"Go on, then," she said, wearily. "I will listen."
He paused and looked fixedly at her, and at last said, with slow emphasis, "I come to bid you farewell."
"You are going? Now, before my uncle has been laid to rest?"
"Yes,--and never to return! You mistake me, Erna. This is no farewell for days or weeks; it means that we are parting forever."
"Parting?" The girl looked at him incredulously, only half comprehending his words; they came upon her too suddenly for her to grasp all their meaning.
"You evidently have no belief in my magnanimity," Ernst said, harshly. "It is true that yesterday I could more easily have annihilated you both, you and your Wolfgang, than have given you back your troth. That is over. He has taught me how to subdue an enemy. Do you think I do not know whose hand it was that snatched me from a terrible death yesterday? Without its aid I should have been crushed at the entrance of the bridge. You saw it,--I know that,--and will only the more worship your hero, whom you watched yesterday with an enthusiasm that transfigured you. This deed of his exalts him to an ideal hero in your eyes. What am I in them?"
"Yes, I saw it," Erna said, looking down, "but I did not think you recognized him, stunned as you were, and in the general confusion."
"A mortal enemy is always recognized, even while he is saving one's life. I tried to thank him yesterday, just after the catastrophe, but I could not bring my lips to frame words of gratitude to that man; they would have choked me. Let him hear them from you. Tell him that I revoke my challenge, and that I release him from his promise, as I release you from yours. Now we are quits,--more than quits: I give him what is tenfold dearer to me than the life he saved for me."
Erna had grown very pale in the certainty of what she had long suspected: "You challenged him? That was the meaning of your interview?"
"Do you suppose that I could have borne to know him happy in your arms?" Waltenberg asked. "But for what happened yesterday I would have shot him down like a dog; and he promised to be at my service as soon as the Wolkenstein bridge was completed. Fate has released him from his promise."