Lina sat from morning until evening like a kind of feminine Doctor Faust among bookcases, retorts, and globes in a spacious, dreary room, trying to work and longing 'to recover herself.' Then one day Meineck made his appearance at the mill. She received him with a great show of gay indifference, sitting at her writing-table and playing with her pen by way of intimating that any prolongation of his visit was undesirable. He perceived this. Embarrassed, confused by the sight of the scientific apparatus that surrounded him on all sides, he sat leaning forward, his sabre between his knees, in an arm-chair from which he had been obliged to remove a Greek lexicon and two volumes of the 'Revue,' and stammering all sorts of childish nonsense while he gazed at her with adoring eyes. She wore a perfectly plain gown of dark-green cloth fitting her like a riding-habit, and her hair, which curled naturally, was combed back behind her ears and cut short. He found this mode of dressing her hair charming, and his heart throbbed fast as he noted the magnificent fall of her shoulders. In his eyes she was incomparably beautiful; hers was the majestic loveliness of the unattainable. He often saw her thus afterwards in his dreams, and in his death-agony her image hovered before him again, noble, undefaced, as it was impressed upon his heart at this interview.
Later on he wondered how he found courage to speak, but he found it. He sued for her hand, he wooed her passionately with words that could not but move her. She refused him. He would not accept her refusal. She stood her ground bravely, frankly confessing to him that it cost her an effort to repulse him, but that she must do it to insure the peace of mind of both. Apart from her dislike of resigning the freedom of her existence, she thought it unprincipled to give heed to the pleading of a poor exaggerated lad who was led away in a moment of romantic enthusiasm to offer his hand to a woman so much his elder.
There were such full, warm, cordial tones in her deep voice! Sight and hearing failed him. He knelt before her, kissed the hem of her garment, and promised at last to be content for the present if she would allow him to speak again at the end of six months. By that time it would be manifest that his love was not merely momentary romantic enthusiasm.
She laid her beautiful slender hands upon his shoulders, and said, kindly, "Dear lad, if after six months you are still so insane as to covet an elderly bride, we will discuss the matter again. And now adieu!"
He pressed his lips upon her hand so passionately that she suddenly withdrew it, and the colour mounted to her cheeks; he had never seen them flush so before. His eyes fathomed the depths of her own: she turned her head away.
"Au revoir!" he said, and withdrew, bowing gravely and profoundly.
There was something of triumph in the rhythm of his retreating footsteps; at least so it seemed to her as she listened to the sound as it died away in the distance. He walked as though his feet were shod with victory. Indignation possessed her. Her strong nature defended itself vigorously against the influence of this beguiling insidious force which had taken captive her heart and threatened to subdue her reason. In vain! The hand which his lips had pressed burned, and suddenly there glided through her veins, dreamily, lullingly, a something inexpressibly sweet, something she had never experienced before,--a delicious yet paralyzing sense of weariness. She started, and sat upright; then, gathering together the papers on her writing-table, she tried to work. In vain! The pen dropped from her fingers. She rose hastily and went to take a long walk. Her feet sank deep in the melting snow; the air was warm, and the south wind rustled among the trees and shrubbery, whispering mysteriously along the crackling surface of the frozen brook. Her weariness increased; she had to retrace her steps.
She went to bed earlier than usual that evening, and tried to think of grave subjects; but sweet, long-forgotten melodies haunted her heart and brain: she could not think; and at last she fell asleep to the sound of that fairy-like music within her soul.
Tu the middle of the night she awoke. The moon shone through her window directly upon her bed. She listened. What sound was that? A merry uproar like the triumphal note of spring--the swift rushing of the brook--ascended to her windows. The ice was broken.
And in slow, monotonous cadence the falling of the drops from the melting snow on the roof struck upon her ear.