"
"Yes, married to a man who is standing on the threshold of old age; who
does not love you, and for whom you could feel no love even if he were
younger. What does that cold, calculating diplomat know of love? The
Court, his position, his advancement, is all in all to him; his wife is
nothing. He exults over the possession of a treasure whom he knows not
how to prize, and to whose happiness and peace he gives not a thought."
Adelheid's lips trembled. She knew only too well that all he said was
true. She did not answer.
"And what binds you to this man?" continued Rojanow, coming closer. "A
word, a single 'yes,' which you have spoken without knowing its
significance, without knowing yourself. Shall you permit it to bind you
for your whole life? Shall you allow it to make us both miserable for
all time? No, Ada, love, that eternal, undying right of the human heart,
must have its own. Men prate of guilt, others of destiny. It is destiny
which is beckoning us to-day, and we must follow after. A feeble word
cannot separate us."
At this moment a lightning flash parted the heavy, distant clouds, and
cast a long, narrow, dazzling light over the great forest, and gleamed
across Hartmut's face and figure where he stood.
Surely he was his mother's son now. He never looked more like her than
at this moment, with his dark, destroying beauty, and his peculiar,
passionate, demoniacal glance.
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