"For the favor for which I plead so hard and injudiciously. I only asked for a flower. Is my crime then so great that your anger must last for weeks?"
Adelheid remained standing, almost without knowing it. She was again under the influence of those eyes and that wonderful voice.
"You are mistaken, Herr Rojanow," she responded. "I am not angry with you."
"No? And yet you assume again that icy tone which is ever yours when I am near you, and now that you have heard my drama you make no sign of approval. You were present when I read it at Fürstenstein. I heard words of praise on all sides. Your lips alone were closed. From you I received no single word of commendation—will you deny it to me now?"
"I thought we were out for a hunt, to-day," said Adelheid evasively, "and this is neither the time nor the place to discuss poetry."
"We have both left the hunt for to-day; it's on its way now toward the Rodecker heights. Here is the true forest loneliness. Look at the perfect autumn landscape around us. It speaks to the heart of peace and forgiveness. Look at that placid sheet of water, a those heavy storm-laden clouds against the horizon—to me there is more poetry in this than in the crowded salons of Fürstenstein."
The aspect of the landscape had entirely changed since the morning hours, and a dull, gloomy light had taken the place of the bright, clear sunshine, beneath whose gleams the cavalcade had set forth so merrily.
The endless stretch of forest which lay before them was in its gayest autumn dress, but in the sombre light of the approaching storm, its brilliant leaves looked faded and faint. The deep reds and many tinted yellows of the foliage formed a beautiful picture, but these were the colors of decay and death, and told that the end of their life and bloom was not far distant.
Beneath them lay the little lake, dark and motionless, surrounded by high grasses and swamp reeds. It looked like another lonely sheet of water in the far northland—the Burgsdorf fish pond, and back from this little lake stretched a meadow green and marshy, from which, even now, a faint mist was rising, a mist, which as night came down, would change into a rain, while the will-o'-the-wisp in its endless sport and motion, would play in and out among the long green rushes, now gleaming, now disappearing—thus perfecting that far off picture of long ago.
The air was oppressive and sultry, and the distant clouds were forming deeper and darker heights against the horizon.