"And yet these are only the mute, dead witnesses of a life inexhaustible in beauty and charm. If you could see it all in its home where it belongs, you would understand why I cannot exist beneath these cold northern skies, why I am so powerfully attracted to lands of sunshine. You too would find their charm irresistible."
"Perhaps so. And still I might be possessed in your lands of sunshine by intense yearning for the cool mountains of my home. But we will not dispute about a question that only a trial could decide, a trial that I shall hardly make."
"Why should you not make it?"
"Because such an amount of freedom is not accorded to my sex. We cannot wander about the world alone at will as you do."
"Alone!" Ernst repeated, in a low tone. "But you might trust yourself to a protector, a guide who would reveal this new world to you, whose delight it would be to unlock its pleasures for you. You may visit it some day with such a one beside you."
His last words were spoken so as to be audible to Erna alone. She looked up at him in surprise, and encountered a glance of such unmistakable passion that she changed colour and involuntarily turned aside.
"It is very improbable," she said, coldly. "One must have a natural inclination for such a life, and I----"
"You are made for it," he eagerly interrupted her,--"you alone among hundreds of women. I am sure of it."
"Are you so wonderfully gifted with insight, Herr Waltenberg?" the girl asked, calmly. "We meet today for the second time,--surely your estimate of the character of a stranger is overbold."
The rebuff was evident; Waltenberg bit his lip. "You are right, Fräulein von Thurgau," he replied, "perfectly right. In this world of forms and unrealities one may easily be mistaken in an estimate of character. There is no intensity of feeling here, and an ardent word that rises involuntarily to the lips may well be accounted overbold. All here must conform to times and rules. I beg pardon for my inadvertence."