Eline looked round, and gave her friendliest nod, when Vincent Vere and Paul van Raat approached them. They remained standing, as there were no vacant chairs to be seen.
“Would you two like to sit down for a moment; that is, if Eline cares to walk?” asked Otto, half rising.
Eline thought it was a capital idea, and whilst Vincent and Paul took their seats, she and Otto slowly followed the stream of promenaders. They approached the band-stand, and the high violin movements in the overture to Lohengrin were swelling out fuller and fuller, like rays of crystal.
A group of attentive music-lovers was ranged about the band in a semi-circle. Otto wanted to let Eline pass through the narrow gangway between the rows of chairs and the standing group, but she turned round, and whispered—
“Listen for a moment; shall we?”
He nodded his head, and they stood still. How she enjoyed the stately swell of melody. It seemed to her as though it were not [[164]]notes of music, but the blue waters of her lake that flowed by, limpid and clear as the stream along whose bosom Lohengrin’s bark had glided, and she beheld the swans, stately and beautiful.
At the loud fortissimo she took a deep breath, and while the brittle threads of harmony brought forth by the violins spun themselves out, thinner and thinner in texture, the swans, stately and beautiful, also floated away.
The applause resounded on all sides; the semi-circle broke.
“Beautiful—oh, how beautiful!” murmured Eline as in a dream. And delightedly she felt Otto’s hand searching for her arm; life was sweet indeed!
“Don’t you think it foolish? I always feel myself so—so much better than at other times, when I hear beautiful music; it is then that I get a feeling as though I am not quite unworthy of you,” she lisped at his ear, so that none overheard her. “Perhaps it is childish, but I really cannot help it.”