Neither his energy nor his presence of mind stood him in stead now. The man who had for so long been the spoiled darling of Fortune, for whom everything had turned to gain, could not understand how she could suddenly prove thus false to him. He had always been a bold, clever man of business, but he had no force of character; in misfortune he was pitiably cast down. In dull, dumb despair he stood gazing at the men, at whose head the engineer-in-chief had again placed himself.
Wolfgang seemed to be everywhere; one moment he was standing on the most imperilled part of the dam, anon he breasted the tempest in the centre of the bridge, and then he hurried to the station-house to issue his orders thence. He was dripping from head to foot,--the water was trickling from his hair, from his clothes; he did not seem to feel it, or to be in need of either rest or refreshment, and yet nothing but the most fearful tension of mind and body sustained him in the conflict which had now been going on for three times four-and-twenty hours. These were hours when Wolfgang Elmhorst might have forced even his bitterest enemies to respect and admire him.
And his mortal enemy was thus forced, but none the less did his hatred and jealousy burn fiercely. Waltenberg was familiar with danger,--he had often invoked it and dallied with it recklessly,--but there was something far beyond dalliance in the unconquerable energy with which Elmhorst thus devoted himself to duty. He knew that his was a forlorn hope; half of his work was already destroyed, he could not save the rest, and yet he worked on, seeming determined to die rather than yield.
And as he thus struggled, Ernst Waltenberg on horseback looked on at 'the very interesting spectacle,' but was conscious of the part he had condemned himself to play. He had invited Erna to ride with him to the scene of disaster; the same calculating cruelty which had tormented her by silence had dictated the proposal. He knew she would accede to it, since it would give her an opportunity to see Wolfgang again, and she should see him in the midst of the danger to which he so recklessly exposed himself, she should tremble in mortal distress, and yet never betray by a change of feature the anguish of her soul. Elmhorst was right: this man's love was mere selfishness. What was it to him that the woman he loved was tortured and in agony, if but his savage thirst for revenge were allayed? Erna should suffer as he suffered; he would be as pitiless to her as fate had been to himself.