The air was grand, fresh and moist, reminiscent of summer’s breath while also prophetic of winter’s bite, and the Isar swept below them, carrying its hurry of tumult away, away, far into the west, towards a wealth of rose and golden sky. Between the glory and the water, in the middle distance, lay a line of roofs stretching irregularly into the blackness of their own shadows, and beyond them was the forest, to the fringing haze of whose bare branches the distance lent a softness not their own. The banks of the Promenade were still green, but the masses of vine that trailed in the green ripples were all of a crimson or reddish brown, and the shrubs showed here and there an echo of the same color.
It was beautiful and wonderful to see, and they stood still and feasted their eyes for some long minutes.
“Oh, Isar,” Rosina cried softly, holding her hand out towards the singing waters below, “when shall I see you again?”
“You will return some day,” her companion said hopefully.
“Who can tell?”
“But always you must come over some bridge to return to-night.”
She felt that such levity jarred upon her mood, and refused to return his smile. She did not like him to feel like smiling too often these days.
“Do not be of a bad humor,” he entreated. “I am this afternoon of such a good one; and how can you know that you will not return? A woman can never be decided, so you may very well see the Isar soon again. Vous comprenez?”
“Is it being bad-humored to be sad?” she asked; “and why can’t I be decided if I want to be?”
“Because,” he said, wisely, “you are a woman; and a woman is very foolish to ever be decided, for she always changes her mind; and then all her decided seems to have been quite useless.”