Thus Helen saw herself forced to lay aside her hat, which she was already holding in her hand, and to step up to the piano, although she felt at that moment little disposed to sing, since her young, full heart was still trembling under the effect of the passionate scene which had just taken place.
Oswald stood a few steps off, leaning with folded arms against the mantelpiece, his eyes fixed immovably on the two slender forms. And, indeed, the sight was such as to arrest his attention; a more charming one could hardly have been found.
One might have doubted at that moment which of the two was--not the more beautiful, for Helen was indisputably the fairer--but the more interesting. The harmony of most lovely features, the velvety softness of a dark complexion, and the bluish blackness of her rich hair--all this spoke in favor of Helen, and seemed to raise her to inapproachable heights of beauty; but the expression in Sophie's face as she sat there, given up to her music, now bending over the keys, and coaxing out, as it were, the soft notes, and now looking up as if she was following the escaping sounds in the air, would have been ample compensation for him who finds the greatest beauty in the most spiritual expression. As a favorable glance of sunlight may often pour over a landscape, which has no charms of its own, a marvellous beauty, so the noble, art-loving soul of the girl lighted up and made brilliant her face, which was far from being really beautiful. There was something of Beethoven's nature in it--the meteoric light which the freed spirit of man casts through the vast night of sensuality into the unbounded regions of eternal brightness. And, strangely enough, in the same measure in which music heightened the expression in Sophie's face, it softened the harshness in Helen's energetic beauty, by giving her proud features a mildness which they never showed in ordinary life. The harmony of sweet notes awakened there the slumbering genius, and put here the demon of pride and ambition to sleep, so that the poetic excitement benefitted both, though in quite opposite ways.
So it seemed to Oswald, while his eyes rested on the charming picture of the two girls at the piano. Helen seemed to him almost a stranger; he had to become once more familiar with her beauty; and yet, it did not make the same overwhelming impression upon him as before. He ascribed this partly to the unaccustomed surroundings, partly to the attractive form of Sophie, which interrupted him in his devotion. He did not know that since he had seen Helen last, the mirror of his soul had become dim, and was no longer able to reflect a pure image purely. In vain he tried to catch a glance from Helen. If Sophie was so entirely given up to her music that she had really forgotten his presence, Helen seemed at least to be in the same state of mind. She did not raise her eyes from the music. Oswald rejoiced at it. He concluded from it that his stormy greeting was, if not forgiven, still also not yet forgotten.
They had drifted, as is apt to happen in such cases, from one song into a second, and from that into a third and fourth. But suddenly Helen declared she must go home now. Oswald, who thought that of course a servant from the institute was waiting outside, was just considering how he should manage to ask her permission to see her home, when Sophie's question: "but you cannot go home alone?" relieved him of his trouble. What was more natural than that he should make his bow and politely offer his arm to Fräulein von Grenwitz, and that Fräulein von Grenwitz should accept it with a haughty bend of her head!
Sophie was just buttoning the young lady's velvet cloak, and tying a white fichu around her neck, "that your voice may not come to harm, Helen!" and Oswald was standing, hat in hand, by her side, when the door opened, before any one had heard a knock, and in walked Mr. Bemperlein.
Oswald, who was standing with his back to the door, only became aware of Bemperlein's presence when he heard Sophie's greeting: "How do you do, Bemperly?" and turned round to see the new comer. At the same moment Bemperlein recognized Oswald.
They had not seen each other since that night in which Bemperlein had come to carry Melitta to Fichtenau and surprised the lovers in the park. They had then parted in cordial friendship; and now, after so many weeks, when they saw each other again, neither offered his hand to the other, neither greeted the other with a smile, nor with a hearty word of kindness. Their whole welcome consisted in a formal bow and a few indifferent phrases, so that Sophie, who had thought Oswald and Bemperlein were intimate friends, was not a little surprised and did not exactly know what she ought to do in such an unforeseen case. However, the embarrassing situation was not to last long; for Sophie had scarcely introduced Mr. Bemperlein to Fräulein von Grenwitz who either did not recollect the tutor, whom she yet had often enough seen at Berkow, or did not choose to acknowledge it in words--when Helen and Oswald left the room. Sophie went as far as the door with them, while Bemperlein remained standing near the fire-place, his hands on his back, and his eyes rigidly fixed upon the ground.
It was almost night when Helen and Oswald found themselves in the ill-lighted street.
"What way shall we go?" asked Oswald.