provoked a loud voice was heard declaiming at the other end of
+the room, where, in the midst of a circle of listeners, stood a
+black-bearded individual with a Mephistophelian cast of countenance,
+holding forth upon some subject.
+
+"Who is that?" asked Countess Muehlberg.
+
+"I do not know the fellow," said the Count. "Not in my line."
+
+"A writer from Vienna," Fraeulein von Horn explained. "He was invited
+here, that he might write an article upon Minona."
+
+"What is he talking about?" asked the Count.
+
+Countess Muehlberg, who had been stretching her delicate neck to listen,
+replied, "About love."
+
+"Indeed!" exclaimed Count Treurenberg, springing up from his seat: "I
+must hear what the fellow has to say." And, followed shortly afterwards
+by Constance Muehlberg, he joined the circle about the black-bearded
+seer.
+
+Erika remained sitting with Fraeulein Agatha on the sofa beneath the
+palm. They could hear the seer's drawling voice as he announced very
+distinctly, "Love is the instinctive desire of an individual for union
+with a certain individual of the opposite sex."
+
+Fraeulein von Horn meditatively smoothed her gray hair with one of her
+long knitting-needles, and said, carelessly, "I know that definition:
+it is Max Norden's." Whereupon she left her seat beside Erika to devote
+herself to the three artists, her _proteges_.
+
+Erika was left entirely alone under the palm, in a state of angry
+discontent. Never before, wherever she had been, had she been so
+little regarded. She was of no more importance here than Fraeulein
+Agatha,--hardly of as much. For the first time it occurred to her that
+under certain circumstances it was quite inconvenient to be unmarried.
+
+At the same time she was conscious of a great disappointment: she
+had not come hither to study the Baroness Neerwinden's eccentricities,
+or to listen to Minona von Rattenfels's love-plaints: she had
+come---- What, in fact, had she come for?
+
+From the other end of the room came the seer's voice: "The only
+strictly moral union is founded upon elective affinity."
+
+"Very true!" exclaimed Frau von Neerwinden.
+
+A short pause followed. The servants handed about refreshments.
+Rosenberg, the black-bearded seer, stood with his left elbow propped
+upon the back of his friend Minona's chair; in his right he held his
+opera-hat.
+
+A French _litterateur_, who had understood enough of the whole
+performance to be jealous of his German colleague, began to proclaim
+his view of love: "_L'amour est une illusion, qui--que_----" There he
+stuck fast.
+
+Then somebody whom Erika did not know exclaimed, "Where is Lozoncyi? He
+knows more of the subject than we do; he ought to be able to help us."
+
+"I think his knowledge is practical rather than theoretical," said
+Count Treurenberg.
+
+Not long afterwards a few guests took leave, as it was growing late.
+The circle was smaller, and Erika discovered Lozoncyi seated on a
+lounge between two ladies, Frau von Geroldstein and the Princess
+Gregoriewitsch. The Princess was a beauty in her way, tall, stout, very
+_decolletee_, and with long, languishing eyes. Lozoncyi was leaning
+towards her, and whispering in her ear.
+
+Erika rose with a sensation of disgust and walked out upon a balcony,
+where she had scarcely cast a glance upon the veiled magnificence of
+the opposite palaces when Lozoncyi stood beside her. "Good-evening,
+Countess. I had no idea that you were here; I discovered you only this
+moment."
+
+In her irritated mood she did not offer him her hand. "You are
+astonished that my grandmother should have brought me here," she said,
+with a shrug.
+
+But, to her surprise, she perceived that nothing of the kind had
+occurred to him: his sense of what was going on about him was evidently
+blunted.
+
+"Why?" he asked. "Because--because of the antecedents of the hostess?
+It is long since people have troubled themselves about those, and it is
+the brightest salon in Venice."
+
+"There has certainly been nothing lacking in the way of animation
+to-night," Erika observed, coldly.
+
+She was leaning with both hands on the balustrade of the balcony, and
+she spoke to him over her shoulder. He cared little for what she said,
+but her beauty intoxicated him. Always strongly influenced by his
+surroundings, the least noble part of his nature had the upper hand
+with him to-night.
+
+"Rosenberg has taken great pains to entertain his audience," he
+remarked, carelessly.
+
+"And his efforts have assuredly been crowned with success," Erika
+replied, contemptuously. Then, with a shade more of scorn in her voice,
+she asked, "Is there always as much--as much talk of love here?"
+
+"It is frequently discussed," he replied. "And why not? It is the most
+important thing in the world." Then, with his admiring artist-stare, he
+added, in a lower tone, "As you will discover for yourself."
+
+She frowned, turned away, and re-entered the room.
+
+He stayed outside, suddenly conscious of his want of tact, but inclined
+to lay the fault of it at her door. "'Tis a pity she is so whimsical a
+creature," he muttered between his teeth; "and so gloriously beautiful;
+a great pity!" Nevertheless he was vexed with himself, and was firmly
+resolved, if chance ever gave him another interview with her, to make
+better use of his opportunity.
+
+Shortly afterwards Countess Lenzdorff, with Erika and Constance
+Muehlberg, took her leave. She was in a very good humour, and exchanged
+all sorts of witticisms with Constance with regard to their evening.
+
+"And how did you enjoy yourself?" she asked Erika, when, after leaving
+Constance at home, the two were alone in the gondola on their way to
+the 'Britannia.'
+
+"I?" asked Erika, with a contemptuous depression of the corners of her
+mouth. "How could I enjoy myself in an assemblage where there was
+nothing talked of but love?"
+
+Her grandmother laughed heartily: "Yes, it was rather a silly way to
+pass the time, I confess. I cannot conceive why they waste so many
+words upon what is perfectly plain to any one with eyes. They grope
+about, and no one explains in the least the nature of love." She threw
+back her head, and, without for an instant losing the slightly mocking
+smile which was so characteristic of her beautiful old face, she said,
+"Love is an irritation of the fancy, produced by certain natural
+conditions, which expresses itself, so long as it lasts, in the
+exclusive glorification of one single individual, and robs the human
+being who is its victim of all power of discernment. All things
+considered, those people are very lucky who, when the torch of passion
+is extinguished, can find anything save humiliation in the memory of
+their love."
+
+The old Countess was privately very proud of her definition, and looked
+round at Erika with an air of self-satisfaction at having clothed what
+was so self-evident, so cheerful a view, in such uncommonly appropriate
+words. But Erika's face had assumed a dark, pained expression. Her
+grandmother's words had aroused in her the old anguish,--anguish for
+her mother. It was not to be denied that in some cases her
+grandmother's view was the true one. Was it true always? No! Something
+in the girl's nature rebelled against such a thought. No! a thousand
+times no!
+
+"But the love of which you speak, grandmother, is only sham love," she
+said, in a husky, trembling voice. "There is surely another kind,--a
+genuine, sacred, ennobling love!"
+
+"There may be," said her grandmother. "The pity is that one never knows
+the true from the false until it is past."
+
+Erika said no more.
+
+The air was mild; the scent of roses was wafted across the sluggish
+water of the lagoon; there was a faint sound of distant music. But an
+icy chill crept over Erika, and in her heart there was a strange,
+aching, yearning pain.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+Three weeks had passed since Minona von Rattenfels had so effectively
+given vent to her languishing love-plaints.
+
+A striking change was evident in Erika. She was much more cheerful, or,
+at least, more accessible; she no longer withdrew from the world in
+morbid misanthropy, but went into society whenever her grandmother
+requested her to do so. Wherever she went she was feted and admired.
+Since her first season in Berlin she had never received so much homage.
+It seemed to give her pleasure, and, what was still more remarkable,
+she seemed to exert herself somewhat--a very little--to obtain it.
+
+Wherever she went she met Lozoncyi,--Lozoncyi, who scarcely took his
+eyes off her, but who made no attempt to approach her in any way that
+could attract notice. His bearing towards her was not only exemplary,
+but touching. Always at hand to render her any little service,--to
+procure her an ice, to relieve her of an empty teacup, to find her
+missing fan or gloves,--he immediately retired to give place to her
+other admirers. Among these Prince Helmy Nimbsch was foremost: the
+entire international society of Venice were daily expecting the
+announcement of a betrothal, and one afternoon, at a lawn-tennis party
+at Lady Stairs's, he had given Erika unmistakable proofs of his
+intentions. She was a little startled, and, while she was endeavouring
+to lead the conversation with him away from the perilously sentimental
+tone it had assumed, her eyes accidentally encountered Lozoncyi's.
+
+Shortly afterwards she managed to get rid of the Prince; and as, after
+a last game of lawn-tennis, she was retiring from the field, her cheeks
+flushed, her eyes sparkling from the exercise, Lozoncyi came up to her
+to relieve her of her racket. "You see how right the poor painter was,
+not to venture to approach his little fairy," he murmured. The words,
+his tone, aroused her sympathy and compassion, but before she could
+reply he had vanished. He did not come near her again that afternoon,
+but she could not help perceiving that his looks sought herself and
+Prince Nimbsch alternately, at first inquiringly, and afterwards with
+an expression of relief.
+
+
+Dinner has been over for some time. The lamps are gleaming red along
+the Grand Canal, and their broken reflections quiver in long streaks
+upon the waters of the lagoon. The little drawing-room is but dimly
+lighted, and Erika is seated at the piano, playing bits of 'Parsifal,'
+her fingers gliding into the motive of sinful, worldly pleasure.
+
+The old Countess enters, and, after wandering aimlessly about the room
+for a moment, goes, after her fashion, directly to the point. She
+pauses beside Erika, and observes, "Prince Nimbsch is courting you.
+People are talking about it."
+
+"Nonsense!" Erika rejoins, running her fingers over the keys. "He is
+only amusing himself."
+
+"H'm! he seems to me to be very much in earnest," murmurs the old lady;
+"and there is no denying that it would be a brilliant match."
+
+Erika drops her hands in her lap. "Grandmother!" she exclaims, half
+laughing, "what are you thinking of? He is a mere boy!"
+
+"A boy? He is full four years older than you; and I need not remind you
+that you are no child. At all events, you must consider well----"
+
+"Before I enter into another engagement," Erika interrupts her. "I
+promise you I will; nay, more than that, I promise you solemnly that I
+will not engage myself to Prince Nimbsch."
+
+"In fact, I must confess that I do not think him your equal." There is
+a certain relief in the old lady's tone, although she adds, with some
+hesitation, "But the position is tempting, very tempting."
+
+"Ah, grandmother!" Erika exclaims, with reproach in her tone, as,
+rising, she puts her arm around the old Countess's shoulder and kisses
+her gray head, "do you know me so little?"
+
+Her grandmother returns her caress with emotion, murmuring the while,
+as if talking to herself, "As if you knew yourself, my poor, dear
+child!"
+
+"I know myself so far," Erika declares, "as to be sure that after my
+first unfortunate mistake I am cured of all worldly ambition."
+
+"Oh, that was quite another thing!" her grandmother sighs. "Your
+marriage with Lord Langley would have been positively unnatural; but
+Prince Helmy Nimbsch is a fine, gallant young fellow."
+
+"It all amounts to the same thing: old or young, he is a man whom I do
+not love, and never could love."
+
+The old lady shakes her head impatiently: "Are you beginning upon that?
+Love? I thought you had more sense. Love!--love! Heaven preserve you
+from that disease! The only sound foundations for a happy marriage are
+unbounded esteem and warm sympathy: anything more is an evil."
+
+Erika is silent, and the old Countess continues: "No respectable woman
+should indulge in passion. Passion is an intoxication, and nausea is
+sure to follow upon intoxication. Therefore a respectable woman, who
+can at the most indulge but once in such intoxication, condemns
+herself, after a short period of bliss, to nausea for the rest of her
+life. Only the unprincipled woman who cures her nausea by a fresh
+passion can permit herself such indulgence. It is all nonsense for one
+of us."
+
+During this long speech the Countess has seated herself in an arm-chair
+with a volume of Taine's 'Les Origines de la France' open in her lap,
+and to lend emphasis to her words she taps the book from time to time
+with a large Japanese paper-knife.
+
+Erika stands near her, leaning upon the piano, tall and graceful in her
+white gown. "And what am I to infer from your preachment? That I must
+marry Helmy Nimbsch, even without love?"
+
+"Helmy Nimbsch? Who is talking of him?" The old lady almost starts from
+her chair.
+
+"I thought you were, grandmother," Erika says, with a mischievous
+smile. "If I am not mistaken, he was the subject of our conversation."
+
+"Nonsense! Helmy Nimbsch! _Ce n'est pas serieux!_"
+
+"Of whom, then, are you talking?" Erika asks, looking her grandmother
+full in the face.
+
+"Oh, of no one: I was talking in general," her grandmother replies,
+with some irritation, adding, still more petulantly, after a pause, "If
+you have unbounded esteem and warm sympathy for young Nimbsch, why,
+marry him, by all means."
+
+Instead of replying, Erika begins to arrange the sheets of music on the
+piano.
+
+A long pause ensues. From below come the murmur of voices, the ringing
+of bells, and the moving of trunks,--in short, all the bustle
+consequent upon the arrival of fresh guests at a large hotel. Countess
+Lenzdorff takes the opportunity to complain of so much noise, and to
+declare, "In fact, I am quite tired of this wandering about from place
+to place."
+
+"What, grandmother? Why, you were so delighted here! Only yesterday you
+told me how 'refreshing' you considered your Venetian life."
+
+"Yes, yes; but it has lasted too long for me. While you were playing
+lawn-tennis this afternoon with Constance Muehlberg, I went to see
+Hedwig Norbin. She arrived yesterday, and is at the 'Europe;' but she
+is only stopping for a day or so on her way home. 'Tis a pity."
+
+"And she gave you such an alluring description of Berlin that you are
+anxious to fold your tent and fly back to Bellevue Street now, in the
+midst of this wondrous Southern spring?" Erika asks, coldly.
+
+"Oh, spring is lovely everywhere!--lovelier in Berlin than in Venice:
+there is nothing more beautiful than the Thiergarten in May. And then I
+find there all my old habits, my old friends."
+
+"I have no friends in Berlin," says Erika, with a strange emphasis,
+"and that is why I beg you to stay away from Berlin for a while longer.
+Next autumn you may do with me what you please. Have a little patience
+with me."
+
+"Patience! patience!" The old Countess taps her book more energetically
+than ever.
+
+After a while Erika begins: "Did Frau von Norbin tell you anything
+about Dorothea von Sydow? How is her position regarded by society?"
+
+"How?" her grandmother exclaims. "How should society regard the
+critical position of a woman who has never shown the slightest
+consideration for any one, never conferred a benefit upon any one,
+scarcely even treated any one with courtesy, but lived only for her own
+frivolous gratification? Society acknowledges a woman in her position
+only when it would lose something by dropping her. Who would lose
+anything if Dorothea were stricken from its list? A couple of young
+men, perhaps; and they would be at liberty to make love to her outside
+of the ranks of society. The world has turned its back upon her: Hedwig
+tells me that she is positively shunned."
+
+"And how does she accommodate herself to her destiny?" asks Erika.
+
+"As poorly as possible. One would suppose that she would have left
+Berlin. For my part, I never imagined that she cared so much for her
+social position; but she appears to be clutching it in a kind of
+panic."
+
+"How unpleasant for--for the dead man's brother!" says Erika. Several
+months have passed since she has spoken Goswyn's name: it would seem as
+if her lips refused to utter it.
+
+"For Goswyn!" her grandmother exclaims, in a tone of sincere distress.
+"Terrible! They say he is altered almost beyond recognition. I did not
+know he was so devoted to Otto. But, to be sure, the circumstances
+attendant upon his death were frightful. Goswyn always found fault with
+me, but, after all, since his mother's death I have stood nearest to
+him in this world. I know he would be glad to pour out his heart to
+me."
+
+Erika draws a long breath; her large clear eyes flash. "Ah!"
+she exclaims, "this, then, is your reason for wishing to go to
+Berlin,--that you may console Herr Goswyn von Sydow? I always knew that
+he was dear to you: I learn now for the first time that he is dearer to
+you than I am!"
+
+"Oh, Erika!--dearer than you!" The old lady rises and strokes the
+girl's arm tenderly. "I am often sorry that I cannot love you both
+together!" she adds, half timidly, in an undertone.
+
+But this time Erika repulses almost angrily the caress usually so dear
+to her. "I cannot understand you!" she says: "it is a positive mania of
+yours. You are always reproaching me for not having married Goswyn, or
+hinting that I ought to marry him,--a man who has not wasted a thought
+upon me for years!"
+
+"Oh, Erika! how can you talk so? Remember Bayreuth."
+
+"What if I do remember Bayreuth? Yes, he still thought of me then; that
+is, he remembered the young girl with whom he had ridden in the
+Thiergarten, and he brought her memory with him to Bayreuth; but he
+discovered it did not fit with what he found there: that was the end of
+it all!" Erika silently paces the room to and fro once or twice, then,
+pausing before her grandmother, she continues: "It stings me whenever
+you speak of Goswyn and lose yourself in the contemplation of his
+measureless magnanimity. Magnanimity! Yes, but it is a cold, sterile,
+arrogant magnanimity! He is a thoroughly just man, but he is a man who
+never forgives a weakness, because none ever beset him,--none, at
+least, of which he is conscious. He---- Oh, yes----,"--the girl's voice
+grows hoarse, she catches her breath and goes on with increasing
+volubility,--"I have no doubt that he would spring into the water at
+any moment to save the life, at the risk of his own, of any worthless
+wretch, but as soon as he brought him to land he would turn his back
+upon him and march away with his head proudly erect, without even
+casting a look upon the man he had rescued, let alone giving him a kind
+word. Witness his behaviour towards me. I refer to it expressly that we
+may correct once for all your painful and humiliating misapprehension.
+He did, as you know, do me a service in Bayreuth which I could not have
+expected of any one else. Granted. But he has never forgiven me for
+being betrothed for six or eight weeks to Lord Langley. Good heavens!
