When they left he heaped up all of these that had not been touched by the heat in their gondola, which sometimes returned alone to the Hotel Britannia, laden with the flowers, while Lozoncyi escorted his guests to their home by some picturesque roundabout way.
It was a great pleasure to walk with him. No one knew as he did how to call attention to some artistic effect, some bit of colour that might have easily escaped one less sensitive to picturesque detail.
"Good heavens!" said the old Countess, "I have been through these alleys a hundred times, but you make me feel as if I never had been here before. You have a special gift for teaching one the beauty of life."
"Indeed? Have I?" he murmured. "It is a gift, then, for teaching what I cannot learn myself."
By degrees Erika came to see with his eyes, and sometimes more quickly than he was wont to do. She was especially pleased when she could first call his attention to some artistic effect that had escaped him, and he always exaggerated the value of these discoveries of hers, assuring her that he had never seen a woman with so keen a sense of the beautiful, and rallying her upon her artistic skill. Once when the old Countess asked what they were talking about, Lozoncyi replied, "The Countess Erika and I are teaching each other to find life beautiful." And once he turned to Erika and said, sadly, "It is a pity that it must all come to an end so soon."
All the sentences abruptly broken off which just touched the brink of a declaration of love, but were never really such, Erika naturally interpreted in one way: "He loves me, but dares not venture to hope for a return of his affection: he is convinced that I am too far above him."
At first she was proud of having inspired a man so rare, so gifted, so flattered, with so profound a sentiment; then----
"To what can this lead?"
For the hundredth time Lozoncyi asked himself this question.
"To what can this lead?"