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Boris, in the accurate way characteristic of him, was building a little pyramid of chessmen with his delicate white fingers while awaiting Berg's move, and watched his opponent's face, evidently thinking about the game as he always thought only of whatever he was engaged on. "Well, how are you going to get out of that?" he remarked.
You remind me of a certain horned beast that has seen a red flag," said Ik Stanton, linking his arm in that of Van Berg's. "An apt illustration. I have been baited and irritated for the last twenty minutes." "I thought you enjoyed Beethoven's music, and surely Thomas rendered it divinely to-night." "That is one of the chief of my grievances.
Only this time I sat proudly on Frau Berg's right, in the place of honour next to Doctor Krummlaut, instead of in the obscurity of my old seat at the dark end near the door. It was so queer, and so different.
Mayhew seemed to find a wonderful relief in her coming, and added her voluble congratulations. "I have had nervous headaches myself, and know how to sympathize with you," she concluded. "She does not know how to sympathize with me," sighed her daughter. The sigh caught Van Berg's attention, and he was surprised to see that the maiden's eyes were full of tears.
But where is this stolidity one has heard about? Compared to the Germans I've seen, it is we who are stolid; stolid, and slow, and bored. The last thing these people are is bored. On the contrary, the officers had that same excitement about them, that same strung-upness, that the men boarders at Frau Berg's have. Potsdam is charming, and swarms with palaces and parks.
In her ignorance of Van Berg's motives, and in the utter impossibility of surmising them, she could scarcely come to any other conclusion; and she determined to punish him to the utmost extent of her ability. Thus it came to pass that Miss Mayhew had designs against Van Berg that were not quite as amiable as those of the artist in regard to herself.
It is not fitting that Bernd's betrothed should live in that boarding-house of Frau Berg's. Will not your mother soon join you?" It is very kind of her, I think. It appears that a girl who is engaged has to be chaperoned even more than a girl who isn't. What funny ancient stuff these conventions are. I wonder how long more we shall have of them.
Then the womanly instinct to hide her secret asserted itself, and a moment later her laugh jarred discordantly on Van Berg's ears, and he interpreted it as wisely as have thousands of others who fail to recognize the truth that often no cry of pain is so bitter as a reckless laugh. A little later, however, her companions missed her. Later still her mother sought admission to her room in vain.
A maiden would have been blind indeed had she not been able to read the riddle of Van Berg's ardent friendship now, and Ida had seen that expression too often not to know its meaning well. In the morning she had strongly hoped, now she believed. She no longer walked by faith but in full vision, and she trod with the grace of a queen who knows her power in the realm that woman loves best.
But the hour of waking and clear vision was drawing near, and Harold Van Berg would learn anew that the cool, well-balanced reason on which he had once so prided himself was scarcely equal to all the questions which complex human life presents. With the night dreams began to vanish and the prose of reality gradually to take form and outline in Van Berg's mind.
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