+it was a mistake of mine, a stupidity, the result of vanity and
+ambition on my part. But it was nothing more; and yet it was enough to
+cause--to cause Herr von Sydow to banish me from grace forever. This is
+your wonderful Goswyn. It is a matter of perfect indifference to me: I
+take not the slightest interest in him, thank God! If I had been
+interested in him I might have fretted myself nearly to death; but, as
+it is, I am merely vexed that I should have overrated him,--that is
+all."
+
+Her grandmother listened in amazement. She had never before seen Erika
+so excited, had never imagined that her voice was capable of such
+intonations. At times it was the voice of a stubborn, angry child, and
+anon that of a proud, passionate woman.
+
+"Why, Erika!" she exclaimed when the girl paused, "this is all
+nonsense,--cleverly-invented nonsense, the worst of all kinds. There is
+not one word of truth in it. I know that he adores you just as he
+always did."
+
+"You have a lively imagination," Erika said, sarcastically. "It is
+remarkable that Goswyn has had nothing to say about his adoration all
+this time."
+
+"My dear child," replied her grandmother, "that is quite another thing.
+In certain respects Goswyn is petty: I have always told you so. His
+poverty and your wealth have always been of too much consequence in his
+eyes. It is a folly which may have cost him the happiness of his life.
+Say what you will, I am convinced that his poverty alone has prevented
+him from renewing his suit."
+
+"Indeed!" said Erika, tossing her head disdainfully. "Well, his poverty
+is at an end!"
+
+"Oh, Erika, with your wonderful sensibility you ought to understand
+that a man like Goswyn cannot bring himself all in a moment to profit
+by his brother's death,--a death, too, so terrible in its attendant
+circumstances."
+
+Erika was silent for a minute; her lips quivered; then she said, in a
+low tone, "True, grandmother; it would be odious of him to renew his
+suit instantly; but, you see, if such a misfortune as has befallen him
+had happened to me, I should long to carry my pain to those who were
+nearest my heart. You are ready to return to Berlin for his sake. If
+all that you fancy were true, he would have come to Venice: he could
+easily have obtained a leave. And now we have done with this subject
+once for all. Fortunately, I do not care for him in the least,--not in
+the least. I tell you all this only that you may not request me to ride
+posthaste with you to Berlin, that the world there, already so
+predisposed in my favour, may say, 'She is running after Goswyn von
+Sydow, now that he has inherited the family estates.'"
+
+The grandmother laid her hands on Erika's shoulders, then drew the
+proud young head towards her, and kissed her on the forehead. At
+that moment Luedecke, the indispensable, entered and presented a
+visiting-card.
+
+"Paul von Lozoncyi," Countess Lenzdorff read from the card, and then
+dropped it upon the salver again. "Are you in the mood to receive
+strangers?"
+
+"Yes. Why not?" asked Erika.
+
+
+Shortly afterwards Lozoncyi entered Erika's pretty little boudoir, now
+illuminated by a couple of shaded lamps.
+
+Erika received him most amiably. The old Countess, on the other hand,
+was at first rather formal in her manner towards him. She was not
+accustomed to have young men delay so long in taking advantage of an
+invitation extended by herself to visit her. But before Lozoncyi had
+been five minutes in the room her displeasure melted like snow in
+sunshine.
+
+Without the slightest attempt to excuse his dilatoriness, the artist
+was at pains to impress his hostesses with his delight in having at
+last found the way to them. "How charming!" he said, looking around the
+room and rubbing his slender hands, after his characteristic fashion.
+"One never would dream that this was a hotel."
+
+"This is my grand-daughter's sanctum," said the old Countess. "My own
+reception-room is several shades barer."
+
+"Indeed? Ah, I know it does not become me, the first time I am
+permitted to enjoy this privilege, to stare about at your treasures
+like the private agent of some dealer in antiquities, but we artists
+delight in the pride of the eye. It is remarkable how well you have
+suited the frame to the picture. Look, your Excellency."
+
+He drew the old lady's attention to the picture formed at that moment
+by her grand-daughter, who was sitting in a negligent attitude in a
+high-backed antique chair, the gilt leather covering of which made a
+charming background for her auburn hair.
+
+"It is enchanting, the white figure against the golden gleam of the
+leather, and with that vase of jonquils beside it. If one could only
+perpetuate it!" He sighed.
+
+"You will embarrass the child," the grandmother admonished him,
+although in her heart she was delighted. "Instead of turning the
+Countess Erika's head, tell us why you have been so long finding your
+way hither."
+
+He raised his eyes, looked her full in the face, and then dropped them
+again, as he said, in a low tone, "Rather ask me why I have come at
+all."
+
+"No, I ask you expressly why you did not come before," the old lady
+persisted, laughing.
+
+"Why?" He hesitated a moment, and then replied, calmly, "Because I have
+no wish to be the last among the Countess Erika's adorers to drag her
+triumphal car. Now you know. Such plain questions provoke plain
+answers." He looked at the old lady as he spoke, to see if he had gone
+too far. No, he was one of those favoured individuals to whom thrice as
+much is forgiven as to other men. Something in the intonation of his
+gentle, cordial voice, his frank yet melancholy glance, and especially
+his smile, his charming insinuating smile, instantly prepossessed
+people in his favour. It was the same smile with which as a lad of
+seventeen he had beguiled little Erika's tender heart, the merry,
+careless smile which he must have inherited from an amiable,
+light-hearted mother.
+
+The old lady only laughed at his confession, and then asked, mockingly,
+"And now you are content to be the very last, etc., etc.?"
+
+He shook his head: "Now it has occurred to me that perhaps I can offer
+the Countess Erika a small pleasure which none other among her adorers
+can give her, and I come to ask if she will give me leave to do so."
+
+Erika was silent. Countess Lenzdorff said, "Herr von Lozoncyi, you
+speak in riddles."
+
+Lozoncyi turned from one to the other of the ladies with a look
+calculated to go directly to their hearts, and then, addressing the
+younger one, said, "You perhaps remember that I am in your debt,
+Countess Erika?"
+
+"Yes; I once lent you five guilders."
+
+"Five guilders," he repeated. "It seems a trifle; but then it was much
+for me. Without those five guilders I should probably never have been
+able to reach my aunt Illona in Munich, and I might have starved in a
+ditch. You see that I owe you much; and in consideration of this fact I
+have come to ask if you will allow me to paint your portrait."
+
+Erika gazed at him blankly.
+
+"For five guilders?" exclaimed the old Countess, with comical emphasis.
+Every one knew how difficult it was to persuade Lozoncyi to paint a
+portrait, and what a fabulous price he asked when induced to do so.
+
+"I entreat you not to refuse me, Countess Erika," he begged, with
+clasped hands.
+
+"I advise you to accept the offer," said her grandmother: "it will
+hardly be made a second time."
+
+"You shall not be subjected to the slightest inconvenience," he went on
+to Erika, "except that of being bored for a few hours. I know that you
+do not, as a rule, like my pictures, and therefore I promise you that I
+will burn this one if it does not please you, even though I should
+consider it a masterpiece. But should I succeed in pleasing you, the
+picture may serve to remind you sometimes of a poor fellow who----"
+
+The sentence was cut short by the entrance of several visitors, and
+much talk and laughter ensued.
+
+Lozoncyi stayed until all the rest had gone.
+
+"When shall I have the first sitting?" he asked.
+
+"Whenever you please," Erika made reply.
+
+"To-morrow?"
+
+"To-morrow? No; to-morrow will not do; but the day after to-morrow, in
+the forenoon, if you like."
+
+His eyes sparkled. "About eleven?"
+
+She assented.
+
+"There goes another man whose head you have turned, Erika," remarked
+the old Countess, as the door closed behind the artist. She laughed as
+she said it. Good heavens! what did it matter?
+
+
+At the appointed time Luedecke carried down to the gondola the
+portmanteau containing the gown in which Lozoncyi had seen Erika at
+Frau von Neerwinden's, and in which he had wished to immortalize her.
+The two ladies were not accompanied even by a maid, Erika declaring
+that she needed no help in arranging her toilette for the portrait.
+
+The sky was cloudless, the air warm but not oppressive. The gondoliers
+rowed merrily and quickly.
+
+Lozoncyi's studio was back of the Rialto, on one of the narrower
+water-ways to the left of the Grand Canal. In about a quarter of an
+hour the gondola stopped before a light-green door with an iron lion's
+head in the centre of it. One of the gondoliers knocked with the ring
+depending from the lion's mouth.
+
+Lozoncyi himself opened the door. He wore a faded linen blouse, and
+appeared greatly elated. "To the very last moment I was afraid of an
+excuse, and here you are, only a quarter of an hour late!" he cried, in
+a tone of cordial welcome; then, taking the portmanteau from the
+attendant gondolier, he called loudly, "Lucrezia! Lucrezia!" "You must
+excuse me, ladies," he said: "my house does not boast electric bells."
+
+From a passage at the head of the stone staircase there appeared an old
+Venetian woman, with large earrings in her ears, and thick waving gray
+hair brushed back from her temples and coiled in a knot at the back of
+her head, the antique style of which suited admirably her regular
+classic features. She smiled a welcome to the ladies, thereby
+displaying a double row of dazzling white teeth, while Lozoncyi in
+fluent Italian ordered her to take the portmanteau to the dressing-room
+and unpack it.
+
+Along the narrow passage leading directly through the house from the
+water, they walked into the garden, a tangle of luxuriant growth. The
+bushes were already clothed in tender green, and here and there through
+the young leaves could be seen a spray of white hawthorn.
+
+"Oh, how charming!" exclaimed Erika.
+
+"Is it not?" said the painter. "I came here for the sake of the garden.
+A spot of earth is so precious in this watery Venice."
+
+"Do not forget your Lucrezia: her beauty exceeds that of your garden,"
+the old Countess remarked.
+
+"My old factotum? Yes, she has a fine face, magnificent features. I
+cannot endure anything ugly about me. But did you notice how short and
+stout she is?" He asked the question with so genuine an air of
+annoyance that the old Countess could not help laughing.
+
+"What of that? Is it a crime in your eyes?"
+
+"No," he said, thoughtfully, "but it makes her useless for artistic
+purposes. I tried to pose her the other day,--in vain. She might do for
+Juliet's nurse, or for a modern fortune-teller, but that is not my
+line. I find plenty of handsome faces among these Venetians, and fine
+shoulders, too, but nothing more. Their bodies are too long, their
+legs too short; there are no sweeping lines, no grace of movement. And
+when one finds a model whose limbs are long enough, she is like a
+stork. I have a deal of trouble in this respect. When I was painting
+'Spring,'--the picture that Countess Erika does not like,--I was in
+despair because I could find no model for my female figure. Then one
+day on the Rialto I found a person, no longer young, rouged, but
+magnificently formed,--as tall as Countess Erika, only not----"
+
+He broke off and grew very red. A moment afterwards, however, he had
+forgotten his embarrassment in a new inspiration. At the door of the
+studio Erika lifted her arm to pluck a spray of wistaria.
+
+"Stay just as you are, for one instant, Countess!" he cried, and,
+rushing into his studio, he returned instantly with a sketch-book and a
+basket-chair. The latter he placed in the shade for the old Countess,
+and then began to sketch rapidly.
+
+"Only look at that curve!" he exclaimed to the grandmother. "It is
+music! And the line of the hips!"
+
+His manner of unceasingly dwelling upon the beauty or ugliness of the
+human body, the exact analysis which he was perpetually making of its
+structure, in connection with his profession, was at times offensive.
+But neither of the ladies took exception to it, Erika partly from
+inexperience and partly from flattered vanity, the old Countess because
+her sensitiveness in this respect had become dulled of late, and also
+because Lozoncyi expressed himself in so naive a fashion that he seemed
+at the worst to be merely guilty of a breach of good taste. One had to
+know him very intimately to discover what a profound impression upon
+his inmost nature this perpetual study of the human figure had
+produced.
+
+"How thoroughly you understand how to dress yourself!" he exclaimed,
+continuing to look fixedly at the girl, who wore a gown of some white
+woollen stuff, with a large straw hat trimmed with heavy old Venetian
+lace.
+
+"I have half a mind to paint you thus, instead of in evening dress," he
+murmured. "But no; your portrait should be in full dress. Only, be
+generous; we will begin the portrait to-morrow, give me an hour for
+myself to-day: I want to make a water-colour sketch of you. Does it
+tire you too much to stretch your arm out so far?"
+
+"A woman does not grow tired when she is conscious of being admired,"
+the old Countess declared; "but the situation is less entertaining for
+me. Have you not some book to give me?"
+
+
+Erika grew weary at last, in spite of the admiration lavished upon her
+by Lozoncyi while he sketched. The painter improvised a lunch for his
+guests beneath a mulberry-tree, upon a little rickety table. It was
+excellently prepared and delicately served, and he enjoyed seeing the
+ladies do ample justice to it. Lucrezia had just served the coffee, and
+was standing with a smiling face and arms akimbo, listening to the old
+Countess's praise of her skill in cookery, when there came a knock at
+the door.
+
+"Confound it!" muttered Lozoncyi, "not a visitor, I trust."
+
+It was no visitor, but a letter brought by Lozoncyi's gondolier, a
+handsome dark-skinned lad in a sailor dress, with a red scarf about his
+waist. Involuntarily Erika glanced at the letter. The address was in a
+feminine hand; the post-mark was Paris.
+
+Lozoncyi gave an impatient shrug at sight of the handwriting; then,
+crushing the letter in his hand, he slipped it unopened into his
+pocket. "Will you not look into my workshop?" he asked the ladies.
+
+"I was just about to ask you to show us your studio," replied the old
+Countess. "I am curious with regard to your 'Bad Dreams.'"
+
+"Yes,"--he shivered,--"'bad dreams,'--that is the word!"
+
+The atelier, which they entered from the garden by a glass door, was an
+unusually high and spacious apartment, but very plainly furnished, and
+in dusty confusion,--the workshop of a very nervous artist, who can
+endure no 'clearing up,' who cannot do without the rubbish of his art.
+Erika's gaze was instantly attracted by a remarkable and horrible
+picture.
+
+A single figure in a close, clinging garment of undecided hue, the head
+thrust forward, the arms stretched out, the whole form expressing
+yearning, torturing desire, was groping its way towards a swamp
+above which hovered a will-o'-the-wisp. Above in the dark heavens
+gleamed the pure light of the stars. It was all a marvel of tone and
+expression,--the sad harmony of colour, the star-lit sky, the dreary
+swamp, and above all the figure, its every feature, every fingertip,
+every fold even of its garment, expressing desire.
+
+"What did you mean it to represent?" asked the old Countess.
+
+"Can you not guess?"
+
+No, she could not guess; but Erika instantly exclaimed, "Blind Love!"
+
+He looked at her more curiously than he had done hitherto, and then
+asked, "How did you know?"
+
+"I see how the figure is creeping towards the will-o'-the-wisp, not
+heeding the stars sparkling above it. Look how it is sinking into the
+swamp, grandmother. It is horrible!"
+
+"Blind Love," her grandmother repeated, thoughtfully. The subject did
+not appeal to her.
+
+"Yes," said Lozoncyi, "blind love,--the misery of debasing passion."
+With a bitter smile he added, "Well, the only comfort is that one can
+sometimes attain to the will-o'-the-wisp, though he can never reach the
+stars, however he may gaze up at them."
+
+"No," Erika exclaimed, indignantly, "that is no comfort. Rather--a
+thousand times rather--reach up in vain for the stars, and expand and
+grow in longing for the unattainable, than stoop to a happiness to be
+found only in a swamp!"
+
+He made an inclination towards her, and said, half aloud, "What you say
+is very beautiful; but you do not understand."
+
+
+"Well, you certainly have turned that poor fellow's head," Countess
+Lenzdorff remarked, leaning back comfortably among the cushions of the
+gondola as she and Erika were being rowed home. "It will do him no
+harm: on the contrary, it is good for such young artists, too apt to be
+self-indulgent, to reach after the unattainable; it enlarges their
+minds." Then after a while she went on: "I wonder whom the letter that
+so provoked him was from. Perhaps from that blonde who was with him at
+Bayreuth."
+
+Erika did not reply; she looked down at a spray of wistaria he had
+plucked for her as she took leave of him. Suddenly she started: a large
+black caterpillar crept out from among the fragrant blossoms. With a
+little cry of disgust she flung the spray into the water.
+
+
+At the same time Lozoncyi was standing in his studio, looking at the
+water-colour sketch he had made of Erika.
+
+"A glorious creature," he muttered to himself; "glorious! I do not
+remember ever to have seen anything more beautiful, and, with all her
+distinction, and that pallor too, thoroughly healthy, fully developed,
+nothing maimed or deformed about her. She must be at least twenty-four.
+How is it that she is not married? Some unhappy love-affair? Hardly.
+She seems entirely fancy free, as if she had never in her life cared
+for a lover. How proudly she carries her head! Her kind is entirely
+unknown to me. Well, there are always women enough to do the dirty work
+of life; some there must be to guard the Holy Grail." He turned to the
+door of the studio that led out into the garden. A light vapour was
+rising from the earth, enveloping the blossoms in mist. He smiled
+strangely and not very pleasantly. "The spring cares not a whit for the
+Holy Grail. It goes on its way; it goes on its way."
+
+
+At first she had been repelled by him; then he had flattered her
+vanity; by and by he interested her, but from the very beginning he had
+excited her imagination as no other man had ever done. And this in
+spite of the fact that his views of life, which he scarcely concealed,
+aroused within her painful indignation. She was quite aware that there
+were dark recesses in his soul which she might not explore, and that,
+courteous and faultless as was his behaviour towards women like her
+grandmother and herself, he respected them as curious specimens of the
+sex, interesting, because not often encountered. Upon all this she
+pondered, sick at heart, as she turned her head to and fro upon her
+pillow, so many nights, seeking the refreshment of sleep.
