"I congratulate you on your fine comparison," says she, kissing his hair lightly. "Now I must dress for dinner."
"Already? Am I to be sentenced to read the paper?"
It was a little more than five years ago that Erwin Garzin had come to his estate of Steinbach adjoining the beautiful Lanzberg Traunberg in order to arrange his business after the death of his father. Elsa, with whom he had as boy played many a trick, he had found a grown girl. At that time nineteen years old, her mind, matured by pain, was far in advance of her years, her body far behind. She had the slender, undeveloped form of a child too quickly grown, and carried her head always bent forward, like a young tree over which a cold storm has passed, and was always sad and depressed. At times, to be sure, she smiled suddenly like a true child, but only for a moment, and her eyes were almost always moist. She spoke little and had a hollow, almost too deep voice. And yet the first time that Erwin heard this hollow voice his heart beat strangely, and that night he lay awake and was angry at the sweet song of a nightingale which disturbed him in his efforts to remember that hollow voice.
It was spring-time then, a mixture of showers and rainbows, flowers heavy with dew, bright foliage and mild air. Erwin fell hopelessly in love with the pale daughter of old Mr. Lanzberg. She, however, avoided him, not with that pretty maidenly reserve behind which the coquetry of the future woman usually lurks, but with the shy despondency of a sick owl dreading the light. When he had at length accustomed her to his society he was still miles from his aim. She did not think of what most young girls do. She was wholly absorbed in consoling her bowed father, in pitying her unfortunate brother, at that time dwelling in a far distant land. Her heart was full, longed for no other feeling, suspected none, and yet slowly her whole being warmed; something like a cure was effected in her, and the day came when she laid her small hand firmly and confidingly in Erwin's and for the first time he whisperingly called her his betrothed.
But he had not yet won. Soon she expressed her scruples at dragging the shadow which made her so sad under his roof, then at leaving her father. When they proved to her that nothing could so help the bowed man as the consolation of seeing at least one of his children happy, the wedding day was at length appointed. A strange turn suddenly seized her when Erwin one day asked her in what part of Vienna she would prefer to live.
"In Vienna?" cried she. "We are to live in the city?" Whereupon he replied: "My treasure, you know that I am not a rich man, and the rents of Steinbach only just suffice for the support of a very economical couple. Therefore I, and you with me are dependent upon my career. But I like to work. I have fine connections, and the times are favorable to ambitious people. You will yet be the wife of an Excellency, Elsa!"
From her pale face it could be read that she did not see the slightest pleasure in being the wife of a governor, ambassador, or minister. Her hand grew limp and cold in his, she evaded his caresses, and every time that evening that his glance met hers, her eyes were filled with tears. Her exaggerated aversion to the world disquieted him, without seeming to him other than a symptom of diseased nerves; he thought that his loving patience must vanquish it, and when the next morning his servant brought him a letter from Elsa, he admired the strange, energetic, large letters of the address, and played with it, firmly convinced that it could not contain anything important. It contained the following:
"Above all things, many, many thanks for the sympathizing friendship which you have always showed to us, my father and me. Never should I have allowed myself to be persuaded into an engagement with you. I should be a lamentable wife for you. I will not hinder you in your career, and I cannot live in the world even for your sake. Therefore I give you back your word. I wish you all joy and happiness in the world, and as to me, when you have become a great man, keep a little friendly remembrance of the spring of '70. Elsa."
What could he do but rush over to Traunberg, overwhelm her with tender reproaches, represent to her subtly and incontrovertibly that her shyness was morbid, her yielding to this mood fairly wrong.
"Am I then nothing to you?" he finally cried, vexedly.