"My girls are not partial to a town-life," said Madame Duroc. "Their city cousins are always begging them to go, yet I cannot prevail on them to leave the parsonage."
"I cannot abide it!" cried Rahel. "It is very well for Cousins Anna and Gretchen; they have adopted all the French modes; but as for poor Alide and myself, we feel like peasants in our German."
"Nevertheless," interposed. Alide, gently, "you are very kind to ask us, Dr. Steck; and if we ever do find ourselves in Strasburg we may call upon you to remember your promise."
"Oh, I am sure you would forget all your prejudices if you would but let me take you through the town!" exclaimed Steck, with enthusiasm. "It is only in a city that one can see the thousandfold life of man fully and worthily developed. There the broad, rich current of our modern industries flows past the stately monuments of an antique world. A single pitiful existence cannot suffice for the soul's insatiable craving after boundless, interminable activity. One must feel one's self in all. These busy comers and goers, these merchants, students, artists, cart be made to serve the single master-mind and carry his thought in ever-widening circles to the ends of the earth. By Jove! when I feel myself so young, so favored, so thoroughly alive, I long to taste the sweets and bitternesses of a hundred existences, to pass through all experiences. It is for me—I please myself by thinking—to study the endless aspects under which our national character reveals itself,—to snatch the secret of the ardent aspirations, the noble discontent, of our German youth. It is for me——"
"Steck," interrupted Max, in a dry, quiet tone, from the opposite side of the table, "don't you think you would like to see the meadows by moonlight? Since we have all finished our supper, what does madame say to a walk in the fields?"
"Oh, charming!" exclaimed Rahel; but Frau Duroc rose silently, and Alide, who had sat with downcast eyes and abated breath, started and looked up with a bewildered sort of disappointment. Again she saw the strange student blush like a girl, and cast, as it were, a mask of dulness over his face. The fire died out from his eyes, a constrained, unpleasant expression replaced the ardent enthusiasm that had ennobled every feature, and once more the shy, awkward Dr. Steck was standing before her.
CHAPTER IV
A MOONLIGHT WALK
There was a little confusion in the hall, of shawl-wrappings and head-coverings, and injunctions from Madame Duroc to her daughters to beware of the wet grass and the dripping leaves.
"I cannot get this hood over my hair," cried Alide, who had thrown a white cloak over her shoulders and was vainly trying to draw the hood over her high braids. "Mamma, it is a mild, soft evening. I will go just as I am." And so the whole party went out into the bright night.
The moon was by this time high in the heavens; the meadows were bathed in a lustrous haze, the brook glittered from unexpected places, the vineyard was full of black shadows, and the trees of the orchard allowed broken rays to fall between their branches, checkering the colorless turf with patches of light and darkness. The sound of the brook stumbling over its pebbles, of the pleasant little gusts of breeze as they went shuddering through the crisp foliage, the sudden soft thump of an apple dropping on the grass, and the incessant song of the crickets, were all that could be heard even in the intense quietness of the autumn night.