Primula was sitting in her study before a table covered with new books, magazines, and papers. The door was open towards the reception-room, which was also lighted up. She had just finished a longer poem, which had to be sent this very evening to the editor of a literary journal, in the "correspondence" of which the following notice had appeared three times already: "P. V. in Gr. Great and gifted friend:--We await the promised MS. impatiently." There it was now, the promised MS., written with the heart's blood of the poetess! She had but just placed the last dot over the last i, and already it was to be sent away into the wide heartless world, before he who had inspired all these glowing stanza had ever seen a line of the poem! If he would only come early, so that she might read him at least a few stanzas before that young Baroness Cloten came, in whose presence that would of course be impossible!
There, listen! Was not that a ring at the bell? The door is open below ... A deep male voice ... It is he! it is he! Thanks be to you, oh gracious gods!
Primula blushed, cast a glance at the mirror that was hanging over her writing-table and pushed the fair curls from her blushing face, seized a pen and began although there was no ink in the pen--to scribble with nervous eagerness on a blank sheet.
"Do I interrupt you?" asked the deep voice, close to her ear.
"Why, great heavens!" exclaimed the poetess, casting away the pen; "is it you, Oswald? I had not heard you come at all."
"You were kind enough, madame, to tell me in the most charming note that I have ever read----"
"You flatterer! If you praise thus the simple lines of this morning, what will you say of these verses which I have written this evening with glowing brow and beating heart, thinking of no one but yourself? I must read you at least the beginning. She will not be here so soon; perhaps not at all."
"But who is it?"
"Pray, take a seat. It has to go to the post-office in half an hour. Listen! What do you think of this original metre, which seems to be worthy of our Freiligrath? The title is, 'The lion at the Cape.'"
The Castalian Spring once opened was not to be checked. Oswald had to submit to his hard fate and allow himself to be flooded by a genuine deluge of wretched verses. Suddenly the door-bell rang again. The sound seemed to be but a signal for the poetess to read with double and treble rapidity, while she laid her hand upon her hearer's arm, as if to prevent him from escaping. There were only about thirty stanzas yet to be read, when a silk dress was heard rustling in the adjoining room, and suddenly the graceful figure of Emily Cloten was standing in the open door which led to the reception-room.