"I hope we shall see you soon again, old fellow; but--hm!--have you no message for my foolish little Stella?" asks the captain.
"I hope with all my heart that she may soon fall into good hands!" Rohritz says, with emphasis, in a hard vibrant voice.
And the train whizzes away.
"The deuce!" thinks the captain; "there's but a slim chance for the poor girl. Good heavens! if I loved Stella and my circumstances did not allow of my marrying, I'd take up some profession. But Rohritz is too fine a gentleman for that."
Meanwhile, Rohritz leans back discontentedly in the corner of an empty coupé.
"A charming, bewitching creature,--Stella resembles her," he murmurs to himself. "She married an elderly man from pique, and so on." He lights a cigar and puffs forth thick clouds of smoke. "She might not have married me from pique, but from loneliness, from gratitude for a little sympathy. And if Zino had come across her later on---- I was on the point of losing my head. Thank God it is over!"
He sat still for a while, his head propped upon his hand, and then found that his cigar had gone out. With an impatient gesture he tossed it out of the window.
"I could not have believed I should have had such an attack at my years," he muttered. He set his teeth, and his face took on a resolute expression. "It must he," he said to himself.
Outside the wind sighed among the trees and in the tall meadow-grass.
It sounded to him like the sobbing of his rejected happiness.