The arrangement was a very natural one; fearless as the young lady might be, she could not be left here in the night alone, and Wolfgang, almost a member of her family, was, of course, the one to be left to take care of her. Nevertheless neither of them seemed pleased. Erna objected, and thought it would be better to accompany the doctor. But Waltenberg would not hear of it; he hurried away with Reinsfeld and Sepp over the meadow, and then all three vanished in the opposite wood.
Those left behind were obliged to accommodate themselves to circumstances. They exchanged a few remarks about the accident and its possible consequences, and then there was a long silence.
The midsummer night with its deep, mysterious stillness brooded above the mountains, but without the darkness of night. The full moon, now high in the heavens, bathed everything in its dreamy radiance. In its light the fires upon the mountains gleamed but dimly. They no longer flamed aloft, but looked like glowing stars fallen from the firmament and shining on the heights in clear, quiet beauty. By day there was a distant view from this meadow, now the mountain world was veiled in a delicate mist that left only certain detached features distinctly visible. The rigid lines of the tall summits were softened, the thick forests were massed in bluish shadow; below, where yawned the Wolkenstein abyss, darkness still reigned, although the moonlight already silvered the bridge. It reached from rock to rock, like a narrow, shining plank, discernible by keen eyes even at this height.
The Wolkenstein summit alone, close at hand, was defined sharply against the clear sky of night. The forests at its feet, the jagged outlines of the billowy sea of rocks, and the gigantic proportions of the steep wall rising from them,--all were flooded with snowy lustre. Around its head there was still a fleecy vapour, which seemed slowly melting away in the moonbeams; at times each icy peak would be revealed clearly, to half vanish again in a semi-transparent veil. Erna had seated herself on the stump of a felled tree on the border of the forest. The scene fascinated her, as it did her companion, who was, nevertheless, the first to break the long silence.
"Herr Waltenberg could hardly achieve that ascent," he said. "It was scarcely necessary to warn him off so seriously; he certainly would have turned back at the foot of the rocky wall."
"You heard what we said?" the girl asked, without looking away from the Wolkenstein.
"I did. I was standing very near you."
"Then you heard that the attempt was relinquished."
"At your request."
"I was interested that it should be so; there is something distressing to me in all aimless foolhardiness."