It is the day after Treurenberg's meeting with Harry in the dusty little garrison town.
Lato is sitting at his writing-table, counting a package of bank-notes,--his yesterday's winnings. He divides them into two packets and encloses them in two letters, which he addresses and seals and sends by a servant to the post. He has thus wiped out two old debts. No sooner have the letters left his hand than he brushes his fingers with his handkerchief, as if he had touched something unclean.
Poor Treurenberg! He has never been a spendthrift, but he has been in debt ever since his boyhood. His pecuniary circumstances, however, have never been so oppressive, never have there been such disagreeable complications in his affairs, as since he has had a millionaire for a wife.
He leans his elbows on his writing-table and rests his chin on his hands. Angry discontent with himself is tugging at his nerves. Is it not disgusting to liquidate an old debt to his tailor, and to pay interest to a usurer, with his winnings at play? What detestable things cards are! If he loses he hates it, and if he wins--why, it gives him a momentary satisfaction, but his annoyance at having impoverished a friend or an acquaintance is all the greater afterwards. Every sensible disposition of the money thus won seems to him most inappropriate. Money won at cards should be scattered about, squandered; and yet how can he squander it,--he who has so little and needs so much? How often he has resolved never to touch cards again! If he only had some strong, sacred interest in life he might become absorbed in it, and so forget the cursed habit. He has not the force of character that will enable him to sacrifice his passion for play to an abstract moral idea. His is one of those delicate but dependent natures that need a prop in life, and he has never had one, even in childhood.
"What is the use of cudgelling one's brains till they ache, about what cannot be helped?" he says at last, with a sigh, "or which I at least cannot help," he adds, with a certain bitterness of self-accusation. He rises, takes his hat, and strolls out into the park. A huge, brown-streaked stag-hound, which had belonged to the old proprietor of the castle and which has dogged Lato's heels since the previous evening, follows him. From time to time he turns and strokes the animal's head. Then he forgets----
At the same time, Paula is sitting in her study, on the ground-floor. It looks out on the court-yard, and is hung with sad-coloured leather, and decorated with a couple of good old pictures. She is sitting there clad in a very modern buff muslin gown, with a fiery red sash, listening for sounds without and with head bent meanwhile over Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet.'
The noise of distant hoofs falls upon her ear, and a burning blush suffuses her plump cheek. Upon the white shade, which is pulled down, falls the shadow of a horse's head, and then the upper portion of his rider's figure. The hoofs no longer sound. Through the sultry summer stillness--breaking the monotonous plashing of the fountain and the murmur of the old linden--is heard the light, firm pat of a masculine hand upon a horse's neck, the caress with which your true horseman thanks his steed for service rendered; then an elastic, manly tread, the clatter of spurs and sabre, a light knock at the door of Paula's room, and Harry Leskjewitsch enters.
Paula, with a smile, holds out to him both her hands; without smiling he dutifully kisses one of them.
A pair of lovers in Meissen porcelain stands upon a bracket above Paula's writing-table,--lovers who have been upon the point of embracing each other for something more than a century. Above their heads hovers a tiny ray of sunshine, which attracts Harry's attention to the group. He and Paula fall into the very same attitudes as those taken by the powdered dandy in the flowered jacket and the little peasant-girl in dancing-slippers,--they are on the point of embracing; and for the first time in his life Harry wishes he were made of porcelain, that he might remain upon the point.
His betrothal is now eight days old. The first day he thought it would be mere child's play to loosen the knot tied by so wild a chance, but now he feels himself fast bound, and is conscious that each day casts about him fresh fetters. In vain, with every hour passed with his betrothed, does he struggle not to plunge deeper into this labyrinth, from which he can find no means of extricating himself. In vain does he try to enlighten Paula as to his sentiments towards her by a stiff, repellent demeanour, never lying to her by look, word, or gesture.