At first Leo intended to give his sister a scolding, but when on the following day he was face to face with her, he had lost the desire to humiliate her. Why draw forth tears and wailings from this child when the youth was in his power? Better reserve himself for that encounter.
He confined himself, therefore, to taking hold of her by the arm, and teazing her by a hundred taunts and gibes. He felt a kind of malicious sympathy with her. Had she, after all, done anything very bad? He, who was on the high-road to ruin and fully conscious of what he was doing, could not be hard on this little fool for stumbling in the blindness of her youthful pursuit of enjoyment. So when he had tormented her sufficiently, he kissed her and let her go. This had happened shortly after the dinner-hour was over. A little later, Hertha, pale from suppressed excitement, came to him with a letter from Johanna. His eldest sister wrote that she had things of urgent importance to speak to him about, and prayed that on the receipt of her note he would come to her immediately.
"She may congratulate herself that I can obey her summons," he thought.
But in spite of his feigned scorn and indifference, he knew that he was afraid of Johanna, or, if not of her, of the discomfort with which she always threatened him. For a reminder from Johanna that she existed meant nothing pleasant. A sudden current of vigorous life shot through his limbs and told him how much he could still hate. He hated her, and Felicitas, and every one. But her most of all.
He put on his fur coat and strode over the park. It was nearly four o'clock. The pale winter sun was sinking, and scarcely able to illumine the monotonous greyness of the snow-covered fields with its feeble parting rays, though here and there there trembled over the landscape a crystalline-blue reflection. The shrubberies seemed like black crouching figures on the ground, and between the highest straggling branches the light peeped like a thousand round eyes.
The girls had made a slide on the snowy surface of the carp pond, and it spanned it like a narrow dark ribbon from bank to bank. Absently Leo slid along the slide, and considered himself lucky that he got to the other side without a fall. He recalled the sultry afternoon on which he had smoked his cigar here, stretched out on the seat, and had awaited with perfect calm the interview with his sister. The seat was now cushioned with snow, on which the footmarks of birds had made a star-like pattern. He felt inclined to throw himself down there again in spite of the snow, and try to recover the equable frame of mind that he had been in then.
"Ah, but she won't get off so well this time," he thought, and he made his way along the overgrown path that led to the dower house.
She stood at the window waiting for him. As he entered the room, she turned round and, biting her lips, gave him a cold glassy stare. She had aged still more since he had last seen her, and seemed more gaunt and wasted. The flesh on her throat hung in folds, and the sharp line of pain from mouth to chin completely marred the oval of her face. The greyish side light which fell upon her gave a chalk-like hue to her complexion peculiar to people who are fitting themselves for the next world by ascetic exercises, and to those who have imposed on themselves some great mental strain.
"So this is where you prefer to dwell," he said, and looked round him.
He saw the white crucifix in its corner, with the prie Dieu in front of it, and heavy pieces of furniture on which the fading daylight lay unbecomingly. The odour of poor children which the scholars had left behind them almost suffocated him, and with it was mingled the smell of dried grasses and mouldy hymn-books.