He put his arm round her slight and yielding figure, and she clung to it with evident pleasure. "It goes splendidly," she whispered, after the first round. "I feel as if I were being lifted up into heaven. Do you remember how you put me on your horse, that time? Good Heavens! how long ago that seems, and yet it's only a few weeks!"
He did not answer, but went on dancing, rather gravely and seriously; for it was no easy task to move easily up and down through the long, narrow entry. And all the while he felt that his partner clung to him more and more tenderly, while he himself remained perfectly cool; and it was only when it seemed to him that they had had enough, and he had released the girl from his arms again, in front of the chair on which her beer-mugs stood, that he stroked her round face caressingly and said: "Was that right, little one?"
She trembled slightly, glancing over his shoulder in the direction of the stairs which led to the upper story. Suddenly she pushed him from her, whispered "Thank you," and, quickly seizing her mugs, ran past him and down the stairs.
He looked after her in surprise. What was it that had transformed this girl so suddenly? A sudden suspicion arose within him. He rushed toward the stairs, and peered up into the darkness. There was no longer anything to be seen. But he heard a light footstep up above creeping softly across the entry, and immediately afterward the latch of a door was heard to fall, and a key was turned in the lock.
A cold shiver passed over him, as the thought suddenly flashed across him that this must have been she. She had started to go and join the company, and had turned back when half-way down the stairs, in order not to disturb his dance with a waiting-maid--!
The discovery was so crushing that he remained standing motionless in the middle of the corridor, and heard and saw nothing of what was going on around him. He was finally roused from his stupor by one of the wedding-guests, who, in stumbling past, struck against him with no little force. He slowly felt his way down-stairs, passed across the lower hall, and stepped out into the open air in a truly pitiable state of mind.
The storm had passed, but the air still trembled from the shock, and now and then a drop fell from the roof, or the distant reflection of the fading lightning flashed across the clear sky. The mountains stood out on the horizon like light, sharply-defined clouds, and the reflection of the stars danced up and down upon the waves, which seemed to keep up the turmoil longer than anything else, and still surged darkly on the shore.