+
+The outcome of it was a strange, pathetic, foolishly ambitious project.
+She set herself the task of converting him to nobler views of life.
+
+How many unfortunates have been ruined in their zeal for conversion!
+
+
+That Erika should unconsciously play with fire was not astonishing, but
+that her grandmother should look on in smiling indifference while her
+grand-daughter was thus occupied was amazing.
+
+There are learned fanatics who in their determination to establish some
+theory of their own lavish all their powers in an effort to elaborate
+it, shutting their eyes to any light which may steal in upon them,
+while thus engaged, from an opposite quarter.
+
+
+At first the portrait progressed with great rapidity; but now weeks had
+gone by, and it seemed as if Lozoncyi were unable to finish it.
+
+It was life-size, a three-fourths figure, and, in order not to fatigue
+Erika, she was taken sitting in an antique chair, her lap heaped with
+pale-lilac wistaria blossoms. There was no straining for effect, not a
+trace of conventionality.
+
+"Take the position that you find most comfortable," he had instructed
+his beautiful model. "You can take none that will not be lovely."
+
+The long spring days glided slowly by. When the two ladies first
+went to Lozoncyi's studio the gray stone of the garden wall was easily
+seen behind the vines and bushes; now the green alone showed
+everywhere,--the roses were in bloom, and the hawthorn had nearly
+faded.
+
+The studio, too, was changed. When they first came, it had been
+absolutely bare of all decoration; now when they came, which was three
+or four times a week, it was filled with the loveliest flowers.
+
+When they left he heaped up all of these that had not been touched by
+the heat in their gondola, which sometimes returned alone to the Hotel
+Britannia, laden with the flowers, while Lozoncyi escorted his guests
+to their home by some picturesque roundabout way.
+
+It was a great pleasure to walk with him. No one knew as he did how to
+call attention to some artistic effect, some bit of colour that might
+have easily escaped one less sensitive to picturesque detail.
+
+"Good heavens!" said the old Countess, "I have been through these
+alleys a hundred times, but you make me feel as if I never had been
+here before. You have a special gift for teaching one the beauty of
+life."
+
+"Indeed? Have I?" he murmured. "It is a gift, then, for teaching what I
+cannot learn myself."
+
+By degrees Erika came to see with his eyes, and sometimes more quickly
+than he was wont to do. She was especially pleased when she could first
+call his attention to some artistic effect that had escaped him, and he
+always exaggerated the value of these discoveries of hers, assuring her
+that he had never seen a woman with so keen a sense of the beautiful,
+and rallying her upon her artistic skill. Once when the old Countess
+asked what they were talking about, Lozoncyi replied, "The Countess
+Erika and I are teaching each other to find life beautiful." And once
+he turned to Erika and said, sadly, "It is a pity that it must all come
+to an end so soon."
+
+All the sentences abruptly broken off which just touched the brink of a
+declaration of love, but were never really such, Erika naturally
+interpreted in one way: "He loves me, but dares not venture to hope for
+a return of his affection: he is convinced that I am too far above
+him."
+
+At first she was proud of having inspired a man so rare, so gifted, so
+flattered, with so profound a sentiment; then----
+
+
+"To what can this lead?"
+
+For the hundredth time Lozoncyi asked himself this question.
+
+"To what can this lead?"
+
+He was standing in his studio before Erika's unfinished
+portrait--unfinished!
+
+"It must be finished at the next sitting. For the last ten days I have
+simply put off its completion from one sitting to the next, and all
+because I cannot tell how I can endure seeing her no more. And, yet, to
+what can it all lead?"
+
+He was very pale, and the moisture stood upon his forehead. He would
+have turned away from the portrait, but was drawn towards it as by a
+spell. "A glorious creature!" he murmured; "and not only beautiful, but
+absolutely unique. It raises a man's moral standard to be with such a
+creature. H'm! before I knew her I was not aware that I had a moral
+standard." He laughed bitterly, and continued to gaze at the picture.
+"She is beautiful!" he muttered between his teeth. "It is folly for a
+being like her to be so beautiful,--a waste,--a contradiction of
+nature!" He stamped his foot, vexed that any but the purest thoughts
+should intrude upon his admiration of Erika. "A strange creature! What
+eyes!--so clear, so deep, so penetrating!" He could think of nothing
+save of her; his nerves thrilled with passion for her.
+
+Strive as he might, his artist imagination could not force itself from
+the contemplation of her beauty.
+
+He loved her; he had known that for some time. But hitherto his love
+for her had been a tender, noble sentiment, something of which he had
+not supposed himself capable, something that exalted him in his own
+estimation. He had been refreshed, revived, by her presence, by
+intercourse with her. But that was past.
+
+"The charm of love is the dream that precedes it," he murmured. The
+dream was over: what now?
+
+Then an insane idea occurred to him: "She is unlike all others: there
+is a magnanimous, exaggerated strain in her composition, which exalts
+her above all pettiness. If she loved me, could she ever have been
+induced to marry me?"
+
+He shivered. "No! no! it is worse than folly to imagine it. In spite of
+all her enthusiasm, in spite of her immense power of compassion, she is
+too much the Countess to ever dream of such a possibility."
+
+His lips were dry; an iron hand seemed clutching his throat. He turned
+his back to the picture and went out into the garden. The skies were
+covered with gray clouds: the flowers drooped; there was a distant
+mutter of thunder.
+
+"Yet if it could be!" he murmured.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+Erika was sitting by the window in her boudoir. Although outside the
+night had not yet fallen upon the earth, it was too dark to read. Her
+window looked out upon the hotel-garden,--which at this season of the
+year was like one huge bed of roses intersected by a narrow gravel
+path. The sweet breath of the roses was wafted in at the window, but
+with it there mingled always the sickening odour of the lagoon.
+
+A couple of distant clocks were striking the hour, and the water was
+lapping the feet of the old palaces.
+
+Lost in thought the girl sat there. The mission in life for which she
+had so yearned was revealed to her in the noblest, most attractive
+form.
+
+She could not doubt that Lozoncyi loved her. Mistrustful as she usually
+was concerning the sentiments she was wont to arouse, there could be no
+uncertainty in this case.
+
+The future lay before her bright and alluring. How could she have
+despaired in this wonderful life of ours? She seemed to have always
+known that she was foreordained for some special service.
+
+Why had he never yet made a direct confession of his sentiments? Her
+pride replied to this question, "He dare not venture."
+
+It was for her to take one step to meet him. Reserved as she was, the
+mere thought of so doing sent the blood to her cheeks, but she took
+herself sternly to task, admonishing herself that cowardice on her part
+would be paltry in the extreme.
+
+It would surely be possible to allow him to read her heart, without any
+indelicate frankness on her part.
+
+Thus far her thoughts had led her, when Marianne brought her a card:
+"Herr von Lozoncyi."
+
+"Did you tell him I was at home?"
+
+"No; I said I would see. When her Excellency is away I never say
+anything decided," replied the maid.
+
+The old Countess had gone out a little while before, to pay a short
+visit in the neighbourhood; Luedecke had accompanied her.
+
+Erika hesitated a moment, then turned up the electric light and told
+Marianne to show in the visitor. Immediately afterwards he entered, and
+she arose to receive him. She was startled as she looked at his face,
+it was so pale and wan.
+
+"Are you ill?" she exclaimed; "or have you come to tell us of some
+misfortune that has befallen you?" The sympathy expressed in her tone
+agitated him still further.
+
+"Neither is the case," he replied, trying to assume an easy air. "I
+came only to----" There he paused. Why had he come? The thought that
+she might entertain a warmer sentiment for him--a thought that had
+occurred to him to-day for the first time--would not be banished. He
+had dragged the sweet, racking uncertainty about with him for an hour
+through the loneliest streets of Venice, without being able to rid
+himself of it. He would see her,--would have certainty; and then----
+
+Ah, he could not gain that certainty: he could only long for her.
+
+He had invented some explanation of his visit, but he could not
+remember it; instead he said, "You are very kind to receive me in
+Countess Lenzdorff's absence, and I will show my appreciation of your
+kindness by making my visit a short one."
+
+"On the contrary," she rejoined, "I hope you will spend the evening
+with us. My grandmother will be here in a few minutes, and will be very
+glad to find you here."
+
+How soft and sweet her voice was! Could it be--could it be----?
+
+His agitation became almost intolerable. He knew that he ought not to
+stay, but he could not bring himself to leave.
+
+The evening minstrels of Venice were beginning their rounds, and in the
+distance they sang "_Io son felice--t'attendo in ciel!_"
+
+"Bring your present expression to the studio tomorrow!" Lozoncyi said,
+hoarsely: "I will transfer it to the canvas as well as I can, in memory
+of the noblest creature I have ever met. You are coming to-morrow?"
+
+"Certainly. The portrait is almost finished, is it not?"
+
+"Yes; I think to-morrow will be the last sitting; and then----"
+
+"And then----?" she repeated.
+
+"Then it will all be over!"
+
+There was a pause. He turned his head aside. Suddenly a low sweet
+voice, that went directly to his heart, said, softly, "Then you will
+wish to know nothing more of me!"
+
+He started as if from an electric shock; the room swam before his eyes,
+when----the door opened, the Countess Muehlberg appeared, and Lozoncyi
+arose to take leave, thanking Heaven for this unexpected interruption.
+
+"Will you not wait until my grandmother returns?" Erika asked.
+
+"Unfortunately, it is impossible."
+
+"Adieu, then. To-morrow at eleven," she called after him. He made no
+reply.
+
+
+It lightened and thundered all through the night, but scarcely a drop
+of rain fell; the air the next morning was as sultry as it had been on
+the previous day.
+
+When Erika, with her grandmother, entered Lozoncyi's garden punctually
+at eleven o'clock, everything there looked withered and drooping.
+Lozoncyi himself was pale; his motions had lost their wonted
+elasticity, and his face was grave. When the old Countess asked him if
+he were ill, he ascribed his condition to the sirocco.
+
+Erika noticed that there were no fresh flowers in the studio: he had
+taken no pains to decorate it for his guests, and she was conscious of
+a foreboding of misfortune.
+
+"I must subject you to some fatigue to-day, I fear, that the picture
+may at last be finished," he said, speaking very quickly. "You must
+have patience this last time. I should not like to give you a picture
+that was not as good as I knew how to make it."
+
+"You have already bestowed too much of your valuable time upon the
+Countess Erika," the old Countess said, kindly.
+
+"Indeed? do you think so?" he murmured, with a bitterness he had never
+displayed before. "Do you think we artists should not be allowed to
+devote so much time to enjoyment? 'Tis true," he added, in an
+undertone, "that we have to pay for it."
+
+Erika looked at him in startled wonder: his words were perfectly
+incomprehensible to her, but the expression of his pale face was one of
+such anguish that her compassion, always too easily aroused, increased
+momentarily.
+
+As usual, she repaired to the adjoining room to change her dress with
+Lucrezia's assistance. When she returned to the studio Lozoncyi was
+standing with his back to the chimney-piece, his hands in the pockets
+of his jacket, while her grandmother, sitting opposite him in her
+favourite chair, was asking him, "What is the matter with you,
+Lozoncyi? Have you lost money in the stock market?"
+
+He shook his head. "No," he said, trying to answer the question in the
+same jesting tone as that in which it had been asked.
+
+"Then what is wrong? Confide in me."
+
+He cleared his throat. "In fact, I----" he began.
+
+Then, perceiving Erika, "Ah, ready so soon?" he cried. "Let us go to
+work."
+
+She could not find the pose immediately: he was obliged to move her
+right arm. His hand was as hot as if burning with fever, and he had
+scarcely touched the girl's arm with it when he withdrew it hastily.
+
+He went to the easel, gazed long and with half-closed eyes at his
+model, then turned and began to paint.
+
+Usually there was a constant flow of conversation between Erika and
+himself. To-day he spoke not a word; perfect silence reigned in the
+studio; the turning of the leaves of the novel which the old Countess
+was reading and the twittering of the birds in the garden outside, were
+audible; one could even hear now and then the sweep of the brush upon
+the canvas.
+
+Thus an hour passed. Then, stepping back a few paces from the picture,
+he fixed his eyes upon Erika, added a few touches with his brush, and
+looked from her to the portrait.
+
+"Look at it yourself," he said, with a hard emphasis on each syllable.
+"So far as I can finish it, it is done. I cannot improve it!"
+
+Both ladies went and stood before it. "I do not know whether it is
+like," said Erika, "but it certainly is a masterpiece."
+
+"It is magnificent!" exclaimed her grandmother. "You have flattered the
+child, and have done it most delicately,--_en homme d'esprit_."
+
+"Flattered!" he cried. "Hardly! I have tried to produce the expression
+which not every one can see in the face. That is the only merit of my
+poor performance: otherwise it is a daub. I have never seemed to myself
+so poor a painter as when at work upon this picture." As he spoke he
+tossed the entire sheaf of brushes which he held in his hand into the
+chimney place.
+
+"What are you about?" exclaimed the old Countess. "You are in a very
+odd mood to-day."
+
+"Oh, the brushes were worn out," he replied. "I could not have painted
+another picture with them."
+
+The blood mounted to Erika's cheek with gratification. She understood
+him. His agitation and sorrow did not disquiet her now, so convinced
+was she that it was in her power to dispel them by a single word.
+
+"You must leave the picture with me for a time. When it is dry I will
+varnish it and send it to you: I must ask you, however, to what
+address?"
+
+"I hope we shall still continue to see you," the old Countess replied.
+"I assure you that I entertain a sincere friendship for you. The visits
+to your studio, although my part in them has been a secondary one, have
+come to be a pleasant habit, which I shall find it hard to discontinue.
+We shall always be glad to welcome you wherever we are."
+
+Erika, meanwhile, had approached the painter. "I do not know how to
+thank you," she said.
+
+"I have done nothing for which thanks are due," he rejoined. "The
+thanks should come from me. All I ask of you is to bestow a thought now
+and then upon the poor painter who has enjoyed the sight of you for so
+long. No, there is one thing more. You will allow me to make a copy of
+the picture for myself?"
+
+The grandmother interposed: "Go change your dress, Erika."
+
+And Lozoncyi asked, "Will you take your portmanteau with you, or shall
+I send it to you?"
+
+Erika went into the next room. Hurriedly, impatiently, she took off the
+white gown and put on her street dress. "Stuff everything into the
+portmanteau," she ordered Lucrezia, slipping a gold coin into the
+servant's hand.
+
+She was in a strange mood: she felt her heart throb up in her throat.
+"Shall I have one moment in which to speak to him alone?" she asked
+herself.
+
+"Ready? You have been quick," her grandmother said when she re-entered
+the studio. "Have you summoned our gondola, Lozoncyi?"
+
+"Yes, Countess. I wonder it is not here. Meanwhile, I must cut the
+roses in my garden for you. I cannot tell for whom they will bloom when
+you come no longer."
+
+He went out into the garden. For one moment Erika hesitated; then she
+followed him. The skies were one uniform gray; every branch and blossom
+drooped wearily. The roses which Lozoncyi tried to cut for Erika fell
+to pieces beneath his touch, strewing the earth with pink and white
+petals.
+
+Lozoncyi did not look around, but cut unmercifully, with a large pair
+of garden scissors. Before he knew it, Erika stood beside him. "I may
+be overbold," she half whispered, lightly touching his arm, "but I
+cannot help feeling that I have a right to know your troubles. Is
+anything distressing you?"
+
+He looked at her and tried to smile. "To say farewell distresses me,
+Countess, as you must be aware."
+
+She was overpowered by timidity, but her compassion gave her courage.
+She collected herself: they must understand each other. "If to say
+farewell really distresses you, I--I cannot see why it should be said,"
+she whispered. The tears stood in her eyes, and he----? He was ashy
+pale, and the roses dropped from his hands.
+
+At this moment the bell rang loudly, and a woman's voice asked, in
+French with a strong Prussian accent, "Does the artist, Paul Lozoncyi,
+live here?"
+
+Erika was startled. Where had she heard that voice before? Out into the
+drooping garden came a tall, well-formed woman, with regular features,
+fair, slightly rouged, every fold of her dress, every curl of her fair
+hair,--yes, even the perfume which breathed about her,--betraying her
+cult of physical perfection. A scarlet veil was drawn tightly about her
+face: otherwise her dress was simple and becoming.
+
+Erika recognized her instantly, and guessed the truth. For a moment the
+garden swam before her eyes: she was afraid she should fall. Meanwhile,
+the new-comer laid a very shapely and well-gloved hand upon the
+artist's arm, and cried, "_Une surprise--hein, mon bebe! Tu ne t'y
+attendais pas--dis?_"
+
+"No," he replied, sharply.
+
+She frowned, and, challenging Erika with a look, she said, "Have the
+kindness to introduce me."
+
+He cleared his throat, and then, sharp and hard as the blow of an axe,
+the words fell from his lips, "My wife."
+
+Erika had recovered her self-possession. She had advanced sufficiently
+in knowledge of the world since Bayreuth to know that no one, not even
+Frau Lozoncyi, could expect her to be cordial. She contented herself
+with acknowledging Lozoncyi's introduction by a slight inclination.
+
+Meanwhile, the old Countess appeared from the studio to see what was
+going on. She took no pains to conceal her astonishment, and when
+Lozoncyi presented his wife her inclination was, if possible, colder
+and haughtier than Erika's had been, as she scanned the stranger
+through her eye-glass. Lozoncyi's servant announced the gondola.
+
+Erika offered her hand to Lozoncyi and had the courage to smile.
+
+The old lady also held out her hand to him, but did not smile. Her
+manner was very cool as she said, "Thank you for all the kindness you
+have shown us. I had hoped you would dine with us to-night; but you
+will not wish this first day to leave--to leave Frau von Lozoncyi."
+
+The gondola pushed off. The water gurgled beneath the first stroke of
+the oar, and the wood creaked slightly. For an instant the artist stood
+upon his threshold, looking after Erika; then he went into the house,
+and the light-green door which she knew so well closed behind him.
