"Yes; he spoils me very much," says Mascha, moved. "I shall miss him fearfully--fearfully. You know, perhaps, that he has left the city to-day. You cannot think how unpleasant it is for me to be so quite alone."
"Alone?" repeated he.
"That is--well, yes, I am with relatives," Mascha hastens to explain. "Aunt is very good to me, but I cannot warm to my cousin; I do not like her. She is very beautiful, but intolerable. And you, Count Bärenburg, how do you find Anna?"
"She has a very decorative effect," says he, dryly. "She reminds me of an aloe, she is so stiff and pointed. She would do very well on a terrace."
"I am only surprised that she has not yet married," remarks Mascha, very pleased at Bärenburg's cool description of Anna's charms.
"I am not at all surprised," replies he. "I have often noticed that these acknowledged beauties usually marry very late. They are like the too beautiful apples on the dessert dishes, which remain because no one has the courage to reach for them. And then, finally, to kindle a flame one must have somewhere a spark about one; and your cousin is of ice."
"Yes, that is true," laughs Mascha; then, restraining herself, she adds: "But I really should not speak so of my nearest relatives to a stranger. I--I always forget that you are a stranger; you seem to me like--a friend."
He smiles at her, and says softly: "When I so soon feel such warm sympathy for any one as for you, it seems to me as if we had long been good friends in heaven, and had found each other again on the earth."
"Really?"
"Certainly," says he, earnestly. "I can distinctly remember our acquaintance up there. You were a lovely, gay, half-grown little angel, with short, unformed wings, with which you could not yet majestically sail about in the air, but only helplessly flutter a little. But every one loved you, and all the other angels were jealous of you. Then--now the affair becomes considerable; shall I go on?" he smilingly interrupts his improvisation.