Heinrich looked him sharply in the face. "You are the Baron von Wergenthin-Recco."
"So that's your reason! But you must remember that there are a whole lot of people going about to-day who are prejudiced against one for that very reason—and manage to cast in one's teeth the fact of one's being a baron whenever they get a chance."
"Yes, yes, but I think you will agree with me that being ragged for being a baron is a very different matter than being ragged for being a 'Jew,' although the latter—you'll forgive me of course—may at times denote the better aristocracy. Well, you needn't look at me so pitifully," he added with abrupt rudeness. "I am not always so sensitive. I have other moods in which nothing can affect me in any way nor any person either. Then I feel simply this—what do you all know—what do you know about me...." He stopped, proudly, with a scornful look that seemed to pierce through the foliage of the arbour into the darkness. He then turned his head, looked round and said simply to George in quite a new tone: "Just look, we shall soon be the only ones left."
"It is getting quite cold, too," said George.
"I think we might still stroll a bit through the Prater."
"Charmed."
They got up and went. A fine grey cloud hung over a meadow which they passed.
"The fraud of summer doesn't last after nightfall. It'll soon all be over," said Heinrich in a tone of unmitigated melancholy, while he added, as though to console himself: "Well, one will be able to work."
They came into the Wurstelprater. The sound of music rang out from the restaurants, and some of the exuberant gaiety communicated itself to George. He felt suddenly swung out of the dismalness of an inn garden at autumn time and a somewhat painful conversation into a new world. A tout, in front of a merry-go-round, from which a gigantic hurdy-gurdy sent into the open air the pot-pourri cut of the "Troubadour" with all the effect of some fantastic organ, invited people to take a journey to London, Atzgersdorf and Australia. George remembered again the excursion in the spring with the Ehrenberg party. It was on this narrow seat inside the room that Frau Oberberger had sat with Demeter Stanzides, the lion of the evening, by her side, and had probably told him one of her incredible stories: that her mother had been the mistress of a Russian Grand Prince; that she herself had spent a night with an admirer in the Hallstadt cemetery, of course without anything happening; or that her husband, the celebrated traveller, had made conquests of seventeen women in one week in one harem at Smyrna. It was in this carriage upholstered in red velvet, with Hofrat Wilt as her vis-à-vis, that Else had lounged with lady-like grace, just as though she were in a carriage on Derby Day, while she yet managed to show by her manner and demeanour that, if it came to the point, she herself could be quite as childish as other persons of happier and less complex temperaments. Anna Rosner with the reins nonchalantly in her hand, looking dignified, but with a somewhat sly face, rode a white Arab; Sissy rocked about on a black horse that not only turned round in a circle with the other animals and carriages, but swung up and down as well. The boldest eyes imaginable flashed and laughed beneath the audacious coiffure with its gigantic black feather hat, while her white skirt fluttered and flew over her low-cut patent leather shoes and open-work stockings. Sissy's appearance had produced so strange an effect on a couple of strangers that they called out to her a quite unambiguous invitation. There had then ensued a short mysterious interview between Willy, who immediately came on the spot, and the two somewhat embarrassed gentlemen, who first tried to save their faces by lighting fresh cigarettes with deliberate nonchalance and then suddenly vanished in the crowd.
Even the side-show with its "Illusions" and "Illuminated Pictures" had special memories for George. It was here, while Daphne was turning into a tree, that Sissy had whispered into his ear a gentle "remember" and thus called to his memory that masked ball at Ehrenberg's at which she had lifted up her lace veil for a fleeting kiss, though presumably he had not been the only one. Then there was the hut where the whole party had had themselves photographed: the three young girls, Anna, Else and Sissy in the pose of classical goddesses and the men at their feet with ecstatic eyes, so that the whole thing looked like the climax of a transformation scene. And while George was thinking of these little episodes there floated up through his memory the way in which he and Anna had said goodbye to-day, and it seemed full of the most pleasant promise.