It was a beautiful star-lit summer night, warm and still; the only sound was the patter of the heavy dew trickling from the branches of the trees in the Schützen Park. I paused outside, enjoying the same sense of comfort we have while awake in bed between two dreams, in the consciousness that we are still enjoying our bodily existence. Only the day before yesterday I had been sitting on the bench in the parsonage garden, beside the dear sensitive girl from whom the sudden outburst of the flame of a hapless attachment had driven me, and to-day I was here amid these totally unfamiliar surroundings, with the old fire once more burning beneath the ashes, and must again save myself by flight if I were not to perish utterly.
I saw the actors, who meantime had changed their clothes and washed off their rouge, emerging from a little back door, heard their loud conversation, and once even the call for "Doctor Johannes." Then the little group dispersed under the trees toward the city, and, after a sufficiently long interval separated us, I too set out on my way home.
Suddenly I heard a light footstep behind me, and a low, musical voice said: "Are you in such a hurry, Herr Doctor, that you can't even look round at a defenseless lady, far less offer her your arm and your company?"
At the same moment a hand was slipped through my arm, and by the uncertain starlight I looked into Victorine's big, mournful eyes.
"I was belated," she said, "and now I am glad to still find a companion. Besides, I should like to become a little better acquainted with you, for at dinner, when the manager's wife is present, my mouth feels as though it were sewed up. Come, you needn't be afraid that anything will be thought of it, if we are seen taking this nocturnal promenade. We sha'n't meet even a cat, and you probably care no more what Mrs. Grundy thinks of you than I do."
Her light tone, so strangely belied by her melancholy eyes, was extremely repulsive to me: So I answered very coldly and a trifle maliciously:
"I only wonder that Herr Daniel leaves the knightly service to another."
"He!" she replied, with a short laugh, which, spite of her beautiful voice, sounded very unmusical. "In the first place, he did not play to-night, and was not even at the hall. And then, though he usually pays me some little attention, we have had a quarrel to-day. You are mistaken if you fancy he is in love with me. It's only old custom that makes us keep together. His heart, such as it is, belongs to a very different person."
"May I ask--?"
"Why not? It is an open secret. He's infatuated with Frau Spielberg, though she's such a cold fish that it always makes me shiver merely to look at her. She behaves, too, as if he were not in existence, and when he gets into a rage about it he pours out his whole heart to me, and it does him good to have me laugh at him. That is our whole relation. Perhaps I ought not to speak to you so frankly about it. You are her relative, and of course revere her as though she were a saint. But I can't help it; she is insufferable to me, with her Canoness airs and woful face the instant the company begins to be a little merry, and one or another goes a shade too far. She ought to have kept away from the stage. But she felt her human nature once when she threw herself into Spielberg's arms. Why does she put on her governess manner now?"