The friends were left alone. Ulrich confessed that even yet he could hardly believe in what had happened to-day. The reconciliation which once he would have thought natural and easy enough seemed, now it had been accomplished, something fabulous and incredible.
"Yes, yes; you are just like children who have kissed and made friends," he said, looking at Leo full of affectionate admiration. "How did you do it? You have only to appear, it seems, and behold the thorny hedge opens and the heart supposed to be full of hate flies out to you."
Leo laughed nervously, and said something about its not having been so bad as hating.
Felicitas brought in the wine, and poured the topaz-coloured fluid into the tall green rummers. Leo felt the gaiety, which always awoke in him at the sight of a noble drink, bubble up and master him; like a presage of ecstasy it rushed over him, sweeping away the last shred of all that had hitherto constrained him.
"Long live friendship!" he cried, raising his glass.
"And may nothing separate us three again," added Ulrich.
Thereupon Leo's eyes met Lizzie's for a moment in a rapid, consciously guilty glance.
If he knew!
The glasses clinked. A pure, echoing arpeggio rang from the superb crystal.
"I could wish that our lives might harmonise in such musical accord as that," said Ulrich.