Now Elsa, unable to contain her merriment any longer, burst out laughing, but seeing that her adorer’s face was beginning to look as it did in the dining-room before he broke the blood vessel, she checked herself, and said:
“Oh! Heer Adrian, don’t waste all this fine poetry upon me. I am too stupid to understand it.”
“Poetry!” he exclaimed, becoming suddenly natural, “it isn’t poetry.”
“Then what is it?” she asked, and next moment could have bitten her tongue out.
“It is—it is—love!” and he sank upon his knees before her, where, she could not but notice, he looked very handsome in the subdued light of the room, with his upturned face blanched by sickness, and his southern glowing eyes. “Elsa, I love you and no other, and unless you return that love my heart will break and I shall die.”
Now, under ordinary circumstances, Elsa would have been quite competent to deal with the situation, but the fear of over-agitating Adrian complicated it greatly. About the reality of his feelings at the moment, at any rate, it seemed impossible to be mistaken, for the man was shaking like a leaf. Still, she must make an end of these advances.
“Rise, Heer Adrian,” she said gently, holding out her hand to help him to his feet.
He obeyed, and glancing at her face, saw that it was very calm and cold as winter ice.
“Listen, Heer Adrian,” she said. “You mean this kindly, and doubtless many a maid would be flattered by your words, but I must tell you that I am in no mood for love-making.”
“Because of another man?” he queried, and suddenly becoming theatrical again, added, “Speak on, let me hear the worst; I will not quail.”