“I hope that I am not disturbing a flirtation.... Do let me sit down with you, Miss Garlett. Oh, and please, Mr. Helmer, do not go away ... you are among my favorites, because you are young still—comparatively speaking. The famous specimens of wisdom which papa collects around him are all too venerable for me; it is a genuine enjoyment to see two such fresh geniuses as you are.... You ought to marry—pardon me, I am chattering absurdities. Certainly, papa understands everything imaginable: making money in heaps, carrying out gigantic undertakings, universal politics, and dozens of other things—but not the education of daughters. Oh, look,” she cried, interrupting herself, “isn’t that lovely?”
She pointed to the dark horizon, where at that moment not merely one but four airships, each provided with dazzling lights, were maneuvering. They darted up and swooped down, made “figure eights” and loops, passed and repassed one another in premeditated regularity—a regular air-quadrille.
“Isn’t that still lovelier?” said Helmer, pointing to a shady clump of bushes where irregular points of light were flickering. “There, do you see?—fireflies! Nature is everywhere more beautiful than any of the works of men. And do you know also why these little creatures, otherwise so invisible, have put on such glittering coat-tails? They are in love and they are out a-wooing.... Nature always makes use of beauty when she is serving love.”
“I cannot answer for that, Mr. Helmer. It is my principle—for I am a reservoir filled to the brim with the strictest principles—to turn the conversation as soon as a man speaks the word love.”
“Yes, Miss Toker, you really give that impression,” laughed Franka.
Again a fascinating spectacle was presented to them—a great white quadrilateral sheet, such as are seen on the stage of a moving-picture theater, appeared on the horizon stretching up high into the sky and on it were projected magnificently colored living pictures. Immense pictures, for the force of the imagination multiplied their dimensions in proportion to the distance apparently equal to that of the stars; and yet it was only the trickery of diminutive films. It was a wholly new invention, based on the laws of the Fata Morgana. Many of the people present saw this spectacle for the first time and it filled them with wonder and awe.
“What shall we not discover before we get through, we worms of the earth!” cried Franka; “and how deep into the heavens even now all our mechanical apparatus penetrate!”
“Apparatus, yes,” murmured Chlodwig; “but not our minds!”
“Don’t be ungrateful, Helmer,” said Franka, reproachfully. “Does not the great success of your ‘Schwingen’ prove sufficiently that a wide circle of minds already feel a yearning for the heights? If it were not so, would you be so understood, so celebrated? Isn’t it true, Miss Toker, that the English translation of Helmer’s poem has aroused the greatest admiration in England and America?”
“Yes, I believe so; at least, papa says so. He is quite crazy over your ‘Schwingen.’ However, I haven’t read it. Papa thinks that you meant to express in poetry exactly the same as he tries to express with his Rose-Week ... but what that really means is a mystery to me.... I believe he would like just such a man for his son-in-law ... but you must not regard this as an offer of marriage, Mr. Helmer.... I shall accept only an American ... and if it should chance to be a European, then it must be at least a duke in the superlative degree—a grandduke or an archduke.... Those titles please me, and especially the way those grandees are addressed in German which, translated into English, would mean ‘Your Transparency, Your Serene Transparency’ ... would not a man appear like a bunch of Roentgen rays?... But now I must trot back to the salon. Good-bye!”