She had made a motion as if to rise and depart, but the thought that such a sudden course could only be constructed into flight, restrained her in time. So she leaned back in her chair again and bent over a branch of great purple-red camelias.
As she plucked a blossom, she answered his question carelessly enough, but her face had assumed the same look of determination and force which it wore the morning on which she stood for a second in the middle of the forest brook. Then she had stepped knee deep into the water rather than accept his services. Here in the castle, with noise and motion on all sides, there were no such obstacles to be overcome, and now the same man, with his dark glance, stood opposite her, and never took his eyes off her face.
"Will you remain much longer at Rodeck?" she asked, with the conventional tone and manner usually accorded a chance acquaintance.
"Probably for a few weeks yet. As long as the duke is at Fürstenstein, Prince Adelsberg will not be apt to desert his hunting lodge. Later I intend accompanying him to the capital."
"And there we shall hear of you as a poet, I presume?"
"O, that is only one of Egon's ideas," said Hartmut, lightly. "He has taken it into his head to have my 'Arivana' brought out on the stage."
"It is an oriental name taken from an Indian legend, but its poetical witchery made such an impression upon me that I could not resist the temptation to create a drama from it."
"And the heroine of this drama, is she called 'Arivana?'" asked the baroness.
"No, that is only the name of a sacred place of refuge during the middle ages, upon which the scene of the drama was laid. The heroine's name is--Ada."
Rojanow spoke the name half-aloud, with a certain hesitation, and gave her a triumphant glance as he saw the same lowering of the head over the flowers as when he first spoke; he came a few steps nearer now while he continued:
"I heard the name for the first time on Indian ground, and it had for me a strangely sweet sound, so I adopted it for my character, and now I learn here that it is, in this country, but the abbreviation of a German name."
"Of Adelheid--yes. I was always called Ada in my father's house. But it is not at all remarkable that the same sounds are repeated in different languages."