Before them lay the square, with the Maria Théresa memorial, in the brilliant glare of the noonday sun. It was a warm day, but a very high wind had arisen. It seemed to Bertha that Emil was looking at her with a scrutinising glance. At the same time, he appeared to her cold and strange, a very different man from what he had been when standing before the pictures in the Museum.
"Now we will say good-bye for the present," he said, after a time.
It made her feel somewhat unhappy to think that he was going to leave her.
"Won't you … or can't I come with you a little way?" she said.
"Well, no," he answered. "Besides, it is blowing such a gale. There's not much enjoyment to be had in walking side by side and having to hold your hat all the time, for fear it should blow away. Generally, it is difficult to converse if you are walking with a person in the street, and then, too, I have to be in such a hurry…. But perhaps I can see you to a carriage?"
"No, no, I shall walk."
"Yes, you can do that. Well, good-bye till we meet again this evening."
He stretched out his hand to her, and walked quickly away across the square. She gazed after him for a long time. He had taken off his hat and held it in his hand, and the wind was ruffling his hair. He went across the Ring, then through the Town Gate, and disappeared from Bertha's view.
Mechanically, and very slowly, she had followed him. Why had he suddenly grown so cold? Why had he taken his departure so quickly? Why didn't he want her to accompany him? Was he ashamed of her? She looked down at herself, wondering whether she was not dressed, after all, in a countrified and ridiculous manner. Oh, no, it could not be that! Moreover, she had been able to remark from the way in which people gazed at her that she was not looking ludicrous, but, on the contrary, decidedly pretty. Why, then, this sudden departure? She called to mind the period of their previous acquaintance, and it seemed to her that she could remember his having this strange manner even then. He would break off a conversation quite unexpectedly, whilst he suddenly became as though his thoughts had been carried away, and his whole being expressed an impatience which he could not master.
Yes, she was certain that he had been like that in those days also, though, perhaps, less strikingly so than now. She remembered, as well, that she had sometimes make jokes on the subject of his capriciousness, and had laid the responsibility at the door of his artistic temperament. Since then he had become a greater artist, and certainly more absent and irresponsible than ever.