Adelheid had not answered Hartmut's question; she stood looking into the distance with face turned away from the man who was watching her, and yet she felt the dark consuming glance resting on her, as she had felt it so many times during the past few weeks.
"You are going away to-morrow, my dear baroness!" he began again. "Who knows when you will return—when I shall see you again. May I not beg for your verdict now, may I not ask whether my words have found favor in Ada's eyes?"
Again her name upon his lips, again that soft, veiled, passionate tone which she so feared, and which rang in her ear like the voice of an enchanter. She felt there was no escape, no chance for flight, she must look the danger in the eye. She turned to her questioner, and her face betrayed that she had decided to fight out the battle—the battle with herself.
"Are you interested in my verdict merely because I bear this name?" she said coldly and proudly. "It stands at the beginning of your poem, which by the way was sent me the other day by some mysterious hand, without name."
"And which you read notwithstanding?" he interrupted triumphantly.
"Yes, and burned."
"Burned?" The old savage expression came over Hartmut's face, that intense angered look which had evoked from Egon's lips the expression, "You look like a demon, Hartmut." The demon of hate and revenge burned once again in his breast as he thought of his recent insults from this woman's husband, insults which must be resented to the full. And yet he loved the woman before him as only Zalika's son could love, with a wild, consuming passion. But in this moment hate gained the mastery.
"My poor pages!" he said with unconcealed bitterness. "They, too, suffered in the flame; they were, perhaps, worthy a better fate."
"Then you should not have sent them to me. I will not and dare not accept such poems."
"You dare not, my dear Baroness? It is the homage of a poet which he lays at a woman's feet, and poets have had that right for all time. It is incumbent on you to accept such an offering."