With these words he raised his glass, held it before the flame of the lamp and slowly drank it off. A deathlike silence followed; the professor, who was apparently on the point of making a rather irritating reply, was restrained by a meaning look from the countess. She herself had looked at the sculptor while he spoke, with a peculiar, searching, flashing look, and merely threatened him playfully with her finger as he now advanced toward her as if to take leave.
"Stay," she whispered to him, "I have a word to speak with you."
Then she turned to the others, and invited them to be seated again and not to think of breaking up so soon. But her most cordial words and demeanor could not banish a certain uncomfortable feeling that had taken possession of the company. No one could be induced to take a place at the piano, and a court musician, who still had a violin sonata in petto, shut up his instrument-case with conspicuous noise and took his leave of the countess, bestowing upon Jansen as he passed a look full of meaning. The others followed his example, and, finally, even the professor, who took his defeat most easily, entered upon his retreat after addressing a few jesting remarks to his opponent. Rosenbusch, who would probably otherwise have waited for Jansen, had offered his services in escorting home the young Fräulein who had fainted earlier in the evening.
The artist and the countess now stood alone confronting one another, in the dimly-lighted room. From the street below they could hear the departing guests as they went away, laughing, talking, and singing.
"I beg for a mild punishment, countess," began Jansen, smiling. "Of course you have only detained me in order to exact a penance in the absence of witnesses. I thank you for this kind intention, although, to be honest, I rather favor a public execution if the head really must come off!"
"You are very, very wicked!" she answered, slowly shaking her head as if she were deeply in earnest in what she said. "You fear neither God nor man, least of all that which seems to many the most terrible--the anger of a woman. And, for that reason, I shall not succeed in punishing you for your sins as you have deserved."
"No," he said. "I submit voluntarily to any penance you may put upon me. How I wish that by so doing I could rid myself of my old fault of thinking aloud without first looking around to see who may be listening!"
She walked up and down the room with folded arms, gazing thoughtfully before her.
"Why should we disguise ourselves?" she said, after a pause. "It is not worth the trouble to deceive the thoughtless masses, and we cannot fool the wise few. Let us drop our masks, dear friend. I think exactly as you do, only perhaps I feel it even more keenly because I am a woman. For me, too, music is merely a bath. But I enjoy it more passionately because a woman, who is much more restricted than you men, is more grateful for every opportunity to cast off all her chains and fetters, and plunge her soul in a great excited and exciting element. To me such an element is music; of course not all music--not that shallow kind that merely bubbles and murmurs pleasantly, yet scarcely rises to my knees, but that fathomless music whose billows break over my head. To me Sebastian Bach is like a shoreless sea, 'and it is sweet to plunge into its depths.' But do not let us talk of the petty souls, the bunglers and the underlings! With you great men--you yourself have said as much--does the material make such a great difference? When you see a work of Phidias, does not your whole being sink as if into divinely cool waters? And that is the main thing in the end. The few moments in life that satisfy our innermost desires are, after all, those only in which we almost believe we are dying. Enjoyment of art, enthusiasm, a great deed, a passion--in the main they all have the same ending. Or do not you agree, dear friend?"
He indicated his assent by a gesture, though he had only caught a few stray words. This woman interested him so little that his thoughts, even when he was at her side, secretly flew away to her whose image filled his heart.