"Hatred?" he broke forth. "Would you add sarcasm to your trifling? You have never for an instant been ignorant that I love you."
It sounded strange enough, this confession of love, uttered in a voice in which indignation and passion strove for the mastery, and with eyes in which there was no tenderness, but a menacing gleam: the emotion did, indeed, seem allied to hatred.
"And is this the way in which to woo?--to seek a woman's love?" asked Hertha, indignantly, while a secret dread, hitherto unknown to her, stirred in her heart.
"Woo?" he repeated, with extreme bitterness. "No, it is not; such wooing would hardly be allowed me,--a young, insignificant officer with a bourgeois name, owning nothing save himself and perhaps some hope for the future. It would soon be made clear to me, and that after a ruthless fashion, that I must not dare to lift my eyes to the Countess Steinrück; that her hand has long been promised to another who, like herself, wears a coronet."
Hertha bit her lip; the reproof went home,--such assuredly would have been the conclusion of the affair. It had never occurred to the young Countess Steinrück to do more than trifle with the bourgeois officer, but yet she felt disgraced by the discovery that she had been seen through from the beginning.
"You do not seem to perceive how insulting your words are," she said, haughtily, "nor how offensive is this confession----"
"Which, nevertheless, you insisted upon hearing," he interrupted her. "Listen, then! I will not deny to you what cannot, indeed, be denied. I will confront my fate, for it has come upon me like a fate. Yes, I have loved you, Hertha, from the first moment of seeing you, and if I could have hoped for your love in return the coronet of the Steinrücks would not have deterred me for an instant. If my bliss were as far above me and as unattainable as the Eagle ridge there, I would scale the heights though every step threatened ruin. I would snatch it to my arms in spite of all the world! But I was warned, warned by a child, who once cozened from me my Alpine roses, to play with them for a while and then to pluck them wantonly to pieces. Those are the same golden curls, the same beautiful, evil eyes,--I knew them the first moment that we met,--but never again shall those lips say to me with contempt, 'Go away, I do not like you any more! I am tired of playing.' Those words have rung in my ears through all the bewitching music of your voice. The boy chose to have his flowers perish in the flames rather than leave them in your grasp, and the man will crush and annihilate his love, even though a part of his life dies with it,--it never shall be a plaything in your hands!"
Hertha had grown deadly pale; no one had ever before dared thus to insult her, to hurl the truth so recklessly and unsparingly in her face; but what did this man whom she had driven to extremity care whether she were offended or not? The tempest which she herself had evoked raged about her; she could no longer restrain its fury. She saw this clearly as Michael stood before her all aflame and overwhelmed her with this strange mixture of love and hatred. His every fibre vibrated with intense passion, and yet he struggled against it with a force that would not succumb. He was conquered, not subdued.
"You will please release me, Lieutenant Rodenberg, from listening further to such words as these," the young Countess said at last, summoning up all her self-possession. "I will go and meet his reverence."
"No need to do so. I am going," said Michael; his voice was low but firm. "I am aware that hereafter we can have nothing to say to each other. Farewell, Countess Steinrück."