+
+How did she feel? She had no time to think of that. All her strength
+was expended in concealing her agitation. She arranged her dress, and
+remarked that the water was unusually muddy. In fact, it had an opaque
+greenish hue. The old Countess did not notice it.
+
+"I never suspected that he was married!" she exclaimed. "He should have
+told us. A man has no right to conceal such a fact."
+
+And Erika replied, with an air of easy indifference that surprised even
+herself, "I suppose, grandmother, he did not imagine that the
+circumstance could possess the slightest interest for us."
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+In addition to many trying and strange characteristics possessed by
+Erika, Providence had bestowed upon her one which at this time stood
+her in stead. Upon any severe agitating experience a few hours of cool,
+hard self-consciousness were sure to ensue,--hours in which she was
+perfectly able to appear in the world with dry eyes, and not even the
+keenest observer could perceive any change in her, save that her laugh
+was perhaps more frequent and more silvery.
+
+This condition of mind was far from being an agreeable one: moreover,
+the reaction afterwards was terrible: nevertheless, thanks to this
+moral paralysis, Erika was able in critical moments to preserve
+appearances.
+
+The day on which, as she supposed, her happiness, her faith, the entire
+purpose of her life, lay in ruins about her, was occupied with social
+duties of every description. She performed them all,--an afternoon tea,
+with lawn-tennis, a dinner, and at last a supper with music at the
+Austrian Consul's.
+
+And even when the old Countess on their way home from the Consul's
+proposed that they should look in at Frau von Neerwinden's, upon whom
+they had not called since the memorable evening when Minona read, Erika
+declared herself quite willing to do so. Perhaps this was because she
+had a secret hope of meeting Lozoncyi there; for she longed to see him,
+to show him how entirely he had been mistaken if he had supposed----
+
+Ah! what pretexts we invent to deceive ourselves as to the cowardly
+impulses of our desires!
+
+But he was not at Frau von Neerwinden's, where the old Countess found
+herself so well entertained, however, that she passed an hour,
+discussing the latest Venetian scandal, in which Erika took no
+interest. She strolled away from the group of elderly guests and
+through the open glass doors leading out upon a balcony above the
+water, where she seemed quite forgotten by those within the apartment.
+
+Beneath her on the dark surface of the lagoon the gondolas were
+crowding from all quarters around a bark whence came music and song.
+They glided past over the black water, a broad stream of humanity
+attracted as by a magnetic needle, lured by a voice. Nearer and nearer
+came the song, until it swept past beneath Erika's balcony:
+
+
+ "Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie,
+ Toi, qui n'as pas d'amour?"
+
+
+And above her glimmered the stars, myriads of worlds, sparkling, and
+shining down disdainfully upon wretched humanity writhing and striving
+in its efforts to attain paltry ends, so vastly important in its own
+estimation.
+
+
+Erika lay awake all night long, oppressed by a terrible burden,--not
+grief for a happiness of which she had dreamed and which had proved to
+be impossible, but something infinitely harder to be borne by a person
+of her temperament, the sense of disgrace.
+
+So long as she had been firmly convinced that he loved her, far from
+resenting the unconventional expression of his admiration, she had
+taken pleasure in it. But now the whole matter bore another aspect in
+her eyes. She remembered with painful distinctness the superficial,
+frivolous theories of life which he had advanced upon their first
+acquaintance. Love! yes, he might perhaps have experienced what he
+designated thus, but at the thought her cheeks burned. She had pleased
+him, as hundreds before her had done, and in the full consciousness of
+the ties of marriage by which he was bound he had allowed himself to
+make love to her as he would have done to any common flirt. When at
+last, in entire faith in the sincerity--yes, in the sacredness--of his
+feeling for her, she had generously laid bare her heart before him, he
+had been simply terrified by the revelation.
+
+"He is probably laughing at me now," she said to herself, trembling in
+every limb. Then, with infinite bitterness, she added, "No; he is
+probably reproaching himself, and wondering at my folly."
+
+It was enough to drive her insane. She buried her burning face in her
+pillow, and groaned aloud.
+
+She shed not a tear throughout the night, and she appeared punctually
+as usual at the breakfast-table, but in the midst of the pleasant
+little meal, which was always taken in her grandmother's boudoir, she
+was overcome by an intense weariness; she longed to flee to some dark
+corner where no one could find her and there let the tears flow freely.
+
+The meal was, however, unusually prolonged. The old Countess, who had
+quite forgotten her vexation at Lozoncyi's concealment of his marriage,
+and who had been vastly entertained the previous evening at Frau von
+Neerwinden's, was in an excellent humour, and was full of conversation,
+in which she showed herself both amusing and witty.
+
+Erika forced herself to laugh and to seem gay, when, just as she felt
+unable to endure the situation for another moment, Luedecke appeared
+with a note for her. It had come, he informed her, the day before,
+shortly after the ladies had gone out to dinner, and he begged to be
+forgiven for having forgotten to deliver it.
+
+"Old donkey!" the Countess Lenzdorff murmured. Erika opened the
+note with trembling hands. It came from Fraeulein Horst, the poor
+music-teacher. She wrote that she had been worse for a couple of days,
+and had made up her mind to go home. With pathetic gratitude and
+sincere admiration she desired to take leave of Erika thus in writing,
+since her weak condition would not allow her to call upon her.
+
+Really distressed, and a little ashamed of having of late somewhat
+neglected the poor creature, Erika had a gondola called, and went
+immediately to the Pension Weber. When she asked in the hall of the
+establishment for Fraeulein Horst, the dismay painted on every face at
+once revealed to her the truth: the poor music-teacher had passed away.
+
+She asked to be taken to the room where the dead woman lay; and as
+Attilio, the hotel waiter, conducted her thither, he told how there had
+been for a long time no hope of the invalid's recovery; the day before
+yesterday the last symptom had appeared,--a restless longing for
+change,--for travel; her departure had been fixed for this evening;
+they had all hoped so that she would get off; but she had died here:
+they had found her dead in bed this very morning, her candle burnt down
+into the socket, and her open book on her bed. Oh, yes, it was very sad
+to die so, away from home, and it was very unpleasant for the
+establishment. Eccellenza had no idea of the injury it was to the
+Pension! The Signor Baron in the first story had declared that he would
+not spend another night there.
+
+As Attilio finished, he unlocked the room where the body lay, and
+ushered in Erika. She motioned to him to leave her alone.
+
+The room was darkened. Erika drew aside the curtains a little. There
+was a crucifix among the medicine-bottles on the table beside the bed,
+and a book, open apparently at the place where the dead woman had been
+last reading. It was a German translation of 'Romeo and Juliet:' it
+was open at the balcony scene, 'It is the nightingale, and not the
+lark----'
+
+Erika kneeled down at the bedside, buried her face in the coverlet, and
+wept bitterly. When Attilio came to remind her gently not to stay long,
+she arose and followed him with bowed head from the room.
+
+As she was going down the stairs, she heard a harsh grating voice
+with a slight Polish accent call, "Sophy, Sophy, are you ready?"
+and then from the end of the corridor two figures appeared, one a
+short, thick-set woman heavily laden with a bundle of shawls, a
+travelling-bag, and several umbrellas, and looking up at a man who
+walked beside her, his hands in the pockets of his plaid jacket, his
+eye-glass in his eye, allowing himself with much condescension to be
+adored. They were Strachinsky and his second wife.
+
+"II signore Barone," murmured Attilio.
+
+Strachinsky glanced towards Erika: he frowned and looked away. She was
+glad that he did so, for in her dejected condition she could hardly
+have brought herself to speak to the couple. Her whole soul was filled
+with a desire to creep away to some quiet spot where she might find
+relief in tears.
+
+She sent away her gondola, and hurried through the narrow streets to
+the Piazza San Zacharie. There she took refuge in the church of the
+same name.
+
+It was empty: not even a tourist was present to gaze upon the beauty of
+the famous Gianbellini.
+
+She crouched down in the darkest corner upon the hard stones, and
+there, leaning her head upon the rush seat of a church chair, she wept
+more uncontrollably than she had done beside the corpse of the poor
+music-teacher. All at once she felt that she was no longer alone. She
+looked up. Beside her stood Lozoncyi.
+
+She arose, doing what she could to summon her pride to her aid. "What
+strange chance brings you here?" she asked him.
+
+"No chance whatever," he replied. "I saw you enter the church, and I
+followed you."
+
+"Ah!" By a supreme effort she forced herself to assume an indifferent
+tone. "I have just been to the Pension Weber to take leave of my poor
+music-teacher. I found her dead. You may imagine----"
+
+He shook his head: "And you would have me believe that the tears you
+have just shed are for that poor creature? It is hardly worth the
+trouble. Countess Erika, I have followed you to speak with you
+undisturbed for the last time, to thank you, and to entreat your
+forgiveness. Be frank with me, as I shall be with you. Let us have the
+consolation of knowing that, when we parted, the heart of each was laid
+bare to the other: it will be but poor comfort, after all."
+
+He uttered the words with so decided a casting aside of all disguise
+that Erika's pride availed her nothing. In vain did she seek for words
+in which to reply. She looked in his face, and was startled to see it
+so wan and haggard.
+
+"You see," he said, perceiving her dismay, "that in this case your
+wounded pride may be entirely satisfied; you can easily dispense with
+it. Compared with the torture I have endured since the day before
+yesterday evening, your pain is mere child's play. Oh, I pray you,"--he
+spoke in somewhat of his old impatient tone, the tone of a man whose
+wishes are usually complied with gladly,--"sit down for a moment: this
+is our last opportunity for speaking with each other. I owe you an
+explanation. You have a right to ask me how I came to conceal from you
+that I was married. To that I can only reply that I never speak of my
+marriage. I am not proud of my wife; I never take her into society with
+me; few of the friends whom I have here are aware that I am married,
+although I do not intentionally make a secret of it. I frequently
+travel alone, and last autumn the relations between my wife and myself,
+from causes unnecessary to relate, became of so strained a nature that
+we agreed to separate for a time. I avoided, when I could, even the
+thought of her. In spite of all this, I ought not to have refrained
+from acquainting you with my circumstances; nor should I have done so
+if I had dreamed---- You shrink, but we have agreed that for once in
+our lives, entirely casting aside pretence, we will tell each other the
+truth. In this case there is nothing in it that can offend your pride.
+I had conceived an enthusiasm for you when you were a very little girl.
+Shall I say that I loved you from the first moment that I saw you? No!
+you excited my curiosity, my wonder; I could not help thinking of you.
+A veritable angel with wings would not have been more wonderful to me
+than such a being as yourself. I did not wish to believe in you. At
+times I called you too high-strung, at times I said to myself that
+yours was simply a cold nature. You know how I avoided you,--avoided
+you when I could not take my eyes off you; and then--then--you have no
+idea of how my heart beat when I went to you to beg to be allowed to
+paint your portrait. From that time all speculation with regard to you
+was at an end: I blissfully and gratefully accepted the miracle
+revealed to me; nay, I ceased to regard you as a miracle; you were for
+me the key to a pure, noble life, of which I had hitherto never
+dreamed. And I began to long for this life: the disgust I had hitherto
+felt for the whole world I now felt for myself; and then all was over
+with me. I had no longer any thought save of you; my whole soul was
+filled with eager anticipation of the short time I could pass with you;
+when you were gone I used to sit for hours in my studio, recalling in
+memory your every look and word. The budding freshness of your being,
+which needed only a little sunshine to blossom forth gloriously, your
+profound capacity for enthusiasm, the wealth of affection concealed
+beneath a coldness of manner, and withal the proud, unsullied purity of
+your heart, mind, and soul--oh, God! how lovely it all was! But you
+were so far removed from me; a universe separated us. Never, no, never
+for one moment did I dream of your bestowing one thought of love upon
+me. Then, when, conscious that the joy which had come to be my life was
+so soon to end, I went to you in most melancholy mood, the day before
+yesterday evening, your look, the tone of your voice, set my brain on
+fire. I left you and wandered about the streets like one possessed.
+When at last I went home, I shut myself up in the studio and began to
+dream. I pictured what my life might have been had I been free to clasp
+in my arms the bliss that might have been mine. I seemed to feel your
+presence, so pure, so holy, and yet so tender and loving. The life at
+which I had always sneered--a home-life--seemed to me the only one
+worth living, if lived with you. I dreamed it in every detail; I
+thought how my art could be ennobled and purified through you,--my art,
+which until now had been little more than the cry of a tortured soul.
+My former life lay far behind me, like some foul swamp from which you
+had rescued me. How I adored you! how tenderly and truly I reverenced
+you! Then on a sudden I awoke to the consciousness of how impossible it
+all was. I crept out into the garden, where in the early dawn all
+looked pale and fading like my dying dream. I forced myself to think:
+it pained me so to think!--but I forced myself to do so, to draw
+conclusions. Whichever way my thoughts turned, they led to despair,--to
+separation from you. I could not resist the conviction that it was my
+duty to end all intercourse with you as quickly as possible. What next
+occurred you know yourself. But you never can dream of what I endured
+from the time when you entered my studio yesterday morning until the
+moment when you followed me into the garden and there among the roses
+held out your hands to me, your eyes filled with light, everything
+about you so chaste, so grave, so tender; no, that agony you never can
+imagine! Not to be able to fall at your feet, to take you in my arms
+and say, 'My heaven, my queen, my every thought, my life, my art, shall
+all be one prayer of gratitude to you!' To live a joyless life when joy
+is all unknown is nothing,--a matter of course. But when an angel opens
+wide the gates of Paradise for one, and one must say, 'No, I dare not!'
+it is horrible! one cannot believe it possible to survive it!" He
+ceased.
+
+Erika had listened to him with bowed head. Every word that he had
+uttered had been balm to her wounded pride, and at the same time had
+excited that which was most easily stirred within her, the tenderest,
+warmest emotion of her heart,--her compassion. She had, it is true, a
+vague consciousness that it was not right that she should listen to
+such words from a married man, but she stifled it with the excuse that
+it was their last interview.
+
+His eyes sought hers: apparently he expected her to speak; but her lips
+refused to frame a sentence, although there was a question which she
+longed to ask.
+
+He leaned towards her. "There is something you would fain ask," he
+whispered. "Tell me what it is."
+
+"I--I"--at last she managed to say,--"I cannot comprehend what induced
+you to marry that woman."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders: "No, nor can I, now, myself. How can I make
+you understand that in the world in' which I lived there were no women
+who inspired me with respect? it was made up of my fellow-students, and
+of women in no wise superior to the one of whom we are speaking. I was
+convinced that all her sex were either like her, or were harsh old
+maids, like my aunt Illona. Ten years older than I, she controlled my
+thoughts and my actions; I could not do without her, and at last I
+married her for fear lest some one of my fellow-students should take
+her from me." He paused.
+
+Erika drew her breath painfully.
+
+"Shortly afterwards came fame," he began anew, "suddenly,--over-night,
+as it were,--and all doors were flung wide for me. I do not want to
+represent myself to you as a better man than I am: I do not deny that
+all went smoothly in the beginning. I did not suffer from the burden
+with which I had laden my life. Dozens of my fellows lived just
+as I did. She relieved me of every petty care, she removed every
+obstacle from my path, she undertook all my transactions with the
+picture-dealers, she was everything that I was not,--practical,
+cautious, energetic. I went into society without her,--she was content
+that it should be so,--and I enjoyed in intercourse with other women
+that charm which was lacking in my home. I felt no disgust then at my
+own want of all true perception. The fashionable circles which I
+frequented were in no wise in advance, so far as a lofty standard of
+morality was concerned, of those in which I had lived hitherto. Whence
+does a young artist nowadays derive his knowledge of so-called refined
+society? From a few exaggerated women who befriend him half the time
+because they are wearying for a new toy. We poor fellows have but
+little opportunity to sound the depths of a true, pure womanly nature,
+least of all in the beginning of our career. It never occurred to
+me to think what my life might have been under other influences,
+until---- Oh, Erika, Erika, why did you so transform me? Why did you
+drag me from the mire which was my element, to leave me to perish?"
+
+She put both hands to her temples. "What can I do?" she murmured,
+hoarsely. "What can I do?"
+
+There she stood, pale and still, trembling with sympathy and
+compassion, needing help and helpless, more beautiful than ever, with
+cheeks flushed and eyes bright with fever.
+
+On a sudden the cannon from San Giorgio announced the hour of noon, and
+instantly all the bells in Venice began to swing their brazen tongues.
+Erika awaked as from a dream. "I must go," she said. "My grandmother is
+expecting me."
+
+"This is farewell forever," he murmured.
+
+He bowed his head and turned away. She could not endure the sight of
+his agony. Approaching him, and laying her hand upon his arm, she
+began, "Do you really believe that you owe no duty to your wife?"
+
+"None!" He could not understand why she should ask the question.
+
+"Then--then----" she stammered, "why not obtain a divorce?"
+
+He gazed at her for an instant. "And you could then consent to be my
+wife? You, the beautiful, idolized Countess Erika Lenzdorff, the wife
+of a poor, divorced artist?"
+
+"Yes," she replied, firmly. Then, offering him her hand, and once more
+lifting to his her clear, pure eyes, she left the church. In an
+inspired frenzy of self-sacrifice, as it were, she crossed the Piazza,
+where the grass grew between the uneven stones of the pavement, and
+above which the gray clouds were floating.
+
+She was as if borne aloft by an inspiration that elevated her whole
+being. Suddenly she became aware of a discord in her sensations. On her
+ear there fell, sung to the tinkling accompaniment of a guitar,--the
+words,--
+
+
+ "Tu m'hai bagnato il seno mio di lagrime,
+ T'amo d'immenso amor."
+
+
+Looking up, she perceived the same repulsive musicians that had so
+shocked her awhile ago on the Piazza San Stefano.
+
+She hastened her steps; but the sound long pursued her, 'T'amo
+d'immenso amor!' until it died away with a last 'amor.'
