Opposite to her sat a gentleman with a saucy-looking fair mustache, and still more saucy blue eyes, who bent towards her familiarly, while a smile flitted over her quiet face.
“She will marry that man,” he said to himself, with a conviction which seemed to be more than a jealous foreboding. With the clear-sightedness of love he had understood that these two natures harmonized and must seek each other. And perhaps they had already found one another while he himself wasted his days in idle dreams.
He stood there as if stunned, and scrutinized the man who suddenly had rendered it clear to him what he had lost—lost, indeed, without ever having possessed it.
How could he ever have dared to compare himself to this man that, to a hair, was the ideal man of whom he had always dreamed?
Bold and energetic and triumphant (that’s what he had meant to be one day), exactly like the strange young man who looked at Elsbeth with his frivolous smile. He also wore patent-leather boots and a fashionable colored necktie, and his suit was made of the finest shining black cloth.
Almost for an hour Paul stood there without daring to move from his position, devouring Elsbeth and her vis-à-vis with his eyes.
The night came. He scarcely perceived it. Long rows of lanterns were lighted, and shed forth an uncertain light on the gay crowd.
“How well I am hidden,” thought Paul, and was glad of the darkness into which he had crept. He did not see that two men came walking towards him and were occupying themselves close to him with something on the ground. Then suddenly, not ten steps away from him, a purple red flame flared up and flooded all around in a sea of dazzling light.
He wanted to take refuge quickly in the shade of a tree, but it was too late.
“Isn’t that Paul standing there?” called out his mother.