Beneath her on the dark surface of the lagoon the gondolas were crowding from all quarters around a bark whence came music and song. They glided past over the black water, a broad stream of humanity attracted as by a magnetic needle, lured by a voice. Nearer and nearer came the song, until it swept past beneath Erika's balcony:
"Ninon, Ninon, que fais-tu de la vie,
Toi, qui n'as pas d'amour?"
And above her glimmered the stars, myriads of worlds, sparkling, and shining down disdainfully upon wretched humanity writhing and striving in its efforts to attain paltry ends, so vastly important in its own estimation.
Erika lay awake all night long, oppressed by a terrible burden,--not grief for a happiness of which she had dreamed and which had proved to be impossible, but something infinitely harder to be borne by a person of her temperament, the sense of disgrace.
So long as she had been firmly convinced that he loved her, far from resenting the unconventional expression of his admiration, she had taken pleasure in it. But now the whole matter bore another aspect in her eyes. She remembered with painful distinctness the superficial, frivolous theories of life which he had advanced upon their first acquaintance. Love! yes, he might perhaps have experienced what he designated thus, but at the thought her cheeks burned. She had pleased him, as hundreds before her had done, and in the full consciousness of the ties of marriage by which he was bound he had allowed himself to make love to her as he would have done to any common flirt. When at last, in entire faith in the sincerity--yes, in the sacredness--of his feeling for her, she had generously laid bare her heart before him, he had been simply terrified by the revelation.
"He is probably laughing at me now," she said to herself, trembling in every limb. Then, with infinite bitterness, she added, "No; he is probably reproaching himself, and wondering at my folly."
It was enough to drive her insane. She buried her burning face in her pillow, and groaned aloud.
She shed not a tear throughout the night, and she appeared punctually as usual at the breakfast-table, but in the midst of the pleasant little meal, which was always taken in her grandmother's boudoir, she was overcome by an intense weariness; she longed to flee to some dark corner where no one could find her and there let the tears flow freely.
The meal was, however, unusually prolonged. The old Countess, who had quite forgotten her vexation at Lozoncyi's concealment of his marriage, and who had been vastly entertained the previous evening at Frau von Neerwinden's, was in an excellent humour, and was full of conversation, in which she showed herself both amusing and witty.
Erika forced herself to laugh and to seem gay, when, just as she felt unable to endure the situation for another moment, Lüdecke appeared with a note for her. It had come, he informed her, the day before, shortly after the ladies had gone out to dinner, and he begged to be forgiven for having forgotten to deliver it.