"No gallop?" he asked, as if nothing had passed between them, except that his voice was still a little hoarse.
"Oh, if you will. I only thought----" she stammered.
He replied with the chivalric courtesy with which he always treated her, "I am entirely at your service."
For a moment she hesitated; then, with a touch of the whip on her steed's right shoulder, she started.
"Oh, how glorious!" she exclaimed, as they turned just before reaching the pavement. "Shall we not have one more?"
And so they rode twice up and down the grand avenue. The air was clear and cool, and there was in it the fragrance of freshly-planed wood, coming from a large shed that was being erected on one side of the avenue for an exhibition of horses.
Years afterwards Erika could never recall that ride and her miserable cruelty without again perceiving that peculiar fragrance.
The young man was in direful plight. Whatever he might say, he had not been prepared for this. The last few days had been passed by him in a state of blissful agitation in which, try as he might, he could not torment himself with doubts. He had fallen from an immense height, and he was terribly bruised. In spite of all his self-control, he began to show it. Erika grew more and more depressed, glancing sympathizingly aside at him from time to time. Now she would far rather that he had not cared so much. Evidently she did not herself know what she really wished.
They trotted along side by side; then just as they turned into Bellevue Street he heard a low distressed voice say,--
"Herr von Sydow--I would not have you think that--that--I--intended to say that to you. I so value your friendship--I should be so very sorry to lose it--and--and----" She threw back her head slightly, and, looking him in the face from beneath the stiff brim of her riding-hat, she said, with a charming little smile, "Tell me that all shall be just as it has been between us."