She felt ashamed that Wolfgang should find it out.
"No, you go home," she said, intrenching herself behind a pout. "As you've not been to see us for so long, you needn't come to-day either. I'm angry with you."
"Angry with me--me? What have I done? I wasn't allowed to come to you, I mightn't--that's not my fault, surely. Frida!"
She commenced to run, her face quite scarlet; he ran beside her. "Frida! Frida, surely you can't be angry with me? Oh, Frida, don't be angry. Frida, let me go with you. At last I've met you, and then you behave like this?"
There was sorrow in his voice. She felt it, but she was angry all the same: why should he cling to her like that? Flebbe would not like it at all. And so she said in a pert voice: "We don't suit each other and never shall. You go with your young ladies. You belong to them."
"Say that once more--dare to do it!" He shouted in a rough voice, and raised his hand as though he would strike her. "Affected creatures, what are they to me?"
He was right--she had to confess it in her heart--he had never taken any notice of the young girls who lived in the villas around him. She knew very well that he preferred them to them all, and her vanity felt flattered; she said soothingly, but at the same time evasively: "No, Wölfchen, you can't go with me any more, it's not proper any more." And she held out her hand: "Good-bye, Wolfgang."
They were among the bushes in a small public garden in which there were benches, the villas lying at a good distance from it, quite hidden behind their front gardens. There was nobody in sight in the quiet radiance of the noonday sun. But even if somebody had come, it would not have made any difference; he seized hold of her with both hands in a kind of rage. "I am going with you--I shall not let you go."
She resisted forcibly: what was the stupid boy thinking of? "Let me go," she said, spitting at him like a little cat, "will you let me go at once? You hurt me. Just you wait, I'll tell Flebbe about it, he'll be after you. Leave me in peace."
He did not let her go. He held her clasped in his arms without saying a word, his books were again lying in the dust.