"But, Mr. Merryfield, I promised Countess d'Olbreuse to wait here for her," says Maschenka, very excited, and catching him by the sleeve.
The American looks helplessly at Bärenburg. "You see that you must put up with my protection, Fräulein," says the latter, whereupon the two men bow formally, and Mr. Merryfield withdraws.
Then she is alone with him in the green twilight of the winter garden,--as good as alone. Truly, from time to time people pass by the young couple, men with ladies and alone, but they are people who know neither him nor her.
Here, in the pale pseudo-moonshine of the electric lights, her beauty has a quite magical effect. The mixture of pride and sadness in her manner, the poetic unusualness of the arrangement of her hair, the pink wreath, on whose bloom lies already a touch of sad weariness, the dark green background, against which her white child's face stands out--all unite in heightening the charm of her fantastic, peculiar loveliness.
For a while both are silent, he and she. At length he begins: "In my whole life, a week has never passed so slowly as the last."
"Indeed! I find it, on the contrary, very short. In my monotonous life one day follows the other before one perceives it."
"Do you not go out at all?" asks he.
"No; my aunt says I am too young to go out in society; my cousin says I have too bad manners; in consequence of which I stay at home," says she, to a certain extent dropping the superior rôle which she childishly and defiantly has planned for herself.
"Your cousin speaks nonsense, and if your aunt really thinks you too young to go out, she should not send you to such a ball as this one."
"Is it an unsuitable ball?" asks Mascha, quickly.