They lay still and waited.

At last one floated toward him and prepared to settle on his nose.

But he would not permit this--hers must be that great piece of good fortune--and he blew the leaf back to her.

She in turn was too proud to accept so munificent a gift and blew it back to him.

Thus laughing and tossing themselves about, they kept the leaf whirling between them, and suddenly in the heat of the struggle their lips touched--touched and would not separate.

The next instant they held each other in close embrace, and the instant after she was his.

The rill purled, the leaves fell as before. But a fiery mist lay upon the earth, and all over small suns winked rainbow coloured eyes.

Why had it happened?

She fell back without thinking and noticed that the heavens above were also clothed in fire.

Her comrade sat beside her with his back curved like a berated schoolboy and rubbed his nails against one another.

"Oh, let's go home," said Lilly, downheartedly.

"As my lady commands," he replied, grotesquely respectful again.

She laughed a weary, mirthless laugh.

Apparently he was concerned with getting rid of what had happened as speedily as possible.

"Oh, now it's all the same," she sighed; "now we can quite calmly call each other by our first names."

CHAPTER XXI

First came dread, the same senseless dread that had dominated Lilly's being before her engagement. It stiffened her limbs, bound her arms to her body, crippled her knees, beat against the walls of the veins in her neck and created a black void in her brain.

But after she had gone through the first meeting with Von Prell and nothing fateful occurred, her fear died down and what remained was a searching attentiveness, a readiness to jump aside at the least sign of danger, a tense antic.i.p.ation of ticklish questions to be answered properly and pitfalls to be avoided with a crafty a.s.sumption of innocence.

The colonel noticed nothing--he, the most suspicious of married men, with the keenest scent, who harboured the least illusions concerning the opposite s.e.x, he noticed nothing. He even believed the headache myth and lavished mocking yet tender pity upon her, while he sat at her bedside laughing and helping her change the compresses that Miss von Schwertfeger had solicitously prepared.

It was more difficult for Lilly to endure the woman's caresses. Behind them lurked a squinting pair of eyes, shy, heedful, and endeavouring to look harmless, while, in spite of themselves, revealing a greedy desire to know.

The anxiety that so far as the colonel was concerned gradually lulled itself to sleep, grew sharper with regard to the self-sacrificing friend, who at any moment might become her enemy and betrayer.

Lilly did not dare to cry until night time, when she felt sure of being alone. She would jump out of bed to wash her eyes, go back to bed again and cry until sleep took her in its soothing arms.

It was not shame, nor regret, nor longing love. It was a feeling of infinite solitariness, it was a straying about in perplexity.

"What will happen now?"

For something must surely happen--confession, convent, flight together, suicide together, or one of all those events described in Mrs.

Asmussen's books as following upon so atrocious a deed.

The week pa.s.sed.

Lilly had arisen from her sick bed several days before, but she had not seen Von Prell. She could discover no signs of him, even when she locked all the entrances to her room and rushed to the window for a glimpse of him.

All the while the colonel kept recommending horseback riding. There was Von Prell to take her and the exercise would do her good.

At last, Sat.u.r.day at dusk, she felt she had to yield--they would meet at dinner the next day at any rate.

The horses were pawing before the door.

The moment for the meeting before which she had recoiled had arrived with its threat of fresh dangers.

When she saw her friend ascend the terrace steps in his high, shiny riding boots, looking pale and thin, and moving as if by springs to display his counterfeit respect, something within her suddenly turned numb.

"Why, that young man there is an utter stranger," she felt. "He doesn't concern you in the least--you are looking upon him for the first time in your life."

They rode out of the gate.

The colonel had gone to the stables, but Miss von Schwertfeger stood on the terrace with her hands clasped and looked after them.

The road, muddy with recent rains, plashed under the horses' hoofs and a cold evening wind crinkled the winter wheat. A yellow sheen hiding the poverty-stricken sun glimmered behind the ragged birch boughs.

Everything looked sad and weary. It even seemed a vain task to have sowed the winter wheat.

They trotted on side by side in silence--a long, long series of anxious moments.

"He must speak some time," thought Lilly, biting her tongue till it bled.

He kept his eyes fixed undeviatingly upon the road ahead, making only slight movements of his right hand from time to time to adjust his reins.

"He'll call me 'my lady' again," she thought, and felt ashamed in advance for both of them.

Finally she took heart and spoke to him.

"Do walk your horse," she said, almost crying.

"Of course, comrade," he replied, and reined in his chestnut.

"Comrade! Comrade!" she burst out, and pa.s.sionately searched his eyes with hers.

He shrugged his shoulders, as always when he feared a scolding, and said nothing.

"Say something, won't you?" she screamed, quite beside herself.