He pulls the bell rope violently. "Elsa," he whispers once more before the servant enters, but with such intolerable cordiality she says, "Well, Erwin?" that he turns away his head and calls to the servant, who just then appears, "Tell Franz to saddle my horse."
XVII.
A small room with large windows opening on the park, innumerable flowers in vases of different forms standing about the room, a perfume as intoxicating and painfully sweet as poison which gives one death in a last rapture; on the walls, hung with silver-worked rococo damask, a few rare pictures, only five or six; two Greuze heads with red-kissed lips and tear-reddened eyes, eyes which look up to heaven because earth has deceived them; then a Corot, a spring landscape, where dishevelled nymphs dance a wild round with dry leaves which winter has left; a Watteau, in which women, in the bouffant paniers of the time of the regents, with bared bosoms and hair drawn high up on their heads, touch glasses of champagne with gallant cavaliers, a picture in which everything smiles, and which yet makes one deeply mournful; a picture in which men and women, especially women, seem to have no heart, no soul, no enjoyment on earth, no belief in heaven; but in deepest ennui float about like butterflies, tormented by the curse of the consciousness that their life lasts only from sunrise to sunset; a Rembrandt, a negress, brutally healthy, bestially stupid, with dull glance, broad, hungry lips, huge, homely, and wholly satisfied with herself and creation; about the room soft, inviting furniture; no dazzling light, pale reddish reflections; draperies in Roman style, artistic knick-knacks and soft rugs--this is what Erwin finds as, pushing aside the drawn portières, he enters Linda's boudoir without announcement.
Amid these surroundings she sits at an upright piano, and softly and dreamily sings an Italian love-song.
Erwin comes close up to the piano. "Ah!" cries she, springing up. It would be impossible not to see what unusual pleasure his visit gives her. Her eyes shine, and a faint blush passes over her cheeks. "Erwin, did you not receive my letter?" she cries almost shyly, and gives him a soft hand which trembles and grows warm in his.
"Certainly," he replies. "It was very nice in you to consider our foo----" in spite of all the bitterness which for the moment he feels toward Elsa, he cannot use the byword foolish, and rather says--"little traditions. I only came for a moment, I----" he hesitates. "Elsa hopes that you will do us the pleasure of dining with us Sunday."
"Sunday?" repeats Linda, letting her fingers wander absently in dreamy preluding over the keys.
"Have you planned anything else?" asked Erwin, who had meanwhile taken a very comfortable chair.
"What should I have planned?" asked she, shrugging her pretty shoulders. "No, no, I will come gladly. You are very good to me, Erwin, and I am inexpressibly thankful to you."
A strangely exaggerated feeling was in her accent, in her moist glance, and the quick gesture with which she stretched out both hands to him.