+
+She frowned. She was indignant, that the wondrous, sacred word should
+be thus profaned.
+
+
+There was no brightness in the future to which Erika looked forward. Of
+this she was fully aware. They must go forth into the world, he and
+she, with none to wish them God-speed, none to bless them. And yet the
+melancholy which shrouded their love made it doubly dear to her. The
+craving for suffering which for some time past had thrilled her excited
+nerves now stirred within her. Had she not been seeking it lately
+everywhere,--in poetry, in music, in art?
+
+She passed the day in this state of enthusiastic exaltation. At
+night she slept better than she had for long, but shortly after she
+awaked she was assailed by a distracting, feverish agitation. No
+arrangement had been made as to how she should get the intelligence
+from Lozoncyi with regard to his wife's consent to a divorce. Would he
+bring the information himself? would he send her a note? Ten o'clock
+struck,--half-past ten,--eleven,--and no message came. Her hands, her
+lips, her brow, burned with fever; she drew her breath with difficulty.
+
+About eleven o'clock the old Countess went to take her forenoon walk.
+She had been gone but a short time when Luedecke announced Herr von
+Lozoncyi.
+
+Erika had him shown up, and the first glance which she cast at his face
+told her that for him there was no possibility of a release.
+
+Without a word she held out her hand to him. His hand was icy cold and
+trembled in her clasp; he looked pale and wretched,--the picture of
+misery.
+
+Possessed absolutely by the pity that had filled her soul, she saw in
+his face only torturing despair at not being able to rid his life of
+what so degraded it. What could she do for him now? What sacrifice
+could she make?
+
+"Sit down," she said, awkwardly, after a pause.
+
+"It is not worth while," he rejoined, in the dull tone of a man crushed
+to the earth beneath a heavy burden. "I have been waiting for an hour
+to see you alone, that I might tell you that which must be told. I have
+spoken with--my wife. She will not consent to a divorce, and without
+her consent no divorce is possible. She has never given me any legal
+cause for a separation,--no, never, strange as it may seem in a woman
+of her class. Yesterday evening I spoke to her, and there was a
+terrible scene; and now,"--his voice grew fainter,--"now all is over."
+He laid his hand upon the back of a chair, as if to support himself,
+and paused for a moment, then resumed: "I ought to have written to
+you,--it would have been far better,--far,--but I could not deny myself
+one more sight of you. Farewell. Now all is over."
+
+She stood as if rooted to the spot, pale, mute, searching feverishly
+for some consolation for him. What more could she offer him? There was
+a gulf as of death between them. She sought some path that would lead
+across it,--in vain. She felt faint and giddy.
+
+"Farewell," he murmured. "Thanks--thanks for all--the joy--for all the
+sorrow---- Good God! how dear it has been!" His voice broke; he turned
+away, holding out to her, for the last time, a slender, trembling hand.
+
+Why at sight of that hand did memory recall so vividly the half-starved
+artist lad after whom as a tiny girl she had run to relieve his misery?
+And now she could do nothing for him,--nothing! Really nothing?
+Suddenly it flashed upon her.
+
+She had but to hold out her arms, to forget herself, and his anguish
+would be transformed to bliss. Compassion grew within her and took
+possession of her like insanity; her soul was shaken as by an
+earthquake; what had been above was now beneath, and from the chaos one
+thought emerged, at first formless as a dream, then waxing clearer,
+until it took shape as a command, gradually obtaining absolute
+mastership of her.
+
+She raised her head, proud, resolved. "Have you the courage to break
+with all your present life, and to begin a new one with me?" she asked.
+
+"A new life?" he murmured, and, vaguely, uncertainly, as if unable to
+trust his senses and fearing to lend words to what was monstrous and
+impossible, he added, "With you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He recoiled a step, and looked her full in the face, speechless,
+breathless.
+
+A burning blush rose to her cheeks. "You have not the courage," she
+said, sternly. "Well, then----" With an imperious gesture she turned
+away.
+
+But he detained her. "Not the courage?" he cried, seizing her hand and
+carrying it to his lips. "Offer a cup of pure water to a man perishing
+of thirst, and ask him if he has the courage to drink! The question is
+not of me, but of you. Have you the faintest idea of the meaning of
+what you have said?"
+
+She shook her head: "I have learned to look life in the face; I know
+what I am doing. I know what the consequences of my act will be; I know
+that I resign all intercourse with my fellow-beings, saving only with
+yourself; that my only refuge on earth will be at your side; I know
+that I shall be a lost creature in the eyes of the world; and yet, if I
+may cherish the conviction that thereby I can redeem your shattered
+existence, that I can purify and ennoble your life, I am ready."
+
+Her voice, always soft and full of that quality which goes straight to
+the heart, was veiled and vibrating; her hands were clasped upon her
+breast, her head was proudly erect, and her eyes seemed larger than
+usual from the ecstasy that shone in them. She was supernaturally
+lovely, and never had the chaste purity peculiar to her beauty
+been more distinctly stamped upon her face than at this moment when
+she--she, Erika Lenzdorff--was voluntarily proposing to follow a
+married man through the world as his mistress.
+
+"Erika!" There was boundless exultation in his voice; he took one step
+towards her to clasp her in his arms and to press the first kiss upon
+her lips. But she repulsed him, overcome, it seemed, by sudden distress
+and dread, and when he repeated, in a tone of dismay and reproach,
+"Erika!" she passed her hand across her brow, and murmured, "My entire
+life belongs to you. Do not grudge me a few hours of reflection and
+preparation."
+
+He smiled at her reserve, and contented himself with pressing his lips
+tenderly again and again upon her hand, as he said, caressingly,
+"Preparation? Oh, my darling, my darling! Meet me to-night at the
+railway-station at ten, and we will start for Florence. Leave all the
+rest to me."
+
+"To-night it would be impossible," she said: "it is our reception
+evening. I could not leave without giving rise to a search for me."
+
+"Then to-morrow?" he persisted, speaking very quickly in his beguiling,
+irresistible voice. Everything about him betrayed the feverish
+insistence of a man who suddenly gives free rein to a passion which he
+has hitherto with difficulty held in check.
+
+"To-morrow," she repeated, anxiously,--"to-morrow----"
+
+"Do not delay, Erika, if you are really resolved."
+
+"To-morrow be it, then!" The words came syllable by syllable from her
+lips in a kind of dull staccato.
+
+"Erika!" His eyes shone, his whole being seemed transfigured.
+
+"Yes," she went on, "Constance Muehlberg has arranged an excursion to
+Chioggia to-morrow in a steamer she has chartered. My grandmother is to
+chaperon the party. At the last moment I will refuse to accompany her,
+and I shall then be free. When shall I come?"
+
+They decided upon taking the train leaving between eight and nine in
+the evening for Vienna. Then other necessary details were arranged, a
+process unutterably distasteful to Erika, to whom it seemed like making
+the business arrangements for a funeral. She suffered intensely in thus
+descending to blank, prosaic reality from the visionary heights to
+which she had soared.
+
+At last everything had been discussed: there was nothing more to be
+said. A great dread then stole over her: she grew very silent.
+
+"I cannot believe in my bliss," he murmured. "You stand there in your
+white robes so chaste and grave, with that holy light in your eyes,
+more like a martyr awaiting death than a loving woman ready to break
+through all barriers to----"
+
+There was something in this description of the situation that offended
+her,--offended her so deeply that with what was almost harshness she
+interrupted him, saying, "And now, I pray you, go!"
+
+He looked at her in some dismay. She cast down her eyes, and with
+flaming cheeks stammered, "My grandmother will return in a few moments:
+I should not like to see you in her presence."
+
+"You are right," he said, changing colour. "Your grandmother has always
+been so kind to me, and now----"
+
+"Ah, go!"
+
+"May I not come to see you at some time during the day to-morrow?"
+
+"No."
+
+"In the evening, then,--at eight?"
+
+She looked him full in the face, stern resolve in her eyes. "I shall be
+punctual," she said.
+
+"To-morrow at eight," he whispered.
+
+"To-morrow at eight," she repeated.
+
+A minute afterwards he stood alone in the sunlit space behind the
+hotel.
+
+He rubbed his eyes, seeming to waken slowly from a lovely and most
+improbable dream.
+
+
+At first he felt only exhilaration, the joy of a near approach to a
+long-desired but unhoped-for goal.
+
+"To-morrow at eight," he whispered to himself several times. Then on a
+sudden the keen edge of his delight was blunted; his joy seemed to slip
+through his fingers; he could not retain it.
+
+He recalled the entire scene through which he had just passed. He saw
+the girl's expression of face, he heard the sound of her voice. It was
+all lovely, exquisitely lovely, but, after all, there was something
+inharmonious, unnatural in it. This very girl who had of her own free
+impulse proposed to fly with him had never, during their long
+consultation, been impelled to utter one word of affection for him, and
+he himself was conscious that he could not have demanded it of her. She
+had been gentle, enthusiastic, self-sacrificing,--yes, self-sacrificing
+even to fanaticism. Self-sacrificing! he repeated the word to himself
+in an undertone: it had seized hold of his imagination as portraying
+precisely her attitude and bearing. Self-sacrificing,--yes, but not the
+slightest evidence had she given him of warm, passionate affection. He
+frowned, as he walked on thoughtfully.
+
+"How does she picture to herself the future, I wonder?" Distinctly in
+his memory rang her words, "I know that I resign all intercourse with
+my fellow-beings, saving with yourself; that my only refuge on earth
+will be at your side; I know that I shall be a lost creature in the
+eyes of the world; and yet, if I can only cherish the conviction that I
+can thereby redeem your shattered existence, that I can purify and
+ennoble your life, I am ready."
+
+How ravishing she had been whilst uttering these words! and beautiful,
+pathetic words they were; but----
+
+He shivered, in spite of the Venetian May sunshine. Some chord of
+overwrought feeling suddenly snapped; a stifling sensation of
+ungrateful and almost angry rebellion against an undeserved happiness
+assailed him. How could this be? He was paralyzed by a cowardly dread.
+
+He was ashamed of this revulsion of feeling, and struggled against it
+with angry self-contempt, but he could not shake it off. He had a vague
+consciousness that he must always be thus shamed in Erika's presence.
+To avoid being so he should have to incite himself to a degree of
+high-souled enthusiasm which was unnatural and inconvenient. "Purify
+and ennoble his life!" What did that mean? "Purify? ennoble?"
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+When by a long and roundabout way he at last reached his home on foot,
+and walked through the stone-paved, whitewashed corridor, looking
+absently before him, he perceived sitting beneath a mulberry-tree, the
+lower boughs of which were covered with the blossoms of a climbing
+rose, an attractive female figure, whose golden hair gleamed in the
+sunlight. She was sitting in a basket chair, and was engaged upon a
+piece of delicate crochet-work. She wore a gown of some white woollen
+stuff, very simply made, and confined at the waist by a belt of russet
+leather; the sleeves, which were rather short, left exposed not only
+the wrists, but part of a plump arm, white and smooth as polished
+marble, and the finely-formed throat rose as white and polished from
+the turn-down sailor collar, beneath which a dark-blue cravat was
+loosely knotted. How deft and skilful, as she worked, was every
+movement of her rather large but faultlessly-shaped hands!
+
+She was somewhat stout, but there was a certain charm in that. The
+broad full shoulders gave an impression of vigour that nothing could
+subdue. Lozoncyi could not but admire them. He was amazed. Yesterday
+there had been shrieks and screams, torn clothes and broken furniture,
+while to-day, after a scene that would have made any other woman ill,
+there was not a trace of fatigue, no dark shade beneath the steel-blue
+eyes, not a wrinkle about the rather large mouth. What a fund of
+inexhaustible vitality the woman possessed! what triumphant, healthy
+vigour! Not a sign of nervousness, of useless agitation; no breath of
+exaggeration.
+
+Ah, she had her good side,--there was no denying it. He sighed, and,
+hearing himself sigh, was startled by the turn his thoughts were
+taking. Was it possible that after a forced companionship of scarcely
+two days--a companionship of which, when he could not avoid it, he had
+taken advantage to hurl in the woman's face his hatred and contempt for
+her--old habits were asserting their rights?
+
+She went on crocheting. The sunlight crept down from among the climbing
+roses and glittered upon her crochet-needle. At last it shone in her
+eyes: she moved her chair to avoid the dazzling glare, and, looking up,
+saw him. Instead of the dark looks she had given him yesterday, she
+smiled slowly, blinking her strange cat-like eyes in the sunshine, and
+by her smile disclosing a row of pearly teeth. He passed her sullenly,
+as if she had taken an unjustifiable liberty with him, and went into
+the studio, wishing to persuade himself that he had a horror of her,
+that she repelled him. He hoped to feel that disgust for her with which
+the thought of her had inspired him since love for Erika had filled his
+heart; but he did not feel the disgust.
+
+
+He lingered for less time than usual before Erika's portrait, which
+occupied a large easel in the most conspicuous place in the studio, and
+went to his writing-table. Several business letters awaited him there;
+he opened them with an impatient sigh. They were for the most part
+requests for answers to letters received by him weeks previously. Since
+he had been in Venice his business correspondence--in fact, his
+business affairs generally--had fallen into terrible disorder.
+
+He opened the latest letter: it contained columns of figures. It was
+the account from his picture-dealer. He snapped his fingers, and,
+sitting down, tried to comprehend it. In vain! The figures danced
+before his eyes. Involuntarily he looked up. Through the glass door of
+the studio a pair of greenish eyes were gazing at him with an
+expression of good-humoured raillery. His heart began to beat fast.
+Formerly she had conducted his entire correspondence for him,--with
+what perfect regularity and skill! Before she had taken up the trade of
+model in consequence of a love-affair with an artist, she had been a
+_dame de comptoir_; she was as skilled in accounts as a bank-clerk. He
+needed but to speak the word, and she would reduce all these provoking
+affairs to perfect order; but he would ask no favour of her. Then she
+opened the studio door, and, entering softly, laid a warm strong hand
+upon his shoulder. He tried to persuade himself that he disliked the
+touch of this hand. But he did not dislike it: it had a soothing effect
+upon his excited nerves. Nevertheless he forced himself to shake it
+off.
+
+The woman laughed, a low, gentle laugh,--the laugh of a cynic. She
+lighted a cigarette and handed it to him, saying, "_Pauvre bebe_, try
+to rest instead of settling those accounts: I will do it all for you in
+the twinkling of an eye, while it would take you until next week."
+
+This time she did not lay her hand upon his shoulder, but stroked his
+head gently. "_Voyons, Seraphine!_" he said, crossly, shaking her off.
+
+She laughed again, good-humouredly, carelessly, with unconscious
+cynicism. Before three minutes had passed, she was seated in his stead
+at the writing-table, and he, with the cigarette which she had offered
+him between his lips, was standing lost in thought before Erika's
+portrait.
+
+How long he had been standing thus he could not have told, when he
+heard a deep voice beside him say, "_C'est rudement fort, tu sais.
+Sapristi!_ Shall you exhibit it?"
+
+"I have not made up my mind," he replied, absently, and then he was
+vexed with himself for answering her.
+
+"She is pretty, there's no denying it," Seraphine confessed. "I am
+really sorry to have interfered with your amusement, but nothing could
+have come of it. If I am not mistaken, you had gone as far as was
+possible. She is one of those who give nothing for nothing, and who
+never invest their capital except in good securities. I am sorry I
+cannot resign these securities to her; _je suis bon garcon, moi_, but,
+_mon Dieu, lorsqu'il y a un homme dans la question--sapristi, chaque
+femme pour elle!_"
+
+Here Lucrezia opened the door, and announced that lunch was served in
+the garden. Lozoncyi had firmly resolved never again to sit down to a
+meal with this woman. But, before he could say so, she began, "It would
+be well if you could give them something to talk of again in Paris.
+When did you leave in the autumn? In October? You have no idea what a
+relief your departure was to the artists there. You ought to see the
+crazy carnival of colour held in this year's Salon! Bouchard exhibited
+a nymph with a faun, quite in your style, only yours is flesh and his
+is putty,--a poor thing; but the critics exalted it, and gave it a
+_medaille d'honneur_. You had begun to make the artists very
+uncomfortable: they are praising up mere daubers, to belittle you,
+doing what they can to knock away the floor from under you. But you
+need only show yourself to recover your ground. Becard told me lately
+that he had got hold of quite a new way of looking at things: his
+picture in the Salon----"
+
+Talking thus, she had gone slowly towards the door; now she was
+outside. Unconsciously he had followed her.
+
+"What has Becard in the Salon?"
+
+"A woman on a balcony, after dinner, between two different lights,--on
+one side candle-light, and on the other moonlight; half of her is
+sulphur-yellow, the other half sea-green; _c'est d'un drole!_"
+
+"I saw the sketch for that monstrosity in his atelier," cried Lozoncyi,
+excited. "Did they accept it?"
+
+She had taken her seat at the tempting table, upon which smoked a
+golden omelette; she did not answer instantly.
+
+"Did they accept it?" Lozoncyi repeated.
+
+"Accept it----! Why, my dear, they laud him to the skies: they hail him
+as _le Messie_!"
+
+Lozoncyi had now seated himself opposite her. He brought his fist down
+upon the table. "Confound it!" he muttered between his teeth.
+
+"You are wrong to be vexed," she said: "he is a good fellow, and your
+friend. He told me awhile ago with reference to his success, 'It is
+envy of Lozoncyi that is now standing me in stead.' Let me give you
+some omelette: it is growing cold."
+
+He allowed her to fill his plate.
+
+
+Two hours later he was pacing his atelier to and fro in gloomy mood.
