"Of course, the women insisted that her golden hair was dyed, and her eyebrows painted. Such a play of colors did not exist in Nature. But the men did not find it the less charming on that account.
"An old Englishman was the first who ventured to address her, as a countrywoman of his. She replied in the best of English, but so shortly, that this unsuccessful attempt frightened away all others of the same kind.
"However, she herself soon appeared to tire of the isolation which she had maintained for the first few days. She made advances to a Mecklenburg lady, who had accompanied her sick daughter to the seashore, and, under the pretext of sympathy, she struck up an acquaintance with her which she let drop again after a short time, evidently because it bored her. As she also spoke German, though with an English accent, several country noblemen from the Mark, who had fallen dead in love with her, ventured to speak to her. She treated them with cool condescension, and it was not long before a regular court had gathered about her, in which several young people with whom I had heretofore associated allowed themselves to be enrolled.
"They told me about the moods and whims of their lady, who was made up of ice and fire; of childish innocence and the most refined coquetry; of sentiment and wild audacity.
"The English coldness, and the soft, dove-like smile, with which she appeared in society, and the half-bored and half-ironical manner in which she accepted the homage of her admirers, were merely a mask. When she was alone with a person, an entirely different and much more adventurous character made its appearance; a seductive, melancholy, and yielding softness--which, however, changed at once into the harshest coldness the moment he who had been encouraged by it began to grow warmer, and attempted to seize the whole hand by means of the little finger she held out to him. She would thrust back any such deluded being into his place with the most cutting irony, and from that moment would treat him with pitiless disfavor, without quite setting him free.
"Several of my acquaintances had discovered this to their cost. They gave me such minute accounts of their disgraceful defeats that I recognized in this woman a type of those perfectly cold-blooded coquettes who are--to the credit of the sex be it said--but rarely met with. The aversion I had felt toward this sea-monster, from the very first moment I had set eyes on her, was only the more confirmed by this; but, at the same time, the thought sprang up in me that it might be a good work, a meritorious act toward the whole male population of the island, if I could succeed in catching this fisher of men in her own net.
"This purpose immediately became a fixed idea with me, actually as if my own honor were staked on the result. As I knew that I was absolutely proof against her charm, I proceeded to its execution without the faintest scruples. She had long regarded my reserve with amazement and anger; the consequence was that nothing was easier for me than to take advantage of the first chance meeting I could bring about, to conquer a place among her intimates.
"I will refrain from inflicting upon you, scene for scene, an account of the wretched comedy that now began. The fact that I had to do with a skillful opponent aroused my ambition, and stung into life all the dormant obstinacy of my character, so that, at the end of a week--for she, too, staked all her pride upon finally seeing me at her feet like all the others--we two stood confronting each other almost alone; her former circle of admirers had withdrawn discomfited.
"The great aim of my tactics was to represent myself as thoroughly blasé and unsusceptible, and to act as though I found the great charm of my intercourse with her merely in the fact that I had at last encountered a kindred nature, who, like me, had long since disclaimed, as a ridiculous delusion, the possession of any warmth of feeling. She accepted the rôle I assigned to her, but it never occurred to her for a moment to cease trying to tempt me out of mine. Occasional human emotions, into which I now and then allowed my calumniated heart to be betrayed, gave her some right to hope; and the freedom of a watering-place afforded a hundred opportunities for putting me to the test.
"Well, it turned out just as it could not help turning out. One evening we came home from a stormy sailing excursion, which had not been entirely free from danger, half wet through and hungry. The return trip had been delayed from the fact of the skipper's having been obliged to stop in the midst of the storm, to mend, as well as he could under the circumstances, a leak in his boat; the consequence was it was late when we reached her fisher's cottage. She herself seemed to have forgotten her enforced rôle for the moment, and appeared to have no other end in view than to refresh and warm me before dismissing me to my lodgings. While she went into her chamber and put on some dry garments, I was forced to stay in the front-room, which was itself little more than a small bedroom, and exchange my coat--which had been soaked through and through with the salt water--for a Turkish jacket she had selected from her wardrobe; and soon, the tea steaming on the table, the warmth of the fire--which was very grateful in spite of its being early fall--and, above all, the extraordinary manner in which we were dressed after the dangers we had escaped, threw us both into a reckless and merry mood such as I had never before experienced in her presence.