"Fräulein Fanny," he whispered, after a pause, "what horrible thing have you seen or experienced in the world that has made you already weary of it? Or does the air here in this house of prayer seem to you easier to breathe than the lovely air of heaven outside? And do you think you will find a convent better ventilated than this place, and filled with a better company?"
"Ave Maria, ora pro nobis, nunc et in hora--" murmured the girl, making the sign of the cross.
"And do you think I will be put off in this way?" whispered Rosenbusch to his neighbor. "Oh, my adored Fanny, you do not know me! If painting battles does not exactly make a man fat, it makes him strong, bold as a lion, invincible. You shall see what heroic deeds I will yet accomplish--on condition, of course, that you remain faithful and true to me. Or do you doubt me?"
She was silent for a moment. A quick, mischievous side-glance rested on him for an instant: "Go away!" she whispered, scarcely above her breath. "You are only joking. It was very wrong of you to follow us here. I still have six paternosters to repeat, and it is a positive sin--"
"It's a sin of your papa, sweet Nanny mine, to shut you up like a nun and let you go nowhere but to church, as if a young creature needed nothing but to be pious. When should one be merry, then, unless it is when one is young? Come, Fräulein Nanny, if your father had not been so angry yesterday, and I were sitting by your side--not here in the dark corner, but in your own house on the sofa--and were whispering all sorts of silly love-talk in your ear, and your sister, who was left to matronize us, should find her presence absolutely necessary in the kitchen, and--"
The round red face in the window-niche assumed a highly displeased expression, for the two heads near the red columns had approached so near together that their hair touched, and the softest whispering sufficed to make itself understood. Over opposite, where the other couple were, a space two spans broad still intervened between the two kneeling figures. But even there not a syllable appeared to be lost.
"I know I have no right to hope for any great happiness," whispered Elfinger. "I am a poor cripple. If you reply by saying that it is a piece of audacity for me to hope, with my single eye, to find favor in the most beautiful pair of eyes that ever read in a prayer-book, I find it very natural. Yes, you will even do me a favor, Fräulein Fanny, if you will tell me so--if you will confess to me that a man who looks as I do can never win your heart. I would try then to come to my senses--that is to say, to become quite hopeless. Will you do me this favor?"
Deep silence. Nevertheless she hardly seemed inclined to make such a declaration.
"You are cruel!" he continued; "I am neither to live nor die. But of what account am I? If I could believe that you would be happy--O Fanny, I would really suppress my own feelings and call the convent a paradise in which you lived and were content. But I shudder to think that you may regret what you have done when it is too late; that then even a life by the side of such an ugly, insignificant, unknown man as I am, who loves you more than himself and would do everything for you, and who finds his whole world in you--"
He raised his voice so loud as he said this that she looked up in affright, and made a beseeching sign for him to calm himself. In doing this, she involuntarily moved a little nearer to him.