"I want to talk with you. Why do you keep at the door there? Come in."
The young man slowly approached. He wore the same Sunday suit which he had worn on that eventful day, but it had evidently been exposed to the wind and rain.
"I have been anxious about you," Valentin said, reproachfully. "No trace of you for forty-eight hours! Where have you been?"
"In the forest."
"And where did you pass the nights?"
"In the empty herdsman's-hut on the mountain."
"In all the storm? Why did you not go home?"
"I knew that Wolfram would attempt to beat me, and I do not mean to be beaten again. I wished to spare both him and myself what would have happened."
His answers sounded monotonous, but the old indifference had gone; there was something in Michael's whole air and bearing strange, gloomy, decided. He was very different from his former self. The priest looked at him with anxiety.
"Then you ought to have come to me. I expected you."