In honor of the _fiancés_--for such they openly avowed themselves,
Geneva and Helene's family being sufficiently distant to be
temporarily forgotten--the American Consul at Berne gave a charming
dinner. There was a gallant old Frenchman, a honey-tongued Italian, a
pervasive air of complimentary congratulation. Helene returned to her
hotel, thrilling with pleasure and happy auguries. The night was soft
and warm. Before undressing she leaned out of the window of her room
on the ground floor, and gazed upon the eternal glaciers, sparkling
like silver under the full moon. Through every sense she drank in the
mystery and perfume of the night, till her spirit seemed at one with
the stars and the mountains. Suddenly she felt two mighty arms clasped
about her. Lassalle stood outside. Her heart throbbed violently.
"Hush!" he said, "don't be frightened. I will stay outside here, good
and quiet, till you are tired and say, 'Lie down, sir!' Then I will
go!"
"My gentle Romeo!" she whispered, and bent her fragrant lips to meet
his--the divine kiss of god and goddess in the divine night. "My
Ferdinand!" she breathed. "If we should be parted after all. I tremble
to think of it. My father will never consent."
"He shall consent. And you don't even need his consent. You are of
age."
"Then take me now, dear heart. I am yours--your creature, your thing.
Fly away with me, my beautiful eagle, to Paris, to Egypt, where you
will. Let us be happy Bohemians. We do not need the world. We have
ourselves, and the moonlight, and the mountains."
She was maddening to-night, his _enfant du diable_. But he kept a last
desperate grip upon his common sense. What would his friends say if he
involved Helene in the scandal of an elopement? What would Holthoff
say, what Baron Korff? Surely this was not the conduct that would
commend itself to the chivalry and nobility of Berlin! And besides,
how could his political career survive a new scandal? He was already
sufficiently hampered by his old connection with the Countess, and not
even a public acquittal and twenty years had sufficed to lay that
accusation of instigating the stealing of a casket of papers from her
husband's mistress, which was perhaps the worst legacy of the great
Hatzfeldt case. No, he must win his bride honorably: the sanctities
and dignities of wedlock were seductive to the Bohemian in love.
"We shall have ourselves and the world, too," he urged gently. "Let us
enter our realm with the six white horses, not in a coach with drawn
blinds. Your father shall give you to me, I tell you, in the eye of
day. What, am I an advertisement canvasser to be shown the door? Shall
my darling not have as honorable nuptials as her father's wife. Shall
the Elect of the People confess that a petty diplomatist didn't
consider him good enough for a son-in-law? Think how Bismarck would
chuckle. After all I have said to him!"
Her confidence came back. Yes, one might build one's house on the rock
of such a Will! "What have you said to him?"