"Indeed!"--derisively.
"Yes, I!" He thrust out both his great arms miserably. "I'm a
healthy-looking individual, am I not, to be running away from anything?"
"Especially after having been a soldier in the Spanish War. Why did
you tell me that your name was Scharfenstein?"
"Heaven on earth, it _is_ Scharfenstein! I'm simply taking my chance
on another man's passports."
"I am unconvinced,"--ungraciously. She was, however, inordinately
happy; at the sight of the picture of woe on his face all her trust in
him returned. She believed every word he said, but she wanted to know
everything.
"Very well; I see that I must tell you everything to get back into your
good graces--Fräulein von Heideloff."
"If you _ever_ were in my good graces!"
Graphically he recounted the adventure at Müller's. He was a capital
story-teller, and he made a very good impression.
"If it hadn't been for the princess' eloping I should not have been
here," he concluded, "for my friend would have had a waiter bring me
that chair."
"The princess' eloping!"--aghast.
"Why, yes. It seems that she eloped to-night; so the report came from
the palace."
The girl sat tight, as they say; then suddenly she burst into
uncontrollable laughter. It was the drollest thing she had ever heard.
She saw the duke tearing around the palace, ordering the police hither
and thither, sending telegrams, waking his advisers and dragging them
from their beds. My! what a hubbub! Suddenly she grew serious.
"Have you the revolver still?"
"Yes."
"Toss it out of the window; quick!"
"But--"
"Do as I say. They will naturally search you at the frontier."
He took out the revolver and gazed regretfully at it, while the girl
could not repress a shudder.
"What a horrible-looking thing!"
"I carried it all through the war."
"Throw it away and buy a new one."
"But the associations!"
"They will lock you up as a dangerous person." She let down the window
and the cold night air rushed in. "Give it to me." He did so. She
flung it far into the night. "There, that is better. Some day you
will understand."
"I shall never understand anything in this country--What are _you_
running away from?"
"A man with a red nose."
"A red nose? Are they so frightful here as all that?"
"This one is. He wants--to marry me."
"Marry you!"
"Yes; rather remarkable that any man should desire me as a wife, isn't
it?"
He saw that she was ironical. Having nothing to say, he said nothing,
but looked longingly at the vacant space beside her.
She rested her chin upon the sill of the window and gazed at the stars.
A wild rush of the wind beat upon her face, bringing a thousand vague
heavy perfumes and a pleasant numbing. How cleverly she had eluded the
duke's police! What a brilliant idea it had been to use her private
carriage key to steal into the carriage compartment long before the
train was made up! It had been some trouble to light the lamps, but in
doing so she had avoided the possible dutiful guard. He _had_ peered
in, but, seeing that the lamps were lighted, concluded that one of his
fellows had been the rounds.