"Thank God, she has gone at last!" sighs Frau Rosamunda, as she hears the light wagon rolling away into the night. "At last!"
[CHAPTER VI.]
ENTRAPPED.
Before Harry seated himself beside the robust Paula in the pony-carriage, a slender little hand was held out to him, and a pale little face, half sad, half pouting, looked longingly up at him.
He saw neither the hand nor the face. Oh, the pity of it!
The night is sultry and silent. The full moon shines in a cloudless, dark-blue sky. Not a breath of air is stirring; the leaves of the tall poplars, casting coal-black shadows on the white, dusty highway, are motionless.
The harvest has been partly gathered in; sometimes the moonlight illumines the bare fields with a yellowish lustre; in other fields the sheaves are stacked in pointed heaps, and now and then a field of rye is passed, a plain of glimmering, silvery green, still uncut. The bearded stalks stand motionless with bowed heads, as if overtaken by sleep. From the distance comes the monotonous rustle of the mower's scythe; there is work going on even thus far into the night.
The heavy slumberous air has an effect upon Harry; his breath comes slowly, his veins tingle.
Ten minutes have passed, and he has not opened his lips. Paula Harfink looks at him now and then with a keen glance.
She is twenty-seven years old, and, although her life has been that of a perfectly virtuous woman of her class, existence no longer holds any secrets for her. Endowed by nature with intense curiosity, which has been gradually exalted into a thirst for knowledge, she has read everything that is worth reading in native and foreign modern literature, scientific and otherwise, and she is consequently thoroughly conversant with the world in which she lives.