"That is your opinion," Erna said, coldly. "In such a case all that a woman takes into consideration is whether she is beloved without calculation or reserve."
"Ought that alone to be decisive? I should suppose there might be a question as to whether she herself loves."
The words came slowly and almost with hesitation from his lips, and yet his eyes were riveted in breathless eagerness upon the face so clearly revealed in the bright moonlight. There was no reply; Erna's glance avoided his: her eyes were fixed upon the distant scene. The mountain-fires were growing fainter; the largest, upon the Wolkenstein, still gleamed with starlike radiance.
Above these the wreathing mist was still floating, and the moonbeams called forth from it strange shapes, which, when the eye would have seized and held them fast, eluded it and melted away. Slowly, however, from among them the topmost peak emerged white and gleaming, the inaccessible throne of the Alpine Fay in her garment of eternal ice and snow.
Wolfgang approached the young girl and stood close beside her as he continued, in an undertone: "I have no right, I know, to ask this question, but doubtless you have put it to yourself, and the answer----"
A low, angry growl interrupted him. Griff had not forgotten his early antipathy for the superintendent; he could not endure to have him approach his mistress, and, as if to defend her, thrust himself between them. Erna laid her hand caressingly upon the dog's head, and he was instantly silent; then she asked, "Why do you hate Ernst Waltenberg?"
"I?" Elmhorst was apparently amazed by this counter-question, which found him entirely unprepared to reply.
"Yes. Can you deny that it is so?"
"No," said Wolfgang, with defiant frankness. "I confess it. I hate him!"
"You must have some reason for so doing."