“To see you,” he said, smiling in spite of himself.
“Much obliged, I am sure. Well, look away, and in the meantime I’ll finish this chapter of my book.”
The method of being severe and renunciatory, with a suitable Byronic fold of the lip and stern compression of the brows—a kind of “fare thee well, and if forever” expression—with a woman like this! Fancy such a reception at twenty-one—when a young man is oldest, gravest, intensest, and slightly melodramatic—from the object of shattered dreams, the creature of agitated and complex feelings, and the cause of poignant humiliation and vexed wonder! Yet the Natzelhuber was unconsciously working most effectually for the boy’s good, and every stab was a definite step on the road to recovery, and to a full lifting of the veil of his own signal folly.
“What makes you look so unhappy, Ehrenstein?” she asked, after a considerable pause. “Have you been playing?”
“No, mademoiselle. I did not know that I looked unhappy,” Rudolph answered, colouring slightly.
“You do then. But there is no need to ask why you are unhappy. You wear your nature in your face, and that proves to me that you will never be happy—any more than my unlucky self.”
“Why?”
“Because you are too refined and too fastidious, and too everything else that goes to the making of a first-class irrational humbug. A man who wishes to make the best of life should be able to take a little of its mud comfortably, whereas you are ready even to turn up your aristocratic nose at a little elegant dust.”
“And you, mademoiselle? Why are you not happy?—for I cannot regard dust or mud as the impediment here,” said Rudolph sarcastically.
“Oh, for just the contrary reason. I am too gamine! It comes to the same thing, child. We are both mad, though reaching the condition by diametrically opposed roads. My life is ending, and it is too late now to change had I even the desire,—but yours is beginning. Get rid of all that superfluous refinement, and tell yourself that there are things more real and more absolutely necessary than sugar and ice-cream.”