But what does it avail him to stand before her like a saint on a pedestal? Before he is aware, she has drawn his head towards her and kissed him on both eyes, whereupon both lovers sigh,--each for a different reason,--and then sit down opposite each other. Paula, however, does not long endure such formality. She moves her chair closer to his, and at last lays her hand on the young officer's shoulder.
Harry is positively wretched. No use to attempt to deceive himself any longer: Paula Harfink is in love with him.
Although she brought about the betrothal by means of cool cunning and determination, daily intercourse with the handsome, chivalric young fellow has kindled a flame in her mature heart, and her passion for him grows with every hour passed in his society.
It is useless to say how little this circumstance disposes him in her favour. Love is uncommonly unbecoming to Paula. It is impossible to credit her with the impulse that forgets self and the world, or with the amount of ideal stupidity which invests all the nonsense of lovers with grace and naturalness. Involuntarily, every one feels inclined to smile when so robust and enlightened a woman--enlightened in all directions--suddenly languishes, and puts on the semblance of ultra-feminine weakness. Harry alone does not smile; he takes the matter very tragically.
Sometimes, in deep privacy he clinches his fist and mentally calls his betrothed "a love-sick dromedary!"
Naturally he does not utter such words aloud, not even when he is alone in his room, not even in the dark; but--thought is free!
"What have you been doing all this time?" Paula asks at last, archly, thus breaking the oppressive silence.
"This time? Do you mean since yesterday?" he asks, frowning.
"It seemed long to me," she sighs. "I--I wrote you a letter, which I had not the courage to send you. There, take it with you!" And she hands him a bulky manuscript in a large envelope. It is not the first sizable billet-doux which she has thus forced upon him. In a drawer of his writing-table at Komaritz there reposes a pile of such envelopes, unopened.
"Have you read the English novel I sent you yesterday?--wonderful, is it not?--hero and heroine so like ourselves."