There was a peculiar expression in the glance which the young artist riveted upon his friend, while with apparent unconcern he took up his palette and brushes and began to paint again. "You surprise me. Count Raoul probably prides himself upon his long line of ancestors, but I have never found him as haughty as is usual with his class. He must have some reason for disliking you."
"Or I for disliking him? I think each is pretty well aware of the other's sentiments."
"Aha! now it's coming," Hans muttered to himself, while he painted away. Then aloud, he continued, quietly: "You see, I have only known the amiable side of the Count. As for his betrothal, every one knows that it is all his grandfather's doing. His Excellency commanded, and the grandson bowed to his august will."
"So much the worse, and the more pitiable," Rodenberg burst forth. "Who forced him to obey? Why did he not refuse to comply? The fact is that this much-lauded, accomplished Steinrück is, with all his boasted chivalry, but a poor coward where there is any need of moral courage."
There was so passionate a hatred expressed in his words that Hans was startled. But with the egotism of the artist, who has no regard save for his work, and who overlooks all else, he never sought to discover the cause of his friend's almost savage irritability. He continued to gaze at him steadily, while his brush made stroke after stroke upon the canvas. "I think the Count would have come to grief if he had attempted any resistance," he observed. "They say the general preserves the same discipline in his household as among his soldiers, and will not suffer any opposition to his will. You know your iron chief. How would you like to confront him with a frank 'no'?"
"I have said much more to him than merely 'no.'"
"You--to the general?" Hans was so astonished that for a moment he stopped painting. Michael forgot all his usual caution, and went on, carried away by his emotion: "To General Count Steinrück? Yes. He tried to quell me with his commanding glance, and ordered me to be silent in the tone to which every one else bows; but I was not silent. He had to hear from my lips what he had probably never in his life heard before. I hurled it ruthlessly in his teeth, and he listened. Now, indeed, we are done with each other, but he knows how much I value his name and his coronet, and that as for him and his entire race, I----"
"Would fain dash them down ten hundred thousand fathoms deep into the burning pit! At last!" the artist burst forth, exultantly, as he laid down his brush. "Bravo, Michael! Now you can be good-humoured again; I have got it!"
"Got what?" asked Michael.
"The expression, the glance of flame, for which I have been looking so long. You were incomparable in your indignation,--you were Saint Michael himself."