One stormy day at the end of July, a bovine-eyed Swiss boy, dripping with rain, appeared at the hygienic hotel, where Lassalle sat brooding with his feet on the mantelpiece, to tell him that a magnificent lady wanted to see him. She was with a party that had taken refuge in a mountain-side shed. A great coup his resurging energy was meditating at Hamburg, was swept clean from his mind.
He dashed down, his heart beating with a hopeless surmise, and saw, amid a strange group, the golden hair of Helene von Dönniges shining like a star. He accepted it at once as the star of his destiny. His strength seemed flowing back in swift currents of glowing blood.
"By all the gods of Greece," he cried, "'tis she!"
In an instant they were lovers again, and her American friend and confidante, Mrs. Arson, was enchanted by this handsome apparition, which, Helene protested, she had only summoned up half laughingly. Dear old Holthoff had written her that Lassalle was somewhere on the Righi, but she had not really believed she would stumble on him. She was suffering from nervous prostration, and it was only the accident of Mrs. Arson's holiday plan for her children that had enabled her to obey the doctor's advice to breathe mountain air.
"I breathe it for the first time," said Lassalle. "Do you know what I was doing when your boy-angel came? Writing to Holthoff and old Bœckh the philologist for introductions to your father. The game has dallied on long enough. We must finish."
Helene blushed charmingly, and looked at Mrs. Arson with a glance that sought protection against and admiration for his audacity.
"I guess you're made for each other," said Mrs. Arson, carried off her feet. "Why, you're like twins. Are you relatives?"
"That's what everybody asks," said Helene. "Why, even before I met him, people piqued my curiosity about him by saying I talked like him."
"It was the best compliment I had ever received—said behind my back too. But people are right for once. Do you know that the painter to whom I gave your portrait to inspire him for the Brunehild fresco said that in drawing our two faces he discovered that they have exactly the same anatomical structure."
Her face took on that fascinating diablerie which men found irresistible.