He knocked the ash from his cigar, and gazed across the river at the outline, now very dim, of a battered-looking tree on the opposite shore.
‘It is time I came to some conclusion,’ he thought. ‘I have been dangling here long enough. I have her friendship—I see and know that her love is given elsewhere. It would be simple madness in me to try to win it. I am only burning my fingers and making a fool of myself by remaining here—and getting more in love with her every day.... Ay, and I do love her!’
He flung his cigar away, and leaned forward, gazing intently out into the darkness, thinking.
‘If ever I had the chance of marrying her—if by any means I could induce her to take me, I would do it, let the risk be what it might.... Shall I stay a little longer? Is the pleasure worth the concomitant pain? When I know that I may not tell her I love her, any more than she, if she loved me, could tell me so.’
As he thus reflected, and reflected, too, that it was all a chance—everything was a chance—he watched how two men on the big steamer threw out a rope to two men in a little boat which was rocking in the swell in the wake of the big one. Twice they threw, and missed; then prepared to cast it out a third time.
‘If they catch it this time,’ decided Rudolf, ‘I’ll stay; if they miss again, I’ll say good-bye to her to-morrow, and go home.’
A third throw of the rope, a lurch of the little boat, and the cry:
‘ Gut! Jetzt hab’ ich’s.’
‘I stay. Gut! I take my holiday in Elberthal instead of in Rome. What does it matter to anyone but myself?’
He arose, and walked straight back to Wilhelmi’s house, where there was, as usual, a large company, many of whom had been invited expressly to meet him. He went amongst them, and made himself agreeable to them for the rest of the evening. He promised himself a month’s holiday from now. The chances were—for something happening to Sara, to Jerome, to anyone, which should lead events in the direction he desired—one. Against that, ten thousand. And for the sake of the one he stayed.