"No; but it is a ball which such a young girl as you does not visit with a superficial chaperon like Countess d'Olbreuse. If one of the patronesses had taken you with her, it would be quite different."
"The patronesses?" Mascha shrugs her shoulders. "The patronesses are great ladies, with whom I have nothing to do; I am no one, only papa's daughter." Her voice trembles a little. "That does not count here in foreign parts; Anna tells me so every day. I did not know it; it was certainly very necessary, but it pained me." She fans herself with her large fan, and smiles as one smiles to keep from weeping.
Bärenburg pulls his mustache.
"And except your cousin, have you no one in Paris who is near to you?" he begins anew.
"Yes, one--one person whom I love with my whole heart," says Mascha, with the exaggeration to which hurt and vexed people are always inclined. "She is sweet to me. It is your cousin, Fräulein von Sankjéwitch."
"Do you ever go to the studio?"
"Yes," says Mascha, shortly.
"H-m! Will you be there to-morrow morning?"
She throws back her little head, looks at him from her dark eyes with unspeakable, reproving pride, and says: "No!"
A longer silence follows. He knows that she was justified in repelling him; knows that he acts unresponsibly to her. This consciousness only assists in robbing him of his self-control. He loves her passionately, unspeakably. He must have her, only her. More and more the recollection of his betrothal shrinks to a purely theoretical hinderance which can and shall be removed.