+
+He had enjoyed his breakfast, and had been entertained by his wife's
+chatter. With infinite skill she lured his fancy back to the old,
+careless, good-humoured Bohemian life in Paris. He questioned her with
+increasing curiosity as to the works of his fellows there, and she told
+him stories,--highly spiced but very amusing stories; she peeled his
+orange for him, and when the sun began to shine full upon the table at
+which they were sitting they drank their coffee in the studio. A
+sensation of intense comfort stole over him; but in the midst of it he
+was conscious of physical uneasiness. She looked at him, and
+disappeared with a laugh, returning with a pair of easy slippers. It
+was warm; his boots were tight; he took them off and slipped his feet
+into the easy shoes she had brought him. He felt as if relieved for the
+first time for a long while of a certain restraint. He yawned and
+stretched himself. Suddenly he shivered.
+
+The question suggested itself, Could he ever allow himself such license
+in Erika's presence?
+
+He started up. The momentarily-restored harmony between himself and his
+wife was interrupted. In the sudden change of mood to which in the
+course of years she had become accustomed, he repulsed her,--actually
+turned her out of the room, rudely, angrily.
+
+Again his every pulse throbbed. He felt as if he should go mad. His
+revulsion of feeling with regard to Erika clothed itself in a new
+dress. It was odious, unprincipled, criminal, to take advantage of the
+enthusiasm of this inexperienced young creature, to drag her down to
+probable--nay, to certain--misery. He went to his writing-table; he
+would write to her that for her sake he withdrew from their agreement.
+But scarcely had he written the first word when a wave of passion swept
+over his soul, benumbing his energies: he knew that he was as powerless
+to renounce her as he was to carry out any other resolve. What did he
+really want? He sprang up, crushed in his hand the sheet of paper which
+his pen had scarcely touched, and threw it away. Once again he stood
+before the portrait.
+
+At last, with bowed head, he went into the next room. Erika had left
+there by accident one or two articles belonging to her,--a lace
+handkerchief, a glove. He pressed them to his lips.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+"Erika! Erika!" old Countess Lenzdorff calls in a joyful voice across
+the garden of the Hotel Britannia. "Erika!"
+
+The old lady is sitting by the breast-work bordering on the Canal
+Grande. Erika is coming out of a side-door of the hotel. Her
+grandmother had sent her upstairs for her parasol. How strange the girl
+looks, with cheeks so white and lips so feverishly red! But that is a
+secondary matter: what must strike every one who looks at her to-day is
+the transfigured light in her eyes,--a light shining as through tears.
+
+"Come quickly!" her grandmother calls. "I have a surprise for you." But
+Erika does not come quickly: she walks slowly through the blooming
+garden to her grandmother, who has an open letter in her hand.
+
+The little garden is basking in the sunshine; the heavens are
+cloudless; the lagoon looks as if it were sprinkled with diamonds, as
+the black gondolas glide past, the sinewy brown throats of the
+gondoliers shining like bronze. In the fragrant garden can be heard,
+now loud, now faint, the sound of gay voices on the water mingled with
+the constant lapping of the waves and the jangle of church-bells.
+
+"From whom does this letter come?" her grandmother asks Erika, with a
+smile.
+
+"I--I cannot imagine," the girl murmurs. Her pale cheeks grow paler,
+and a fixed look comes into her shining eyes.
+
+"Indeed? From whom should a letter come which I am so glad to receive?"
+
+Erika starts.
+
+"From Goswyn!" says her grandmother. "But what a face is that!"
+
+"Am I to be as glad as you are because Goswyn at last condescends to
+take some notice of the kind sympathy you have shown him?" says Erika.
+But the old hard intonation of her voice is gone: it sounds weary and
+dull.
+
+"Never mind!" her grandmother rejoins, triumphantly. "First read the
+letter, and then tell me if you still have the faintest disposition to
+be vexed with him. Whether you have any regard for him or not, the
+letter will please you. He asks, among other things, whether we shall
+be in Venice next week, and if he may come to us here."
+
+Erika holds the letter in her hands, but when she fixes her eyes upon
+it the bold distinct characters swim before them. She looks away into
+the dazzling sunlight above the lagoon.
+
+Among the black gondolas with white lanterns she now perceives Prince
+Helmy in his yellow cutter, which usually lies at anchor in front of
+the Hotel Britannia. Espying the two ladies, the Prince clambers up to
+them over one or two gondolas, and asks, "Can you ladies not be induced
+to intrust yourselves to me? It would be far pleasanter to go to
+Chioggia in my cutter than in the steamer."
+
+"It certainly would," the old Countess replies, with more amiability
+than she is wont to display towards Prince Helmy. "But," she adds,
+"unfortunately I cannot have that pleasure. I have promised to act as
+chaperon to Constance Muehlberg's party, and I cannot disappoint her."
+
+"I'm sorry."
+
+At this moment a merry old voice cries, "Your obedient servant,
+ladies!" It is Count Treurenberg, dressed in a light summer suit, all
+ready for the excursion to Chioggia. "You are going to Chioggia too?"
+
+"We are."
+
+"'Tis a pity you cannot go with us."
+
+"I have just been telling them," observes Prince Helmy.
+
+"Do you know whether Lozoncyi is to be of the party?" asks Treurenberg.
+
+"I have no idea," Countess Lenzdorff replies, rather coldly.
+
+"What do you think of the wife who has made her appearance so suddenly?
+Something of a surprise, eh?"
+
+"A surprise which does not interest me much," the Countess replies,
+haughtily.
+
+"Of course not. But there are some of our Venetian beauties who could
+hardly say as much. 'Tis odd that the fellow should have been so
+close-mouthed concerning his 'indissoluble tie.' I saw him once in
+Paris with the individual in question, but I never dreamed that that
+yellow-haired dame had any legitimate claim upon him. Probably a
+youthful folly."
+
+"A millstone that he has hung about his neck," Prince Helmy says,
+feelingly,--"a burden that will weigh him down to the earth. I am very
+sorry for him."
+
+"H'm!" Count Treurenberg drawls, "my pity is not so easily excited.
+Such women make an artist's life very comfortable; and she certainly
+has interfered but little with him hitherto." He rubs his hands with a
+significant glance.
+
+"Are you ready, Count?" Prince Helmy asks, after the pause that follows
+Treurenberg's words.
+
+The Count is ready, and takes leave of the ladies. Shortly afterwards
+they see him in the cutter with the Prince, who is helping his two
+sailors to hoist the tiny sail. The gentlemen wave a respectful
+farewell to the Lenzdorffs; the cutter glides off, at first slowly from
+among the gondolas, then more and more swiftly, skimming the water like
+a bird in the direction of the line of foam which marks the boundary of
+the open sea.
+
+It is a trifle which has made the weight upon Erika's heart heavier in
+the last minute. She has said to herself that never again after
+to-morrow will a man accord her the respectful courtesy just shown her
+by the two gentlemen in the cutter.
+
+Her attack of cowardice is a short one, however. Immediately afterwards
+she feels the joy of a fanatic who delights in suffering one pang more
+for his convictions.
+
+"I cannot see why we have not been called to lunch," Countess Lenzdorff
+remarks, consulting her watch; then, observing Erika, she is startled
+by the girl's looks. "What is the matter with you?" she asks, and when
+the girl's only answer is a rapid change of colour, the thought occurs
+to her for the first time, "Is it possible that she cares for
+Lozoncyi?--my proud Erika?" She observes her grand-daughter narrowly,
+and an ugly suspicion invades her heart. "What reply shall I make to
+Goswyn?" she thinks. "Good heavens! I had no idea! Perhaps it is only
+fancy. But if---- It would be my fault. And people call me shrewd! Poor
+child!"
+
+Meanwhile, Fritz announces that lunch is served.
+
+
+"My child, you are eating nothing," the old Countess says anxiously to
+her grand-daughter, who is doing her best to swallow a morsel of food.
+
+"I am not very well," Erika replies, in a faint, weary voice. How often
+those tones will ring through the old Countess's soul! "I have a slight
+headache," and she puts her hand to her head; "I feel as if a storm
+were coming; but there is not a cloud in the sky."
+
+"So, there is not a cloud to be seen. The sunshine is so powerful in
+the dining-hall that the shades have to be drawn down, thus diffusing a
+gray twilight through the room.
+
+"Let us go to our rooms," says the old Countess, with a sigh of
+discouragement. They go, and Erika seems to be making ready for the
+proposed expedition. But when her grandmother, fully arrayed, enters
+the girl's room half an hour afterwards, she finds her in a long white
+dressing-gown with loosened hair, leaning back in an easy-chair.
+
+"My child, my child! what is the matter with you?" the old lady
+exclaims, in terror.
+
+"Nothing," the girl replies, without lifting her downcast eyes. "A
+headache. You can see I meant to go, but I cannot: you must go without
+me. Give all kinds of affectionate messages to Constance, and tell her
+how sorry I am."
+
+"My dear child, I cannot go with those people if you are not well," the
+old lady says, beginning to take off her gloves. "No human being could
+expect me to do that."
+
+Erika is trembling violently. "But, grandmother," she replies, "it is
+only a headache. You can do me no good by staying at home, and you know
+I cannot bear to make a disturbance."
+
+"Yes, yes," says the grandmother. "But lie down, at least, my darling."
+
+"You could not disappoint Constance Muehlberg: you know she depends upon
+you, she needs your support," Erika goes on, persuasively.
+
+"Yes, that is true," the Countess admits.
+
+She notices that Erika has hastily brushed away tears from her eyes,
+and the suspicion which had assailed her below in the garden is
+strengthened. Perhaps it would be better to leave the girl in peace for
+a while, she says to herself.
+
+Meanwhile, Marianne appears, to say that the Countess Muehlberg is
+awaiting the ladies below in her gondola.
+
+"Go, grandmother dear," Erika says, faintly; "go!"
+
+"Yes, I will go; but first let me see you lie down, my child." She
+conducts Erika to the bed. "How you tremble! You can hardly stand." She
+arranges her long dressing-gown, strokes the girl's cheek, and kisses
+her forehead. She has reached the door, when she hears a low voice
+behind her say, "Grandmother!"
+
+She turns. Erika is half sitting up in bed, looking after her. "What is
+it, my child?"
+
+"Nothing, only I was thinking just now that I have not treated you as I
+ought, sometimes lately. Forgive me, grandmother!"
+
+The old lady clasps the trembling girl in her arms. "Little goose!"
+she says. "As if that were of any consequence, my darling! Only go
+quietly to sleep, that I may find you well when I return. Where is my
+pocket-handkerchief? Oh, there is Goswyn's letter: when you are a
+little better you can read it. You need not be afraid that I shall try
+to persuade you; that time has gone by; but I think the letter ought to
+please you. At all events, it is something to have inspired so
+thoroughly excellent a man with so deep and true an affection; and you
+will see, too, that you have been unjust to him. Good-bye, my darling,
+good-bye."
+
+For the last time Erika presses the delicate old hand to her lips. The
+Countess has gone. Erika is alone. She has locked her door, and is
+sitting on her bed with Goswyn's letter open on her lap. Her tears are
+falling thick and fast upon it. It reads as follows:
+
+
+"My very dear old Friend,--
+
+"Shall you be in Venice next week, and may I come to you there? I do
+not want you to tell me if I have any chance: I shall come at all
+events, unless Countess Erika is actually betrothed. This is plain
+speaking, is it not?
+
+"Have you known, or have you not known, that through all these years
+since my rejection by the Countess Erika not a day has passed for me
+that has not been filled with thoughts of her? In any case my conduct
+must have seemed inexplicable to you: probably you have thought me
+ridiculously sensitive. It is true, ridiculous sensitiveness, as I now
+see, has been the true cause of my foolish, unjustifiable behaviour,
+but it has not been the sensitiveness of a rejected suitor. God forbid!
+
+"I should never have been provoked by the Countess Erika's rejection of
+me,--no, never,--even if it had not been conveyed in so bewitching a
+way that one ought to have kneeled down and adored her for it. There
+was another reason for my sensitiveness. A certain person, whose name
+there is no need to mention, hinted that I was in pursuit of Countess
+Erika's money. From that moment my peace of mind was at an end. I could
+not go near her again, because, to speak plainly, I was conscious that
+I was not a suitable match for her.
+
+"You think this petty. I think it is petty myself,--so petty that I
+despise myself, and simply ask, am I any more worthy of so glorious a
+creature, now that I have a few more marks a year to spend?
+
+"I dread being punished for my obstinate stupidity. Perhaps there was
+no possibility of my winning her heart, but it was worth a trial, and
+she has a right to reproach me for never in all these years making that
+trial. Inconceivable as my long delay must appear to you, I am sure you
+can understand why I have not thus appealed to you lately, so soon
+after the terrible misfortune that has befallen me.
+
+"It was too horrible!
+
+"In addition to my sincere sorrow for my brother's death, I am
+tormented by the sensation that I never sufficiently prized the
+nobility of character which his last moments revealed. To turn so
+terrible a catastrophe to my advantage would have been to me
+impossible. I could not have done it, even although I had not been so
+crushed by the manner of his death that all desire, all love of life,
+has for some weeks seemed dead within me.
+
+"Yesterday I met Frau von Norbin, who has lately returned from her
+Italian tour. She informed me that Prince Nimbsch is paying devoted
+attention to Countess Erika, although at present with small
+encouragement.
+
+"Jealousy has roused me from my lethargy. And now I ask you once more,
+may I come to Venice? Unless something unforeseen should occur, I could
+obtain a leave without much trouble. Again I repeat, I do not ask you
+what chance I have,--I know that I have none at present,--but I only
+ask you, may I come?
+
+"Impatiently awaiting your answer, I am faithfully yours,
+
+ "G. v. Sydow."
+
+
+She read the letter to the last word, her tears flowing faster and
+faster. Then she threw herself on the bed, and buried her face among
+the pillows. A yearning desire assailed her heart, and thrilled through
+her every nerve, calling aloud, "Turn back! turn back!" But it was too
+late; she would not turn back. She was entirely possessed by the
+illusion that she was about to do something grand and elevating.
+
+A low knock at the door recalled her to herself. It was Marianne, who,
+instructed by the old Countess, came to see if she would not have a cup
+of tea.
+
+"By and by, Marianne," she called, without opening the door. "I want
+nothing at present. I am better."
+
+Marianne left, and Erika looked at her watch. Four o'clock! It was time
+to begin her final preparations.
+
+She gathered together all her trinkets,--an unusually large and
+valuable collection for a girl. She had been fond of jewelry, and her
+grandmother had denied her nothing. Without one longing thought of
+them, she selected all that were of special value, running through her
+fingers five strings of beautiful pearls, and calculating as she did so
+their probable worth. These she added to the heap, and then wrapped all
+together in a package, upon which she wrote "For the Poor." Then she
+sat down at her writing-table and explained her last wishes, arranging
+everything as one would who contemplated suicide. Not one of her
+numerous _protegees_ did she forget, commending them all to her
+grandmother's care.
+
+After everything in this respect that was necessary, or at least that
+she considered necessary, was arranged, she reflected that she must
+write a farewell to her grandmother.
+
+It was a terribly hard task, but after she had begun her letter there
+seemed to be no end to it. She covered three sheets, and there were yet
+many loving things to say. Now first she comprehended all that her
+grandmother had been to her of late years. She forgot how often the old
+Countess's philosophy had grated upon her, how often she had rebelled
+against it. How hard it was to leave her! But retreat was not to be
+thought of.
+
+And she wrote on.
+
+At last she concluded with, "Every one else will point the finger of
+scorn at me; you will bewail my course, but you will not call it evil,
+only foolish. Poor, dear grandmother! And you will mourn over the
+misery which I have voluntarily brought upon myself. It is terrible
+that I cannot fulfil the mission in life which lies so clearly before
+me without giving you pain. But I cannot help it! One thing consoles
+me. I know how large-minded you are: you will have to choose between
+the world and me, and you will be strong enough to resign the world and
+to turn to me, and then nothing will be wanting to me in my new life,
+let people slander me as they will!"
+
+Three times did Erika fold up the letter, and three times did she open
+it again to add something to it.
+
+At last it was finished. She put with it into the envelope the draft of
+her wishes as to the disposal of the effects she left behind her, and
+then asked herself where she should put the letter so that her
+grandmother might find it instantly upon her return. At first she took
+it to the Countess's room, but then, reflecting that the old lady would
+come at once to her bedside to see how she was, she laid it, with eyes
+streaming with tears, upon the table beside her bed. "Poor
+grandmother!" She kissed the letter tenderly as she left it.
+
+Now everything was finished: she had only to dress herself. But she was
+not content. Once more she sat down at her writing-table and wrote.
+This time the words came slowly and with difficulty from her pen, as if
+each one were torn singly from her bleeding heart.
+
+
+"My dear, faithful Friend,"--she began,--"Do not come to Venice. When
+this letter reaches you I shall have vanished from the world in which
+you live. I could not endure to have you hear from strangers of the
+step I am about to take, and so I write to you myself. Yes, when you
+read this letter I shall have broken with all that has constituted my
+life hitherto, and shall have fled with--with a married man. How
+grieved you will be when you read this! My whole soul cries out with
+pain as I think of it.
+
+"You will not understand it. 'Erika Lenzdorff fled with a married man!'
+It sounds incredible, does it not?
+
+"You know that I am not light-minded, nor corrupt, and so you will
+believe me when I tell you that the reasons which have induced me to
+take so terrible a step are unanswerable in my mind.
+
+"I can redeem the life of a noble and gifted man. His moral nature is
+deteriorating, he suffers frightfully, and I cannot avoid the
+conviction that without me he must go to destruction.
+
+"He hoped to be able to procure a divorce from his wife. It was
+impossible. Without hesitation I resolved of my own accord to follow
+him. In the midst of the agony which it has cost me to break with all
+my former associations, I am sustained by a sense of right.
+
+"It is grand and beautiful to suffer for a noble and highly-gifted
+fellow-being,--beautiful to be able to say, 'Providence has chosen me
+to shed light into his darkened soul.' I do not waste a thought upon
+what I resign in thus fulfilling my mission, but the consciousness of
+the pain I shall cause my dear grandmother and you weighs me to the
+earth. She will forgive me, and you, my poor friend, you will forget
+me. I would gladly find consolation in this conviction; but no, it does
+not comfort me. Of all that I must give up with my old life, your
+friendship is what I shall lack most painfully.
