The colonel kept urging her to resume her rides. The exercise would do her good, and Herr von Prell was ready to escort her.
By the time Saturday came she felt she must give in, for they would be forced to meet the next day at dinner. The horses were stamping before the door. Now the moment of meeting, which she had been anticipating with trembling fears, had come, and confronted her like a new danger. But when she had beheld her friend swagger over the terrace in his high, polished riding-boots, pale and haggard, bowing like a doll on wires to show his hypocritical respect, something in her grew rigid; a feeling came over her that this young man was an utter stranger to whom she was going to speak for the first time.
The next moment they rode out of the gate together. The colonel had gone to the stables, but Fräulein von Schwertfeger stood with clasped hands looking after them.
The road across the fields was like a morass from the standing pools of rain, and squelched under the horses' hoofs. A chill breeze stirred the young autumn wheat. Beyond the ragged twigs of the birches was a faint yellow glow, in which a watery-looking sun was sinking. Everything looked fatigued and sad; even the winter crops seemed to think it had been hardly worth while to sow them.
They trotted on side by side in silence; every minute seemed an hour.
"Surely he must speak at last," she thought, biting her lips till they bled, as she rose in the saddle.
He kept his eyes fixed with an unfaltering gaze on the road, and only moved his right hand now and again to adjust his reins.
"He'll begin again before long with his 'gracious baronesses,'" she thought bitterly, and felt ashamed of herself and him in anticipation.
At length it was she who broke silence.
"Do walk your horse!" she implored, nearly crying.