He looked at her more curiously than he had done hitherto, and then asked, "How did you know?"
"I see how the figure is creeping towards the will-o'-the-wisp, not heeding the stars sparkling above it. Look how it is sinking into the swamp, grandmother. It is horrible!"
"Blind Love," her grandmother repeated, thoughtfully. The subject did not appeal to her.
"Yes," said Lozoncyi, "blind love,--the misery of debasing passion." With a bitter smile he added, "Well, the only comfort is that one can sometimes attain to the will-o'-the-wisp, though he can never reach the stars, however he may gaze up at them."
"No," Erika exclaimed, indignantly, "that is no comfort. Rather--a thousand times rather--reach up in vain for the stars, and expand and grow in longing for the unattainable, than stoop to a happiness to be found only in a swamp!"
He made an inclination towards her, and said, half aloud, "What you say is very beautiful; but you do not understand."
"Well, you certainly have turned that poor fellow's head," Countess Lenzdorff remarked, leaning back comfortably among the cushions of the gondola as she and Erika were being rowed home. "It will do him no harm: on the contrary, it is good for such young artists, too apt to be self-indulgent, to reach after the unattainable; it enlarges their minds." Then after a while she went on: "I wonder whom the letter that so provoked him was from. Perhaps from that blonde who was with him at Bayreuth."
Erika did not reply; she looked down at a spray of wistaria he had plucked for her as she took leave of him. Suddenly she started: a large black caterpillar crept out from among the fragrant blossoms. With a little cry of disgust she flung the spray into the water.
At the same time Lozoncyi was standing in his studio, looking at the water-colour sketch he had made of Erika.
"A glorious creature," he muttered to himself; "glorious! I do not remember ever to have seen anything more beautiful, and, with all her distinction, and that pallor too, thoroughly healthy, fully developed, nothing maimed or deformed about her. She must be at least twenty-four. How is it that she is not married? Some unhappy love-affair? Hardly. She seems entirely fancy free, as if she had never in her life cared for a lover. How proudly she carries her head! Her kind is entirely unknown to me. Well, there are always women enough to do the dirty work of life; some there must be to guard the Holy Grail." He turned to the door of the studio that led out into the garden. A light vapour was rising from the earth, enveloping the blossoms in mist. He smiled strangely and not very pleasantly. "The spring cares not a whit for the Holy Grail. It goes on its way; it goes on its way."