Then, moving toward the group of hunters, who had not dismounted, she left the painter standing there, and asking himself uneasily if he had not a second time displeased the woman whom he was growing more infatuated about hour by hour.
A few minutes later the blasts on the horns were again heard, the hunters went off on their way toward the Wandau, and the princess, having remounted with the aid of one of the servants, gave the signal for a start to be made. She wished to be back at the château by breakfast-time.
Paul was the only male guest of the prince who had not joined the hunt, and he reckoned on the fact to afford the chance of an explanation between himself and Lise; but in the course of the hour that was spent on the return journey to Pampeln he could not get a moment alone with the princess. She never was away from the side of the carriages in which her mother and friends were.
Vexed and desperate, wondering whether it was that Lise Olsdorf dreaded him or that she was merely a coquette and laughing at him, Paul Meyrin determined to force her hand. Fortune was about to give him a chance of doing so sooner than he had dared to hope—that very day indeed.
In the evening, about six o'clock, when the few guests remaining at the château were going to their rooms to dress for dinner, the artist saw the princess crossing the lawn and going toward one of the alleys of the park.
Within five minutes, having gone a roundabout way, Paul, as if he had come from the outskirts of the park, met the young woman face to face.
Lise was walking with lowered head, pushing aside idly with the end of her parasol the dead leaves blown from the oaks and cedars, whose great branches met overhead in a thick arch, which made the spot dim and mysterious.
At the sound of the painter's footsteps she raised her eyes.
"You?" she exclaimed, in an ironical voice. "So you are as good a runner as you are a horseman."
"I don't understand you," said Paul, bowing.