“Seven o’clock near Klopstock’s grave,” she murmured to herself.
Shortly after that she walked down stairs and remained standing in the doorway over the veranda and walked slowly, deliberately, down the broad stone steps, pausing and lingering a while on every step, like a playful child, and looking at her feet as she moved them. When she reached the pebbled path of the winding walk she played with the little stones with the tip of her dainty slipper as if there were not a single thought passing through her mind. Presently she was standing before the marble-walled well in the centre of the garden and looked curiously at the carved figures on the outside as if she had never seen them before. Dimly she remembered that Albert had spoken of them the other day—they were mythological figures and he had explained them to her. She recalled his face and the manner in which he looked at her as he spoke of the beautiful goddesses of Greece.
She was soon out of sight of the beautiful mansion on the hill, sauntering down the slope that led to the seashore. Along the Elbe was a cliff-walk that led to a promontory on which was the grave of him who sang of The Messiah.
The sun was going down but it was still long before sunset in this northern clime. There was a golden haze in the air, with hoards of mosquitoes and tiny insects in column formation flitting about like a dancing procession. Klopstock’s grave was west of the Zorn villa, where the sun was sliding down the curving horizon and making the many-branched linden tree over the tomb look like a burnished bush. There was tumult in her brain and her heart was beating irregularly. A number of limes she halted and half-turned, as if she were attempting to twist herself loose from the embrace of some invisible being, but soon again she proceeded on her way.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” he said as he came running toward her. His teeth were almost chattering, his voice was strained.
“I shouldn’t have come—I know I shouldn’t,” she was saying, scarcely glancing at him.
“Why do you despise me so?—”
He touched her hand which she withdrew quickly and put it back of her like an angered child.
“You don’t know how miserable I feel—Hilda—.” His voice was plaintive, pleading. “I know you detest me—You don’t even care for my poems, the echoes of my heart. Oh, Hilda—just a word—”
“You make me so unhappy,” she interrupted him. He thought he saw anger in her eyes.