"Oh, heavens!" she thinks to herself, as she hurries to her room to arrange her dishevelled hair, "why must he come before I have an answer ready? He surely will not insist upon an immediate decision! It would be terrible! Anything but a forced decision; that is the worst thing in the world."
Such, however, does not seem to be the opinion of her hot-blooded cousin. When, a quarter of an hour afterwards, she goes out into the corridor and towards the drawing-room door, she observes a dark figure standing in the embrasure of a window. The figure turns towards her, then approaches her.
"Harry! ah!" she exclaims, with a start; "what are you doing here? Are you waiting for anybody?"
"Yes," he replies, with some harshness, "for you!"
"Ah!" And, without looking at him, she hurries on to the door of the drawing-room.
"There is no one there," he informs her; "they have all gone to the summer-house in the garden. Wenkendorf proposes to read aloud the libretto of 'Parzifal.'" He pauses.
"And did you stay here to tell me this?" she stammers, trying to pass him, on her way to the steps leading into the garden. "It was very kind of you; you seem destined to play the part of sheep-dog to-day, to drive the company together."
They go into the garden, and the buzz of voices reaches their ears from the summer-house. They have turned into a shady path, above which arches the foliage of the shrubs on either side. Suddenly Harry pauses, and seizing his cousin's slender hands in both his own, he gazes steadily and angrily into her eyes, saying, in a suppressed voice,--
"Zdena, how can you hurt me so?"
Her youthful blood pulsates almost as fiercely as does his own; now, when the moment for an explanation has come, and can no longer be avoided, now, one kind word from him, and all the barriers which with the help of pure reason she has erected to shield her from the insidious sweetness of her dreams will crumble to dust. But Harry does not speak this word: he is far too agitated to speak it. Instead of touching her heart, his harshness irritates her pride. Throwing back her head, she darts an angry glance at him from her large eyes.