At this time Pistasch came to Traunberg almost daily. Linda coquetted with him, but her coquetry was vague and cold, and was neither challenging nor encouraging. He made no progress, as he expressed himself to Scirocco. "She has no temperament and no heart," he grumbled, and once he added, "Perhaps I am not the right one----"
"What do you mean?" replied Scirocco, impatiently, remembering the suspicion which had been cast upon him. But Pistasch only answered crossly, "Garzin!"
"Impossible!" replied Scirocco, unwillingly. Pistasch only shrugged his shoulders, and when Sempaly began to consider the matter, he must admit that Garzin went oftener than was necessary to Traunberg, that Linda had quite a different glance and voice when she was with him from what she had for others, that she made concessions to him which she granted no one else, never wore again the most becoming toilets if he had once condemned them, and did not sing the most piquant couplets if he shrugged his shoulders over them, and, once on the slippery path of distrust, Scirocco told himself also that the charming sisterly confidence which Linda permitted herself with her brother-in-law was scarcely in place in such a beautiful woman with such a young man.
He was angry with Garzin.
"He really does not think of wrong, but he should be careful--for----"
Like all people of his stamp, Scirocco, in affairs of passion, did not believe in free will, but so much the more in the compelling influence of opportunity.
"You have a new bracelet, Linda," said Felix one day, after dinner, to his wife as she smoked a cigarette with him in the drawing-room.
"Do you like it?" said she, and held out her white arm to him. The bracelet consisted of a thick gold chain to which a little coin was fastened.
"Charming!" answered Felix, apparently indifferently. "Did you buy it in Marienbad?"
"No; Kamenz gave it to me to-day--he owed me a philopena," replied Linda.