wound. Paul tried to learn more about the lady. Was she to be long in Paris? Really, she could not say. She liked the country so much more than the town that it was always hard for her to stay many days away from the open. She never knew when the whim might seize her to go—to get[165] aboard a train and hurry to some distant spot which she felt impelled to visit. Who knew? To-morrow, perhaps, might find her on her way to the château of a friend who lived in the Bukowina, near the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. [165] "Ah!"—and she turned to Paul with a radiant face that made him long to catch her in his arms—"do you know that wonderful country? Those fissured peaks, with their precipitous and inaccessible crests—their rock-cumbered valleys, concealing deep and lovely lakes? And the beautiful pine-woods creeping down to the foot of the mountains? I could spend all my life in that wonderful place, living in some peasant's hut, if need be." "Tell me more!" Paul leaned toward her, forgetful now of all else but this divine and fascinating being.[166] [166] "Ah!" she breathed, "you are a devotee of Nature, too, I know. You are a great traveller,—the Countess has said it," she continued quaintly. "You have been around the whole world. While as for me, I know Europe only, and of course Russia best of all countries. I have seen much of her—those wonderful rolling steppes, and rugged mountains. The North Sea, too, for I love the sea as my own soul. "Often do I feel as though the sea were really in my soul itself. And as in the sea there are hidden water-plants, which only come to the surface at the moment they bloom, and sink again as soon as they fade, so at times do wondrous flower-pictures form in the depths of my soul, and rise up, shed perfume around, and gleam and vanish.... Then the ships that sail by! As you walk along the[167] shore, is it not a pretty sight to see them—their great white sails look like stately swans. And still more beautiful is the sight when the setting sun throws great rays of glory round a passing bark." [167] In silence Paul gazed at her. He hardly breathed, lest some banal word should frighten this wonderful nymph away. "And then at night,"—she went on dreamily—"what a strange and mysterious sensation the meeting with strange ships at sea
Prev.
Back
Top