She looked searchingly in his face, as if to see whether he was in earnest. She could not understand why he should not be happy.
"Do you know," said she, at last, "if what you said was not meant as a joke, I have a wish, and there is nothing so very terrible about it either--I would like to dance with you, just once."
"To dance with me?"
"Of course I know well enough what is proper, and that a waiter-girl shouldn't mix among the wedding-guests unless it happens to be a peasant's wedding. But to be always hearing this beautiful music, that makes you tingle down to the tips of your toes, and yet never to be allowed to swing round with the rest, is very hard. I only mean that it is almost the same out here in the entry as in the hall--you can hear every note and the floor is smooth and clean. Will you?"
He still hesitated. He certainly felt in no mood for dancing. But when she suddenly put out her hand with a quick movement to seize her mugs, as if she interpreted his hesitation to mean that, after all, he felt himself too good to be her partner, he could not find it in his heart to let her go away from him a second time feeling mortified and insulted.
"You are right, child," he said. "Let us dance. A man needn't be particularly merry to have dancing feet. Come! But you must show me how they do it here in the country."
He put his arm round her slight and yielding figure, and she clung to it with evident pleasure. "It goes splendidly," she whispered, after the first round. "I feel as if I were being lifted up into heaven. Do you remember how you put me on your horse, that time? Good Heavens! how long ago that seems, and yet it's only a few weeks!"
He did not answer, but went on dancing, rather gravely and seriously; for it was no easy task to move easily up and down through the long, narrow entry. And all the while he felt that his partner clung to him more and more tenderly, while he himself remained perfectly cool; and it was only when it seemed to him that they had had enough, and he had released the girl from his arms again, in front of the chair on which her beer-mugs stood, that he stroked her round face caressingly and said: "Was that right, little one?"
She trembled slightly, glancing over his shoulder in the direction of the stairs which led to the upper story. Suddenly she pushed him from her, whispered "Thank you," and, quickly seizing her mugs, ran past him and down the stairs.
He looked after her in surprise. What was it that had transformed this girl so suddenly? A sudden suspicion arose within him. He rushed toward the stairs, and peered up into the darkness. There was no longer anything to be seen. But he heard a light footstep up above creeping softly across the entry, and immediately afterward the latch of a door was heard to fall, and a key was turned in the lock.