"I love Fräulein Elly," he replied, "and I will annihilate all who thwart my love."
"Don't be so impertinent, Herr Kandidat. No one will believe you."
"They shall be made to believe," he said; "when two young hearts love, who shall come between them?"
Hertha shrugged her shoulders. "Elly does not love you, Herr Kandidat," she said.
"I happen to possess proofs to the contrary," he replied, with another polite bow.
"Ah! You mean the silly letters?" asked Hertha. "If she hadn't begun to write them behind my back, I should long ago have put a stop to it. Yesterday she came to me and implored me to save her, and I mean to save her, Herr Kandidat, even if it should cost me my life."
"Save her from what, if I may venture to ask, countess?"
"From you, Herr Kandidat. She has begged you more than once to leave her in peace, and told you that you frightened her. But you have continued, in spite of that, to bombard her with your crazy letters, verses, and stuff. The verses aren't even original, and the rest is all lies. So now you know what I think, Herr Kandidat."
Kurt gnawed his moustache. It seemed as if the prospect of a double defeat lay before him. But he would not lose the battle without a last struggle.
"My good breeding prevents my answering a lady in the tone which you have chosen to adopt towards me. But I should be glad to know why, if your cousin Fräulein Elly holds me in such detestation, and finds my letters so senseless, has she demeaned herself to invite me to enter into a correspondence with her? And why, up to the present, has she not disdained to answer my letters?"