At the far end of the ballroom some thirty tziganes, women and men, in their picturesque costumes were making music. The men played and the women sang. The dancing couples whirled round in the scent-laden air.
Doctor Stahl's wife, a kindly German woman, received us with amiable smiles; Stahl himself greeted us with excited effusiveness. He was quite pale with two red spots on the summit of his cheeks. I was struck anew by his strange air of intoxication, for I knew he never touched wine. Immediately, from the end of the room Bozevsky came hastening to meet us, superb in his full uniform—blue tunic and scarlet belt.
“Hail Fata Morgana!” he cried. “Give me this dance,” and he put his arm round my waist. But I drew back.
“Alas, Prince Charming, I dare not.”
He turned pale; then he bowed, twirled on his heels and moved away. He did not come near me again until late in the evening. I saw him surrounded by women, who danced with him, smiling into his face, floating with languid grace in his arms.
I shrank into a corner of the vast room where tall plants and flowers screened me from the dancers.
“Why, what are you doing hidden here?” cried Stahl, coming up to me. His pupils were narrower than ever and his breath came and went in short gasps. He bent over me and scanned my face. “What are your thoughts, Countess Marie?”
“I have no thoughts,” I replied sadly.
“Then I will give you one,” said he laughing; “a blithe and comforting thought—think that a hundred years hence we shall all be dead!”
“True,” I answered, and a wave of unspeakable melancholy invaded my soul. “We may, perhaps, be dead even fifty years hence.”