"To add to the splendor of festal garments," she went on, "a little of the natural beauty of the divinely created human body is a tribute which even the purest woman can afford the eye, and whatever is kept within the limits of the artistic sense can never be shameless or unseemly. Woe betide any one who passes these bounds and sees evil in it--he erases himself from the ranks of cultured people. So much, and no more, you are still worthy that I should say in my own justification!"
She turned and took up the cloak to wrap herself in it: "Will you be kind enough to have the horses harnessed?"
"Are you going?" asked Freyer, who meanwhile had regained his self-control.
"Yes."
"Alas, what have I done!" he said, wringing his hands. "I have not even asked you to sit down, have not let you rest, have offended and wounded you. Oh, I am a savage, a wretched man."
"You are what you can be!" she replied with the cutting coldness into which a proud woman's slighted love is quickly transformed.
"What such an uncultivated person can be! That is what you wish to say!" replied Freyer. "But there lies my excuse. Aye, I am a native of the country, accustomed to break my fruit, wet with the morning-dew, from the tree ere any hand has touched it, or pluck from the thorny boughs in the dewy thicket the hidden berries which no human eye has beheld;--I cannot understand how people can enjoy fruits that have been uncovered for hours in the dust of the marketplace. The aroma is gone--the freshness and bloom have vanished, and if given me--no matter how costly it might be, I should not care for it--the wild berries in the wood which smiled at me from the leafy dusk with their glittering dewdrops, would please me a thousand times better! This is not meant for a comparison, only an instance of how people feel when they live in the country!"
"And to carry your simile further--if you believe that the fruit so greatly desired has been kept for you alone--will it not please you to possess what others long for in vain?"
"No," he said simply, "I am not envious enough to wish to deprive others of anything they covet--but I will not share, so I would rather resign!"
"Well, then--I have nothing more to say on that point--let us close the conversation."