+
+"Goswyn! for God's sake do not judge me falsely and harshly! What I do,
+I do in the absolute conviction that it is right. If this conviction
+should ever fail me, then---- But I cannot harbour that idea!--it would
+be too terrible. I cannot be mistaken!
+
+"I have a fearful attack of cowardice as I write to you, and a sudden
+dread takes possession of me. Am I equal to the task I have undertaken?
+Will he always be content to live apart from the world with me alone?
+
+"I am prepared for that also. If his feeling for me should wane, my
+task will be done, he will need me no longer. Then I will vanish from
+his life, and from life itself, like a poor taper that is extinguished
+when the sun rises. I shall have the courage to extinguish it; it will
+be a trifle in comparison with what I am now doing. Oh, God! how hard
+it is! Goswyn, adieu! One thing more, and this I tell you because this
+is my farewell to you. Whether it will console you, or add one more
+pang to your sorrow, I cannot tell, but I am constrained to lay bare my
+heart before you: these are as it were the words of a dying woman. If
+last autumn you had said one kind word to me, I should now have been
+your wife, and you should not have repented it! All that is over. Fate
+had another destiny in store for me.
+
+"Once more, farewell!
+
+"Forgive me for causing you pain, and sometimes think of your poor
+friend,
+
+ "Erika Lenzdorff."
+
+
+Now all was done. She put on her travelling-dress, a plain dark suit in
+which she was wont to pay visits to the poor.
+
+She looked at the clock--seven! One half-hour more, and she must go;
+and she could not go without something to lend her physical strength.
+She rang for a cup of tea, swallowed it hastily, and for the last time
+walked through the four rooms occupied by her grandmother and herself.
+Then she took her travelling-bag, which she had packed with a few
+necessaries, put on her straw hat, and went.
+
+It was half-past seven: the servants were at their evening meal. No one
+noticed her departure at so unusual an hour. How often she had been
+seen leaving the hotel in the same dress to visit her poor people!
+
+She walked for some distance, and dropped her letter to Goswyn into the
+nearest post-box, feeling as she did so that she was casting her whole
+life thus far into a dark gulf whence it could never be recovered. Then
+she hired a gondola, an open one,--she could find no other,--and it
+pushed off with her.
+
+She was very weary; with her eyes fixed on vacancy, she leaned back
+among the black cushions.
+
+The tragic wretchedness of the situation no longer impressed her. She
+only felt that she was about to undertake a journey. If it were but
+over! Sssh--sssh--the strokes of the oars sounded monotonously in her
+ears: the gondola glided rapidly over the water.
+
+The garish daylight had faded; the spring twilight, with its
+incomparably poetic charm, was casting its transparent veil over
+Venice. The gondola glided on.
+
+Erika's battle was fought. She leaned back, pale and still, with
+gleaming eyes. The sound of the church-bells droned in her ears. Dulled
+to all that lay behind her, she was conscious of nothing save of the
+enthusiasm of a young hero ready to brave death for a sacred cause.
+
+Around her was the breath of the waning spring, and beneath her was the
+sobbing of the waves.
+
+
+It was later by about an hour and a half. The old Countess, who had
+felt it her duty to be present at the fete, had not thought herself
+obliged to remain until its close. She was very uneasy about Erika, and
+had gratefully accepted Prince Nimbsch's offer to take her home in his
+cutter, leaving Constance Muehlberg and her guests, with the Hungarian
+band that had been telegraphed for from Vienna for their amusement, to
+return to Venice in the steamer.
+
+With the velocity of a skimming swallow the little vessel shot through
+the water. Prince Nimbsch, leaving the management of the sail entirely
+to his sailors, leaned back beside the old lady among his very new
+velvet cushions, and made good-humoured, although futile, efforts to
+entertain her. She was absent: her thoughts were occupied with Erika's
+altered appearance.
+
+"Poor child!" she thought, "I was foolish. It was my fault; but how
+could I suspect it? She seemed so strong, so unsusceptible. It is the
+same folly, the same disease that attacks us all once in a lifetime. I
+had it myself: I can hardly remember it now. It hurts,--it hurts very
+much. But she has a strong character and a clear head. I am very sorry;
+I might have prevented it, if I had only known. My poor, proud Erika!
+What shall I write to Goswyn? Of course that he must come. I think she
+will be glad to see him: this cannot go very deep; but I am very
+sorry."
+
+Venice lay before them, gray and shadowy, a reflection of the pale
+summer sky, whence the sun had long disappeared, and where the stars
+were not yet visible.
+
+They reached the hotel, and the old Countess looked up at Erika's
+windows. "She is not in her boudoir," she said to herself. "Perhaps she
+is asleep."
+
+"Tell Countess Erika how stupid the _fete_ was, thanks to her absence,"
+the young Austrian said as he took his leave, "and how we all
+anathematized that headache for depriving us of her society. I shall
+call to-morrow, and hope to find her quite well again."
+
+He kissed the old lady's hand, and she hurried upstairs to her rooms.
+She softly entered Erika's apartments. The boudoir was dark, as she had
+seen from below. She gently opened the door of the bedroom; that was
+dark also. Had the poor child gone to bed? She approached the bed very
+softly, not to disturb her, and stooped above it. There was no one
+there.
+
+A foreboding of something terrible instantly took possession of her.
+For a moment she lost her head: she grew dizzy, and would have screamed
+and alarmed the house, but her voice died in her throat. Suddenly
+something fluttered down from the table upon which she leaned to
+support herself. She stooped to pick it up: it was a letter. She turned
+on the electric light and read it through. After the first few lines,
+half blind with grief, she would have tossed it aside,--what could it
+contain that she did not now know?--but at last she read it through,
+read every word to the very end, feeding her pain with each tender,
+loving expression of the unhappy, mistaken girl.
+
+Not for one moment did she blame Erika for what had happened: she
+blamed herself alone. She accused herself of plunging Erika into
+wretchedness, as years before she had done with her daughter-in-law.
+She had required of both of them that they should accede to her
+materialistic views. She had never allowed them to entertain any
+idealistic conception of life. She had never understood that such
+idealism was a necessity of their existence, and that if deprived of it
+in one shape they would take refuge in some exaggeration which
+might shield them from a life of coldly-calculating egotism. Her
+daughter-in-law's unhappiness had not affected her much; her
+grand-daughter's misery would blot the sun from her sky.
+
+She was so clear-sighted: ah, why was she so, when she could see
+nothing but what agonized her?
+
+For a creature like Erika it was as impossible to disregard the
+dictates of morality as it would be to breathe in the moon with lungs
+constructed for the atmosphere of the earth.
+
+There were women capable of braving the opinions of the world and of
+quietly going on their way, women for whom the pillory was converted
+into a pedestal as soon as they stood in it. But Erika was not one of
+these. Before the stars in their courses had twice appeared in the
+heavens she would writhe in misery. She had none of that self-exalting
+quality which must veil the moral lack of which she would surely be
+made conscious. Yes, she would then find no other name for the
+sacrifice she had made to the wretch who had been willing to receive it
+at her hands than the one which the world has given to it for centuries
+when it has been made to men by worthless women, inspired by no lofty
+desire. In her own eyes she would be a fallen woman.
+
+The moisture stood upon the old Countess's forehead. "My Erika! my
+proud, glorious Erika!" she murmured. She knew that the peril of a
+woman's fall must be measured by the moral height from which she falls.
+And Erika had fallen from a very lofty height. Her life was ruined.
+
+Once more she opened Erika's letter and read the line, "You will have
+to choose between the world and me." Choose! As if there could be any
+question of choice. Of course she was ready to open her arms to her and
+do for her what she alone could; but what could she do?
+
+Suddenly a picture arose in her memory,--a terrible picture.
+
+In the waiting-room of a railway-station she had once seen among some
+emigrants a poor woman with a child, a boy about six or seven years
+old. His face was frightfully disfigured by scars. All the passers-by
+stared at him, and some nudged one another and whispered together. The
+child first grew scarlet, then very restless, and finally burst into a
+passion of tears; whereupon the mother sat down upon a bench and hid
+the poor face in her lap.
+
+A quarter of an hour later, when the Countess passed the same spot the
+woman was still there with the child's face in her lap. She sat stiffly
+erect, glaring at the unfeeling crowd whose cruel curiosity had so hurt
+the boy, and with her rough hand she gently stroked his short light
+hair. The sight had made a profound impression upon the Countess. "She
+cannot sit there always, concealing in her lap her child's deformity,"
+she said to herself: "sooner or later she must again expose the poor
+creature to the gaze of the crowd."
+
+What now recalled this poor, powerless mother to her mind?
+
+She could do no more for Erika than hide her head in her lap from the
+contemptuous curiosity of the world. So entirely did this thought take
+possession of her imagination that she seemed to feel the warm weight
+of the poor humiliated head upon her knee; she raised her hand to
+stroke it, when with a start she awoke to consciousness. "Ah, even that
+will be denied me," she thought. "As soon as Erika comes to herself,
+she will cast away her life. Yes, all is over,--all,--all!"
+
+Marianne came into the room. She waved her away without a word. She
+never thought of inventing a reason to the maid for Erika's absence.
+She sat there mute and motionless, looking into the future. A vast
+misfortune seemed to have engulfed the world, and she alone was left to
+suffer, she alone was to blame.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+Lozoncyi had gone to the station. He had delayed until the latest
+minute, intimidated by the difficulties of his undertaking, swayed by
+intense agitation. At last, passion for Erika had gained the mastery,
+although it had shrunk to very small dimensions. All the poetry had
+faded out of it. The lofty conception of life and its duties which had
+lately raised him above himself had vanished like a fit of intoxication
+of which nothing is left save a torturing thirst. Will she come? he had
+asked himself, with quivering nerves, as he sprang from the gondola,
+and, after purchasing the tickets, looked around him anxiously.
+
+He had in fact expected that she would be there before him: he was
+disappointed at not finding her. He went out upon the steps leading
+from the railway-station to the Canal, and looked abroad over the
+shining green water. As each gondola approached he said to himself,
+"Here she comes." But no; she did not come.
+
+The first bell rang. He went on the platform, his pulses throbbing
+feverishly. While he had been sure that she would come he had been
+comparatively calm; now his longing for her knew no bounds. He eagerly
+scanned every woman whom he saw in the distance.
+
+Fortunately, he saw no one whom he knew: the train was not very full.
+
+The second bell rang; the passengers hurried into their several
+compartments, porters ran to and fro with travelling-bags and trunks,
+farewells were waved from the windows of the train. The third bell
+rang, and the train steamed noisily out of the station. She had not
+come.
+
+His disappointment was largely mingled with anger, and was so intense
+that it amounted to physical nervous pain. "At the last moment her
+courage has failed her," he told himself. But then her pale beautiful
+face, lit up with enthusiasm, arose before his mind's eye, and in the
+midst of his frenzy of passion he was conscious of the yearning
+tenderness which had been a chief element in his feeling for her. "No,"
+he said to himself, "even if her courage has failed her, she is not one
+to break her word. She must have been prevented at the last moment."
+
+A burning desire for certainty in the matter mastered him. He went to
+the Hotel Britannia, under the pretext of calling upon the Lenzdorffs.
+He was told that her Excellency had gone out early in the afternoon and
+had not yet returned. He hesitated for a moment, and then, in a tone
+the indifference of which surprised himself, he asked if he could see
+the Countess Erika, as he had a message for her. The porter, a
+presuming fellow who meddled in everybody's affairs, informed him that
+the young Countess had just gone out, but would probably return
+shortly.
+
+"Why do you think so?" asked Lozoncyi.
+
+"Because she was not in evening dress. She went out in a street suit,
+and carried a leather bag in her hand: that always means 'charity' with
+the young Countess. I know the bag: I have often carried it for her to
+the gondola. This time she walked, and carried it herself. She is a
+little----" he touched his forehead with his forefinger, "but a good
+lady: she is always giving."
+
+Lozoncyi stayed no longer. He got into his gondola again, uncertain
+what to do. What could have kept her? After some reflection, he went
+again to the railway-station. "She has been detained by some
+acquaintance; she will be here for the next train," he thought. He
+waited until the next train left,--in vain. Then a fierce anger against
+her arose within him and transcended all bounds. He forgot that he
+himself had delayed for a moment. He could not find words bitter enough
+to express his contempt for her. He never should have taken such a step
+of his own accord: he had simply acquiesced in the inevitable. She had
+carried him away by her enthusiasm, which had levelled all barriers
+between them, and now--now her cowardice had left him in the lurch. It
+was hardly worth while to devise so fine a drama, when it was never to
+be played out! How stupid he had been ever to believe that it could
+possibly be played out! he ought to have known that at the last moment
+the censor would prohibit it. In the midst of his anger he experienced
+a sensation of dull indifference. What did anything matter? everything
+of importance in his life was at an end: what became of the rest he did
+not care. He had been lured on by a Fata Morgana; he laughed at the
+thought that he had taken it for reality,--a dull, joyless laugh,--and
+then--he could not spend the night at the station--he resolved to go
+home.
+
+It was about ten o'clock when he passed through the green door of his
+house and along the narrow corridor into the garden. The moon was high
+in the sky, and the trees and bushes cast pitchy shadows upon the
+bluish light lying upon the grass and gravel paths. The air was warm;
+rose-leaves lay scattered everywhere; Spring was laying aside her
+garments, and there was a dull weariness in the atmosphere.
+
+Lozoncyi, with bowed head, walked towards the atelier, where was the
+portrait. On a sudden he heard a light foot-fall behind him. He turned,
+and stood as if rooted to the earth.
+
+"Erika!"
+
+She came towards him lovely as an angel. Her head was bare, and her
+golden hair gleamed in the moonlight.
+
+"Erika!" he exclaimed, hoarsely, without advancing a step towards her.
+He took her for an illusion conjured up by his fancy. But as she drew
+near he felt the reality of her young life beside him. "Then it is
+really you?" he murmured. "I thought it a phantom to deceive me. Why
+are you here?"
+
+"No wonder you ask," she said, and her voice expressed unutterable
+compassion. "I come to bid you farewell."
+
+"Farewell!" he gasped. "Then I was right to doubt you. And yet how
+bitterly I have reproached myself because----"
+
+"Because----?" she asked, sadly.
+
+"Because I ventured to suppose you had lost courage. What could I
+think? I waited for you at the station from one train to the next: you
+did not come. Then I told myself that you had simply treated me to a
+farce. But I cannot believe that now: as I look into your dear face I
+can find there no cowardice, nothing paltry. You have been detained
+against your will, and you are here yourself to tell me so. It is noble
+of you, Erika! my Erika!"
+
+He drew closer to her, and extended his arms towards her: she evaded
+them.
+
+"All is over between us," she said, wearily. "It cannot be."
+
+She saw him turn ashy pale in the moonlight.
+
+"Over? It cannot be? Erika! What does this mean? Have you robbed me of
+all self-control only to desert me thus at the last moment? I cannot
+believe it of you, Erika!" There was passionate entreaty in his voice.
+Again he stretched out his arms towards her: gently, but firmly, she
+repulsed him.
+
+"Do not touch me," she begged. "I can scarcely stand. Something
+horrible has happened; I must tell you of it as quickly as possible,
+but I cannot stand upright." She grasped the bough of the mulberry-tree
+around which the climbing roses were wreathed, and as she did so the
+bough shook, and a cloud of white rose-leaves fluttered to the ground.
+All about her was fading! How sultry the night was!
+
+She sat down on the bench beneath the mulberry, above her the moonlit
+sky with its hosts of stars, at her feet the fading garment of the
+spring.
+
+Then she began her story: "I was on my way to the station. I should
+have been punctual: perhaps I should have been there before you. I was
+convinced that I was doing right, and so long as that was so I could
+not delay. The way to the station leads past this house. My gondola had
+not yet reached the bridge that spans this canal when I heard a loud
+splash in the water. A woman had thrown herself from the bridge. You
+can imagine my horror. In an instant the suspicion darted into my mind
+that it might be your wife. I implored my gondolier to save her, and he
+plunged into the water just in time. It was indeed your wife, whom I
+could not but feel I had thus hunted to death. She lay in the bottom of
+the gondola, covered with sea-weed and slime--oh, horrible! I brought
+her home. We carried her up-stairs, with Lucrezia's help, and then
+recalled her to life. That was comparatively easy; but scarcely had she
+opened her eyes when she was seized with frightful spasms of the chest,
+and I feared she would die."
+
+Lozoncyi had listened breathlessly; now he nodded slowly. "I know she
+suffers from such attacks frequently," he said, bitterly, "but they are
+not dangerous: they are usually the result of a fit of fury."
+
+"That I did not know," Erika murmured, in the same weary, self-accusing
+voice,--the voice of a criminal arraigning herself. "Her condition made
+a terrible impression upon me. We put her to bed, and I stayed with her
+while Lucrezia went for a physician. She returned without him, but the
+unfortunate woman seemed better and calmer, and I was about to leave
+her, when I heard your step in the corridor. I came hither to take
+leave of you. Forgive me, and farewell!" She had risen from the bench,
+and held out her hand to him; her eyes were full of tears.
+
+He did not take her hand. "And for this you would desert me?" he
+exclaimed, angrily. "You have given me no reason,--not the slightest.
+That devil up-stairs has simply played you a trick,--nothing more. Can
+you not see it? She knew what we were about to do, and watched for you:
+she had not the least idea of taking her own life."
