It was too unequivocal. Princess Dorothea understood. Her assumed gaiety took another turn. "I have a sudden longing for a dance!" she exclaimed. "G----, play us a waltz: we will extemporize a ball."
G---- began to play with immense spirit one of Strauss's waltzes, when a gray-haired old General raised his voice,--a clear, sharp voice,--and said, "It would be a little difficult to extemporize a ball, for, with the exception of the hostess, your Excellency is the only lady present."
Dorothea grew paler still, held herself rather more erect than usual, threw back her head, and smiled. Just thus, deadly pale, hard, erect and smiling, Goswyn was to see her once again in his life, a couple of years later, when all her world was pointing at her the finger of scorn.
"You will let me drive Helmy home, will you not, Otto?" Dorothea asked in the hall, where she was holding a kind of little court amid her admirers, a yellow lace scarf wound around her head, and a black velvet wrap about her shoulders. "Helmy has such a cold, and there is no finding a droschky at this hour."
Involuntarily Goswyn, who was just buckling on his sabre, paused to listen to this little speech of his fascinating sister-in-law's, uttered in the tenderest tone.
He had no idea that his brother had anything to fear from Prince Helmy: this was only Dorothea's way of escaping any admonition from her husband. If Otto did not scold on the spot he never scolded at all. There really was nothing objectionable in her driving home alone with her cousin, but then---- She laid her little hand on her husband's breast as she spoke: the gentlemen around her looked on. Without waiting to hear his brother's reply, Goswyn left the house. He had gone but two or three steps in the street when some one joined him: it was Otto.
"Have you a light?" he asked, in a rather uncertain voice. Goswyn struck a match for him, and paused in silence while his brother lighted his cigar with unnecessary effort.
"I am really very glad to walk," said Otto, keeping pace with his brother. "Thea cannot bear to have me smoke in the coupé."
Goswyn was silent.
"I know Thea through and through," Otto continued: "she is as innocent as a child, but a little imprudent; and then all those starched, stiff-necked Berlin women cannot forgive her for being more fascinating and original than the whole of them together. And, after all, what harm was there in her singing those songs? It was easy enough to see that she did not understand what she was singing, or at least did not think. The purest women are always the most imprudent. These people do not understand her. They admire her,--no one can help that,--but they do not appreciate her. When she saw that she was shocking those Philistines she sang on out of sheer bravado. It was perhaps not wise to brave public opinion."