"But presently you will be so and so," says she: and fondly predicts all manner of noble exploits which, as Jurgen remembered, had once seemed very plausible to him also. Now he had clearer knowledge as to the capacities of the boy of whom he had thought so well.
"No, Heart's Desire: no, I shall be quite otherwise."
"—and to think how proud I shall be of you! 'But then I always knew it', I shall tell everybody, very condescendingly—"
"No, Heart's Desire: for you will not think of me at all."
"Ah, sweetheart! and can you really believe that I shall ever care a snap of my fingers for anybody but you?"
Then Jurgen laughed a little; for Heitman Michael came now across the lonely terrace, in search of Madame Dorothy: and Jurgen foreknew this was the man to whom within two months of this evening Dorothy was to give her love and all the beauty that was hers, and with whom she was to share the ruinous years which lay ahead.
But the girl did not know this, and Dorothy gave a little shrugging gesture. "I have promised to dance with him, and so I must. But the old fellow is a great plague."
For Heitman Michael was nearing thirty, and this to Dorothy and
Jurgen was an age that bordered upon senility.
"Now, by heaven," said Jurgen, "wherever Heitman Michael does his next dancing it will not be hereabouts."
Jurgen had decided what he must do.