The house, built of logs, was of two stories; on the ground floor were two living rooms, and the domains of Babette, who amongst her other accomplishments turned out to be not only a most capable valet, but a first-class cook. On the second story there were two large rooms. The whole house was furnished after the manner of a hunting lodge, with stags' heads on the walls, and skins on the floors. In the drawing-room there was a piano and a few etchings of the wild boar by Schaffein.
I dressed for dinner in my "smoking," though under ordinary circumstances I should have considered this rather formal, but I was glad I did, for she appeared in full evening tenue. She wore a violet gown, and across her forehead a black satin bandeau with a Z in diamonds upon it. It must have cost two thousand marks, and I wondered with a dull kind of jealousy whether the Colonel had given it to her.
I cannot remember of what we talked during dinner. We have a hundred subjects in common, and we look at so many aspects of the world through the same pair of eyes; I only know that when I have been talking to her for a period--there is no exact measurement of time for me when I am with her--I leave her presence feeling "completed." I feel that a sort of gap within my being has been filled, that a spiritual hunger has been satisfied, that I have got something which I wanted, but for which I could not have formulated the desire in words. I had resolved that on this first night I would bring matters between us to a head and end this delicious but intolerable uncertainty as to how we stood; yet, when old Babette had served us with coffee in the drawing-room, as I call the second living-room, and we were alone together, I could not bring up the subject. Partly because I think she prevented me so doing by that skilful shepherding of the conversation into other paths with an artfulness with which God endows all women, and also partly because I could not screw myself up to the pitch. I could not, or rather would not, put my fate to the touch. I had a presentiment that in reaching for the summit I might fall from the slope. Alas! how true was this foreboding in some senses--but I will keep all things in their right order.
Let it only be recorded that when she kissed me good-night (with the tenderness of a mother) and left me to smoke a final cigar I had said nothing, and I could only wonder at the strange fate that had placed me practically alone with a girl whom I had grown to love with a deep emotion, and who appeared to love me, yet often behaved as if I was her brother.
The next day we were like two children. The snow was deep on the ground, and the fir trees stood like thousands of sentinels in grey uniform round the clearing. Once during the afternoon, as with Zoe's assistance I was furiously chopping wood for the fire, a droning noise made me look up, and thousands of metres overhead a small squadron of aeroplanes, evidently bound for the Western Front, sailed slowly across the sky. I thought how awkward it would be for them if they experienced an engine failure whilst over the forest, though they were up so high that I imagine they could have glided ten kilometres, and as I think (but I am not certain, and I have pledged myself not to try and find out) we were in the Forest of Montellan, which is barely fifteen kilometres broad, I suppose they could have fallen clear of the trees.
As a matter of fact I imagine they would have used our clearing--I'm glad they didn't.
That night after dinner she played to me, first Beethoven and then Chopin. I can see her as I write; she had just finished the 14th Prelude and, resting her chin on her hand, she smiled mysteriously at me.
The hour had come, and, driven by strong impulses, I spoke. I told her that I loved her as I had never thought that a man could love a woman; I told her that I longed to shield her and protect her, and above all things to remove her from the clutches of that bestial Colonel, and as I bent over her and felt my senses swim in the subtleties of her perfume, I begged her passionately to say the word that would give me the right to fight the world on her behalf.