who could have helped her to understand herself?
"You are not like yourself to-day; you have not been like yourself for some time past. It never used to be your habit to sit up reading novels by night, nor by day either, for the matter of that."
Gretchen made no answer; she was not listening. Her eyes were fixed before her, her thoughts were busily painting two pictures and putting them in contrast to each other.
One picture was painted in brilliant colours, and the canvas was somewhat crowded with gorgeous objects. There was a carriage with a baron's crown painted on the panel; there was a glimpse of brilliant apartments, a glitter of jewels; there was everything which had figured in her dreams of ambition.
On the second picture there was very little, only a steep winding staircase, a dusty ivy-plant in the window, and, as centre-piece, a hard-worked man coming home at night weary from his desk.
Surely there could be no hesitation in the choice. Why, it was not even a matter of choice, she thought, as she detected herself contrasting these two pictures. She had twice been asked to walk up that steep staircase, and she had refused; she was not going to be asked a third time. Somebody else would water the ivy-plant in the window. Perhaps Barbara Bitterfreund. She wondered what Barbara Bitterfreund was like.
Belita's voice recalled her to realities.
"Margherita?" began the Countess abruptly.
"Well?"
"Do you remember the first day when we walked in the arcades?"
"What of it?"
"I meant then to give you a lecture upon life in general; and afterwards we met Baron Tolnay, and I did not; well, I mean to give you that deferred lecture now. Here I am on the eve of my departure, and I certainly had hoped before starting to give you my maternal benediction on an auspicious occasion. In fact I made the sacrifice of keeping a new dress for jour de fiançailles, and the trimming is now démodé, and consequently wasted. I cannot understand why you have not brought Baron Tolnay to the point long ago; you are playing with your chances. If you were a classical beauty you could afford to wait; but I have told you often, Bambina, that strictly speaking you are more picturesque than beautiful. To put it clearly, without beating about the bush, which is a thing I detest, – you look too breakable for many tastes, and it is only a rich man who can afford breakable luxuries. It is a mere chance whether you happen to hit a man's fancy or not."
Gretchen, as she sat listening to the empty, vapid, good-natured chatter, was wondering how she had never till now discovered its emptiness and its absurdity.
"Are you sure that is all?" she asked with a curl of her lip. "Have you no more advice to give me?"
"Certainly I have, and you need it all; for you are unfortunately a German, my dear child, and in every German there is hidden a seed which should be crushed in early childhood. Even you cannot, it seems, quite escape from the commonplace taint of sentimentality which is the ruin of your nation. You are only a German after all."
"And you are only an Elégante!" broke out Gretchen, with a sudden burst of indignation; "you are nothing but a heartless Elégante."
