"Loveliest of women!" murmured Herbert, intoxicated by the sight. "Is it not monstrous that such a woman should mourn over an unrequited love? Does he who could withstand such charms deserve the name of man? No, most certainly not. He is an overstrained pedant, the type of a German Philister, and if blind nature had not endowed him with the head of a Jove and the form of an athlete, the Countess Worronska would never have wasted a tear upon him!"
"Herbert, you shall not revile him! You cannot know how great he seems to me in thus coldly despising my beauty, as though he might choose amongst goddesses,--as though Olympus were around him, instead of this insignificant town filled with ugly, gossiping women. What a lofty ideal must have filled his fancy,--an ideal with which I could not compete! When he saw me first, he did not know this Hartwich. I remember how cold his eye was when he first saw me. He looked at me with the cool gaze of an anatomist. And it was always so. Whenever he visited my husband, he always treated me with the strictest formality. Always the same gentle, inviolable repose,--the same calm scrutiny that one accords to a fine picture, but not to a lovely woman. Oh, there is something overpowering, in all this, for a woman used to seeing all men at her feet!" She sank into a gloomy reverie. At last she seized Herbert's hand. "Herbert, who is she who has power to enchant this man? Is all contest with her useless? Must I resign all hope?"
Herbert, as if electrified by her touch, whispered scarcely audibly, "Will you grant me that kiss if I show you how to annihilate the Hartwich in Möllner's eyes?"
A pause ensued.
"It is my only price. Without it I am dumb."
"Well, take it, then!" cried the countess, driven to extremity; and she held up to him her lovely lips.
But, as Herbert approached her, with the expression of a jackal thirsting for his prey, disgust overpowered the haughty woman, and she thrust the slender man from her so violently that he fell to the ground. She was terrified,--perhaps her impetuosity had ruined everything. She went to him and held out her hand. "Stand up and forgive me."
Herbert stood up, pale as a ghost, with sunken, haggard eyes, and readjusted his dress, disordered by his fall. He wiped the cold drops from his brow with his handkerchief, and, without a word, took up his hat.
The countess regarded his proceedings with alarm. "Herbert," she said with a forced smile, "are you angry with me for being so rude?"
"Oh, no," he answered, in a hoarse, hollow tone.