“Her youth has gone to her head, like wine,” Daniel thought to himself.
Once she took a box of chocolate bon-bons along. Having had enough of them herself and seeing that Daniel did not care for them, she threw what was left away. Daniel reproached her for her wastefulness. “Why drag it along?” she asked with perfect lack of embarrassment, “when you have enough of a thing you throw it away.” She showed her white teeth, and took in one deep breath of fresh air after another.
Daniel studied her. “She is invulnerable,” he said to himself; “her power to wish is invincible, her fulness of life complete.” He felt that she bore a certain resemblance to his Eva; that she was one of those elves of light in whose cheerfulness there is occasionally a touch of the terrible. He decided then and there not to let mischievous chance have its own way: he was going to put out his hand when he felt it was advisable.
“When are you going to begin to tell me the stories?” she asked: “I must, I must know all about you,” she added with much warmth of expression. “There are days and nights when I cannot rest. Tell me! Tell me!”
That was the truth. In order to penetrate his life history, which she pictured to herself as full of passionate, checkered events, she had done everything that he had demanded of her.
Daniel refused; he was silent; he was afraid he would darken the girl’s pure mind, jeopardise her unsuspecting innocence. He was afraid to conjure up the shadows.
One day she was talking along in her easy way, and while so doing she tripped herself up. She had begun to tell him about the men she had been going with; and before she knew what she was doing, she had fallen into the tone she used when she talked with her Uncle Carovius. Becoming suddenly aware of her indiscretion, she stopped, embarrassed. Daniel’s serious questions caused her to make some confessions she would otherwise never have thought of making. She told a goodly number of rather murky and ugly stories, and it was very hard for her to act as though she were innocent or the victim of circumstances. At last, unable longer to escape from the net she had woven, she made a clean breast of her whole life, painted it all in the gaudiest colours, and then waited in breathless—but agreeable—suspense to see what effect it would have on Daniel.
Daniel was silent for a while; then he made a motion with his outstretched hand as if he were cutting something in two: “Away from them, Dorothea, or away from me!”
Dorothea bowed her head, and then looked at him timidly from head to foot. The decisiveness with which he spoke was something new to her, though it was by no means offensive. A voluptuous shudder ran through her limbs. “Yes,” she whispered girlishly, “I am going to put an end to it. I never realised what it all meant. But don’t be angry, will you? No, you won’t, will you?”
She came closer to him; her eyes were filled with tears. “Don’t be angry at me,” she said again, “poor Dorothea can’t help it. She is not responsible for it.”