Ordham realized that he was a little tired, but before making himself comfortable with a book, strolled into the tower to listen for a moment to the band playing in the pagoda of the Englischergarten, and picture the numberless tables, amongst which trudged unceasingly big perspiring Bavarian maidens, carrying mugs of foaming beer to an ever thirsty people. But his eye was immediately attracted to the books on the shelves which covered the walls of the tower, and he scanned them eagerly. He was astonished to find that the collection was almost wholly scientific. Bastian, David Strauss, Johannes Müller, Virchow, Descartes, Goethe, Baer, Lamarck, Paul Holbach, Du Bois-Reymond, Harvey, Heinrich Hertz, Bacon, Aristotle, Darwin, Spencer, Alexander Humboldt, the Vogts, Lavoisier, Spinoza, Cuvier, were a few of the names in this catholic assemblage, which had its representative in every branch of science, using the word in its broad sense. Ordham ceased to wonder that the great Styr had been able to extinguish her merely feminine ego. With such meat for daily sustenance, and the strong wine of art, the wonder was that she had not developed into a new species. The only works of fiction were the novels of Balzac, Gautier, Flaubert, and On the Heights. Other shelves were filled with volumes devoted to the analysis of music and the lives and letters of composers.
He returned to the gallery with a volume of Illusions Perdues, and looked longingly at the divan, but compromised upon the deepest of the chairs. He would have liked to smoke, but he was far too formal both by nature and training to make himself at home at this early stage of his acquaintance with Countess Tann. His eyes roved over the gallery with much curiosity. It was the first time he had known a woman that worked for her living, and he appreciated that this room, full of beautiful and interesting objects as it was, had an entirely different atmosphere from the boudoirs of the fine ladies of the world. There was a certain austerity about it, rather an absence of the luxury, frivolity, soft magnificence, of the personal nests of women that neither knew nor cared how their wants were gratified. Even the carved old chairs looked comfortable, but it was not the room of a woman who lounged, but who worked, studied, thought. To Ordham it was more personal than any woman’s room he had ever seen; then he suddenly realized that it was its component of masculinity which had enveloped him at once like an emanation from his own spirit.
Half an hour later he opened his eyes to behold a tall figure in a long grey cloak smiling before him. He rose with a deep blush and stammered apologies. “Is it possible—will you ever forgive me?”
“Why not, Herr Invalide? I will go and change my frock, and then we will have coffee. Just a moment.”
She reached the door, then, as if suddenly assailed by an anxious memory, turned and said hesitatingly: “I have felt so worried—it was such a relief to hear that you were really ill—and to-day you look so much less careworn, almost happy—”
“I am quite happy—thanks so much. Please don’t bother—how good of you! The lady thought better of it, as I might have known she would,—has thrown me over, in fact.”
“Delightful! I was at my wit’s end. Now we shall keep you in Munich. Do sit down again.”
She returned dressed in a white organdie frock sprigged with violets. It was flounced and full, the bodice crossed by a Marie Antoinette fichu tied loosely at the back, and in her hair she had twisted a lavender ribbon. She looked as if she had merely adapted herself to the warm afternoon, not in the least coquettish or alluring. How could she, thought Ordham, with that library behind her?
“Such a drive as I have taken!” she exclaimed as she seated herself before the coffee service old Kurt had brought in. “Down into the Isarthal and far beyond Castle Grünwald. It was delightful in the woods, or would have been without the crowds. You will go there with me some day, I hope?”
“I will go with you anywhere.”