+
+"I do not know," replied Erika, passing her hand across her brow: "it
+may be that she meant only to prevent me from arriving in time at the
+station. But it was frightful: the canal is very deep there; she would
+surely have been drowned; and how could I have lived after witnessing
+her death? No! as I sat beside her bed a veil seemed to fall from my
+eyes,--a veil which had blinded me to what I was doing. I saw that,
+with the best will in the world, I could do only harm. I was ready to
+give my life for you,--I am always ready for that,--but I must not
+sacrifice the lives of others who stand in close relation to you and to
+me; I cannot!--I cannot! I ought not to have robbed you of your peace,
+to have taken from you the power of self-renunciation; I acknowledge
+it. If you could but know how bitterly I reproach myself, how fearful
+it is for me to see you suffer! My poor friend, I entreat your
+forgiveness from my very soul!" She took his hand and humbly touched it
+with her lips.
+
+The night grew more sultry and oppressive. A bewildering fragrance
+exhaled from the earth, from the plants, from the faded blossoms on the
+ground, and from the fresh buds opening to life. The moonlight fell
+full upon the statue of a dancing faun beneath an acacia-tree, and upon
+the scattered rose-leaves around it.
+
+Hitherto Lozoncyi had stood still, with bowed head. But at the touch of
+her lips upon his hand he looked up. His veins ran fire.
+
+"Farewell!" she murmured, gently.
+
+He repeated "Farewell!" and then suddenly added, "Will you not take one
+more look at the studio before you go?"
+
+She found nothing unusual in this request. He led the way; she followed
+him, her whole being filled with compassion: she would have been nailed
+to the cross to relieve his pain,--the pain for which she was to blame.
+
+The moonlight flooded the studio, lending an unreal appearance to the
+room, and in the magic light stood forth the figure of 'Blind Love,'
+athirst to reach its goal, staggering in the mire.
+
+From the garden breathed a benumbing odour, and from the far distance
+floated towards the pair, like a yearning sigh, the song of the
+Venetian night-minstrels.
+
+Erika looked about her sadly. "It was fair!" she murmured. "I thank you
+for it all. Adieu!"
+
+She held out both her hands to him; she had wellnigh offered him her
+lips, in the desperation of her compassion.
+
+He took her hands in his and bent over them. "It is, perhaps, better
+so," he said, and his voice had never been so tremulous and yet so
+tenderly beguiling. "The sacrifice you would have made for me was too
+great: I ought not to have accepted it at your hands. And you are
+right, we must spare those who are near to us; it must be. But for
+God's sake do not desert me quite! do not consign me to utter misery!"
+
+She looked at him with eyes of wonder. She could not comprehend. What
+was there left for her to do for him?--what?
+
+He kissed her hands alternately: she did not notice how he drew her
+towards him until she felt his hot breath upon her cheek. Then he said,
+softly, very softly, "You must return to your grandmother tonight, I
+know; you cannot devote your life to me; but--oh, Erika! our existence
+is made up of moments--grant me a moment's bliss now and then! you will
+not be the poorer, and I--I shall be richer than a king! The world
+shall never know; no shadow shall fall upon you, be sure----"
+
+At last she understood. She tore her hands from his grasp; a hoarse
+sobbing cry escaped her lips, and without a word she turned and fled
+past the faun gleaming in the moonlight, past the fading blossoms,
+across the garden, through the long cold corridor, without once taking
+breath until the green door with the lion's head had closed behind her.
+A despairing cry pursued her: "Erika! Erika!" It was the voice of the
+man who had been suddenly aroused to the consciousness of what he had
+done.
+
+But she never heeded it: she had a horror of him.
+
+For a moment she stood uncertain on the border of the canal. Her
+gondolier had departed, having judged it best to be rid as soon as
+possible of his wet clothes. It was late, and she was alone.
+
+Around her was the ghostly moonlight, before her the dark lapping
+water. She was not afraid: what was there to fear? But, with the world
+in ruins as it were about her, what should she do? What, except return
+to the Hotel Britannia?
+
+She threaded her way through the zigzag narrow streets, across bridges
+and along the shores of the canals, her eyes bent on the ground. It
+never occurred to her that any one whom she knew could meet her
+wandering thus late at night with uncovered head; for she had left her
+hat in the sick woman's room. All through these last terrible hours she
+had had no thought for her reputation. She walked on and on. Suddenly
+there fell upon her ear,--
+
+
+ "Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie,
+ Toi, qui n'as pas d'amour?
+ Comment vis-tu----"
+
+
+As she crossed a narrow canal by a small bridge, the singers' gondola
+came directly towards her. She saw it close at hand. The soprano was a
+faded, hollow-cheeked woman, the men were quite ragged.
+
+Was that the phantom that had lured her on all through the spring?
+
+The guttering candles in the gondola were burned almost into the
+sockets. One of the paper lanterns took fire. The boat glided beneath
+the bridge. When it emerged on the other side the lights were
+extinguished, the singers silent. The gondola floated drearily on, a
+black formless spot in the moonlight.
+
+Shortly afterwards Erika found a gondola in which she reached the
+hotel.
+
+
+In consequence of the arrival of a large number of fresh guests, the
+hotel was brilliantly lighted, all the doors were open, and Erika went
+up the staircase to her room without attracting special notice.
+
+"Perhaps," she thought, "my grandmother has not yet returned: I may be
+able to recover my letter before she has read it." She went instantly
+to her bedroom. Light issued from the chink of the door: she was too
+late. She opened the door. There, beside her bed, sat her grandmother
+in an arm-chair, erect and stiff, her eyes looking unnaturally large in
+her ashy-pale face, where the last few hours had graven deeper furrows
+than had been made by all the other experiences of her seventy years.
+
+A strange cry escaped the old Countess's lips when she perceived the
+wan, sad apparition in the door-way. Half rising from her seat, her
+hands grasping the arms of the chair, she gazed at the girl as if she
+had been a corpse newly risen from the tomb. Trembling in every limb,
+"Erika!" she stammered. She tried to walk towards her grandchild, and
+could not. Erika's strength barely sufficed to carry her to the
+bedside, where she sank at her grandmother's feet and laid her head in
+her lap.
+
+Neither could speak for a while. The old lady only stroked the girl's
+hair with her delicate hand, which grew warmer every minute. The girl
+sobbed. After some minutes the grandmother bent over her and murmured,
+"Erika, tell me how you have been rescued at the eleventh hour. Where
+have you been?"
+
+Erika lifted her head, and in a faint voice told all that had occurred
+until the moment when she had gone down into the garden to take leave
+of Lozoncyi. There she hesitated.
+
+Her grandmother listened breathlessly, and in an instant the girl began
+afresh: "I had forgotten myself. I would have done more for him than
+was ever done for man before; I would have borne him aloft to the
+stars. And he--the way was too hard; he had no heart for it; he would
+have dragged me down into the mire from which I would fain have rescued
+him. And when at last I understood, I fled----" A fit of convulsive
+sobbing interrupted her: she could not go on.
+
+Her grandmother understood it all. She said not a word, only gently
+stroked the poor head in her lap. After a while she persuaded Erika to
+lie down, helped her to undress, and smoothed the pillow in which the
+poor child hid her tear-stained face.
+
+She sat at the bedside until the dull weariness sure to follow upon
+intense nervous agitation produced its effect and the girl slept. The
+grandmother still sat there, motionless, until far into the morning.
+
+About nine o'clock Marianne softly opened the door of the room. Erika
+awoke. She had forgotten everything,--when her glance fell upon a small
+black travelling-bag in the maid's hand.
+
+"Please, your Excellency, a gondolier has just brought this bag,"
+Marianne explained. "He says the Countess Erika left it in the gondola
+yesterday after the accident,--after the fright, I mean: he told me all
+about it. Poor Countess Erika! what a terrible thing for her! But it
+was fortunate, too, because she was able to save the poor woman. The
+gondolier has come for the hundred lire which the Countess promised him
+for getting the woman out of the water."
+
+The old Countess drew a deep breath. Everything was turning out more
+favourably for Erika than she had dared to hope. The adventure, which
+would of course be discussed freely by all the hotel servants, would
+explain Erika's long absence and strange return.
+
+"Is the Countess Erika ill?" asked the faithful Marianne, with an
+anxious glance at the young girl, whose cheeks were flushed with fever.
+
+"Only suffering from the effects of agitation," said Countess
+Lenzdorff, who had meanwhile brought the money and given it to the
+maid.
+
+"No wonder! Poor Countess Erika!" the servant murmured as she withdrew.
+
+Weary and wretched, Erika again closed her eyes. When she opened them
+she saw her grandmother at the writing-table, her head resting on her
+hand, and a blank sheet of paper before her.
+
+"To whom are you writing, grandmother?"
+
+"I want to write to Goswyn," the old Countess replied, in a low tone.
+"I must answer his letter; and--I am not sure----" She hesitated.
+
+Upon Erika's mind flashed the remembrance of the letter she had written
+the previous day to Goswyn. She had forgotten it.
+
+"Of course I must tell him not to come," said her grandmother.
+
+Erika sighed. Must she give her grandmother that pain too? At last she
+managed to say, in a voice that was scarce audible, "He will not come:
+he----"
+
+Startled by a terrible suspicion, her grandmother looked at her in
+dismay. Erika's face was turned away from her.
+
+"Well?" asked the old Countess.
+
+"I wrote to him yesterday," poor Erika stammered, "telling him what I
+was about to do. I thought he must hear of it sooner or later, and I
+wished that he should hear it in a way that would give him least pain."
+
+"Oh, Erika! Erika!"
+
+But Erika lay still, her head turned away from her grandmother. After a
+while she said, almost in a whisper, "Grandmother, please write to him
+that"--she buried her face in the pillow--"that---- Oh, grandmother,
+tell him--that--he need not despise me!"
+
+Her grandmother made no reply. For a while absolute silence reigned in
+the room. Then Erika suddenly heard a low sob. She looked round. The
+Countess had covered her face with her hands, and was weeping.
+
+It was the first time since Erika had known her that she had seen her
+shed tears.
+
+
+
+
+ CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+No trace of spring can be seen. The garden of the Hotel Britannia
+is a sunburned desert, where the rose-bushes show withered leaves
+and not a single bud. The breath of the yellowish-gray lagoons is
+stifling. All is limp and faded,--both vegetation and human beings. The
+hotels are emptying: the season here is over, and the season for the
+watering-places not yet begun. Moreover, there is in Venice an epidemic
+of typhus fever.
+
+Scarcely half a dozen people assemble every evening at the
+_table-d'hote_ of the Hotel Britannia, and the small table appropriated
+to the Lenzdorffs in the far corner of the dining-hall is deserted.
+
+Nevertheless the Lenzdorffs have not left the hotel; but Erika is ill,
+stricken down by malarial fever, and the old Countess does not leave
+her bedside.
+
+The attack was sudden,--sudden so far as could be seen by those in
+daily intercourse with her, but pronounced very gradual by the
+physician, who maintained that the disease had long been latent in the
+girl's system.
+
+In the afternoon of the day after that upon which Erika had, as by a
+miracle, escaped the most terrible peril of her life, she had, by her
+grandmother's desire, donned a charming gown and had gone with the old
+Countess to pay a round of farewell visits. She had gone patiently in
+the gondola from one palazzo to another, and with a pale, calm face had
+answered question after question as to the terrible catastrophe which
+her timely presence had been the means of preventing.
+
+There were various versions concerning the reasons for Frau Lozoncyi's
+attempt at suicide: thanks to the jealousy of Lozoncyi's numerous
+feminine adorers, none of these versions approached even distantly the
+truth, for none of his adorers would have admitted that the artist had
+ever bestowed a serious thought upon Erika.
+
+In the evening she had dressed for dinner, and then, overcome by
+fatigue, she had lain down upon her bed to rest for a quarter of an
+hour. She did not rise from it for weeks.
+
+Now the disease has left her. The physician has not only allowed but
+advised her to leave her bed. Every forenoon at eleven o'clock Marianne
+and the old Countess dress her,--ah, how tenderly and carefully!--and
+then, leaning heavily upon her grandmother's arm, she walks slowly
+about the room.
+
+It is nearly six o'clock. The intense heat has somewhat abated, and
+Erika is sitting in the most comfortable arm-chair to be had in the
+hotel, her head resting upon a pillow, her hands in her lap. And what
+hands they are!--so slender, so white and helpless! To please her
+grandmother, she has swallowed a few spoonfuls of soup,--without the
+slightest desire to eat,--as if it had been medicine.
+
+"Are you comfortable, my darling? Shall I not get you another pillow?"
+her grandmother asks. The old Countess is hardly to be recognized, her
+treatment of her grand-daughter is so humbly tender, so pathetically
+anxious. Her force and rigour have vanished: she can only pet and spoil
+Erika; she cannot incite her to any interest in life.
+
+"Ah, grandmother dear, everything is most comfortable," Erika replies.
+As if a pillow more or less could procure her ease!
+
+"Shall I read aloud to you, my child?"
+
+"If you will be so kind."
+
+Her grandmother makes choice of a new novel of Norris's. As she reads,
+she looks across the book at Erika: the girl is not listening. The old
+Countess stops, and drops the book in her lap. Erika is not aware that
+she has ceased to read.
+
+After a while she looks up. "Grandmother," she asks, gently, "did no
+letters come while I was ill?"
+
+"Of course," her grandmother replies. "I had letters every day from
+various friends and acquaintances, asking how you were. Hedwig Norbin
+is with her married daughter in Via Reggia, and I had to send her
+bulletins reporting your condition three times a week."
+
+Erika's thin cheeks flush slightly. "And--did no letters come from
+Berlin?" she asks, with averted face.
+
+Her grandmother hesitates for a moment, and then says, "I do not
+correspond with any one in Berlin. I have written as few letters as
+possible during your illness."
+
+Erika's head droops. "How ashamed my grandmother must be for me, if she
+has not even told Goswyn that I am ill!" she thinks.
+
+For a while there is silence; then Erika whispers, "Grandmother, I am
+very tired. I should like to lie down."
+
+Her grandmother leads her to a lounge, where she lies down, with her
+face turned to the wall. She is very quiet. Is she sleeping?
+
+The old Countess softly leaves the room.
+
+In Erika's boudoir she walks to and fro a couple of times, then sits
+down and takes up a book, but it soon drops in her lap unread. For
+weeks she has felt no interest in the comfortless philosophy of the
+books which were formerly her favourites. The book slips to the floor;
+she does not stoop to pick it up; with hands clasped in her lap
+she ponders upon many things that had not been wont to occupy her
+thoughts. She never notices a bustle in the hotel most unusual at this,
+the dull season, until Luedecke opens the door and announces, "Your
+Excellency, Herr von Sydow wishes to know if he may come up, or if your
+Excellency----"
+
+She starts. "Herr von Sydow!" she repeats. "Show him up,--very softly,
+of course: Countess Erika is asleep."
+
+A moment afterwards he enters the room.
+
+At first she hardly recognizes him. His features are sharper; the hair
+about his temples is gray.
+
+"My dear child, you here?" she says, cordially, rising and advancing a
+few steps to meet him.
+
+He kisses her hand. "I learned only three days ago that she is ill. How
+is she?"
+
+"Erika?"
+
+"Who else could it be?" he replies, impatiently.
+
+"The disease is cured; but she does not get well. She gains no
+strength. She has not improved in the last ten days; she has no
+appetite, takes no interest in anything. She is always weary."
+
+"What does her physician say?" Goswyn is sitting beside his old friend,
+leaning forward and listening eagerly to every word that falls from her
+lips. Both speak very softly.
+
+"The physician begins to be anxious; there is not much to say. Entire
+relaxation of the nervous system,--want of vitality,--no love of
+life----"
+
+"No love of life! Nonsense!" exclaims Goswyn. "Life must be made dear
+again for her."
+
+Suddenly they hear a low rustle. The door leading into Erika's bedroom
+opens; on the threshold stands a slender figure in a long white
+dressing-gown, her hair loosely knotted at the back of her head.
+
+What is there in the poor thin face, in the large melancholy eyes, that
+suddenly reminds Goswyn of the unformed, timid child whom he met on the
+staircase in Bellevue Street on the evening of Erika's arrival in
+Berlin?
+
+"Goswyn," she stammers, gazing at him, "you here? What are you doing
+here?"
+
+He goes to her and takes her hand. "I heard that you were ill, and I
+came to help your grandmother to carry you back to your home."
+
+Her pale lips quiver, and her weak slender form sways uncertainly, and
+then--before he is conscious of it himself--he does what he ought to
+have done years before: he takes her in his arms and kisses her
+forehead.
+
+A wondrous sensation of perfect content, of blissful freedom from all
+desire, overcomes her; she clasps her emaciated arms about his neck,
+and murmurs, "Goswyn, do you really want me now,--now, after all the
+pain I have given you?"
+
+He only clasps her closer to his heart. He, who for years has been
+dallying with opportunity because his courage failed him in view of
+little obstacles which would never have daunted another man, now leaps
+at a bound over the first real obstacle in his way. "What!" he cries,
+"do you suppose I blame you for that folly, Erika? No; for me your
+illness began weeks before it did for the physicians."
+
+Meanwhile, he has tenderly conducted her to a lounge, upon which,
+exhausted as she is, she sinks down.
+
+"I must make one confession to you, Erika," he whispers. "I was
+almost out of my senses in that terrible twenty-four hours after I
+received your letter and before I received your grandmother's; my gray
+temples bear witness to that; but then--then I took delight in your
+letter,--yes, in that terrible letter. For I learned from it what I had
+never ventured to hope,--that you cared for me a little, Erika."
+
+"Ah, Goswyn, you always were, of all men in this world, the most
+indispensable one to me!"
+
+How fair life can be! For a while the lovers, hand clasped in hand,
+talk blissfully; then Erika looks round for her grandmother. But the
+old Countess has vanished: they do not need her at this moment. She is
+sitting in her own room, delighting in her two young people, recalling
+her far-distant past, as she says to herself that under certain
+circumstances love may be a beautiful thing, and when it is
+beautiful----
+
+
+
+ THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Countess Erika's Apprenticeship, by Ossip Schubin
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COUNTESS ERIKA'S APPRENTICESHIP ***
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