She was standing behind me, a little to my right. Her pleasure in singing my song was equalled by mine at hearing her. When she had performed it eight or ten times I stopped at last. I was overcome with emotion.
And suddenly I felt her hand caressing my hair.
I trembled. I perceived something happening; a breath, so to say, a mere nothing. Joy and terror at once filled my heart. I gazed at her, and in the twilight I saw a tender smile around her lips. It made me feel out of breath, as if I had been walking too fast.
I got up. "Let us go out a little," I said, "the evening is wonderful."
We went. Doblana was at the opera blowing his hard part in the Mastersingers, which would keep him till nearly midnight, and we had two hours and a half before us. The streets were already empty, for Vienna is a town that goes to sleep very early, thanks to a twopenny fine imposed on each inhabitant who comes home after ten o'clock. The sky was clear and the moon looked like a round silver cake from which somebody had helped himself to a tiny slice of the crust. No stars were visible, but as we had gained the boulevard, the electric lamps growing smaller and smaller in the distance appeared like starry dust.
We entered the municipal park. It was quite empty, and the right frame for romantic amours. For I knew by now into what our companionship little by little had grown. My heart was throbbing, hers probably too, and we felt that the park was an accomplice of the sentiments which were leading us along our walk.
There are many cosy corners in that park. And each one of these corners is adorned with a statue. Before that of Schubert we halted. Why, I do not know, for it is not remarkable in any way. Yet we looked at it as if it had been the goal of our pilgrimage. We were as if transported. We were silent and gazed at Schubert as if he were something new and delightful, as if he were a new invention of the heart, enrapturing, transporting, fit to throw us into a sweet ecstasy. And yet he was only a fat gentleman in white marble, sitting in a chair and holding a conventional sheet of music paper in his hand.
Suddenly Mitzi began to sing softly:
"My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here..." and then the love that for months had been lying longingly at her door, and had voicelessly cherished her, the love, my love, broke forth. I caught her by the neck and bending my face down to her's I touched her lips, whispering:
"I love you, Mitzi, I love you."