Adelaide had paused almost without knowing it.
Again she was under the charm of these eyes--this voice, which held her fast as with magnetism.
"You are mistaken, Herr Rojanow. I am not angry with you."
"Not? And yet it is this icy tone I have always to hear since I dared approach you in that hour. You have learned, too, to know my work, for which I begged a recognition. You were present when I read it at Furstenstein. My Arivana was praised overwhelmingly on all sides, but from your mouth alone I heard no word--not one. Will you refuse it even now?"
"I thought we were hunting to-day," said Adelaide with an attempt to pass the subject by, "where it is surely not admissible to speak of poetical works."
"We have both left the chase; it is running now toward the Rodeck forest. There is only forest solitude here. Look at this autumn-tinted foliage which warns so mournfully of fleeting existence--the silent water down there, those thunder clouds in the distance. I believe there is a more endless amount of poetry in all this than in the halls of Furstenstein."
He pointed to the landscape which spread out before them, but no longer in the bright sunlight that had favored the chase at the beginning. Now it lay in the dim light of an overcast sky, which made even the gay foliage appear withered and dull.
They could see far out into the mountains, which, retreating on both sides, left the distance free. The endless ocean of forest crowns which only a few weeks ago waved green and airily in the breeze, now bore the color of the fall. They shone from the darkest brown to brilliant golden yellow in every shade all around, and shining red gleamed from the bushes and shrubs.
The dying forest adorned itself once more with deceptive splendor, but it was only the coloring of the passing away and dying. All life and bloom were at an end.
Deep in the ravine lay a little forest lake, which, dark and motionless, seemed to dream in the wreath of reeds and rushes which surrounded it. It resembled strangely another pond that, far away in North Germany, lay in the midst of a pine forest--the Burgsdorf pond--which, like this one, ended in a meadow where rich green beckoned, nourished by the swamp and bog, hiding itself deceitfully beneath it, and drawing the ignorant one into its depth without hope of rescue.