While every step she took increased the violence of the passion which had suddenly swept away her strength, every instant added to her confusion. She was taken out of the world in which she was accustomed to rule, and was suddenly placed in one where men are men, and women are women, and in which social conventionalities hold sway. She began to be frightened. The walk must end, and at the end of it they must part. Since she had lost her power over him he might go away, for there would be nothing to bring him to her. She wondered why he would not speak, and her terror increased. She dared not look up, lest she should find him looking at her.
Then they emerged from the street and stood by the river, in a lonely place. The heavy ice was gray with old snow in some places and black in others, where the great blocks had been cut out in long strips. It was lighter here. A lingering ray of sunshine, forgotten by the departing day, gilded the vast walls and turrets of venerable Hradschin, far above them on the opposite bank, and tinted the sharp dark spires of the half-built cathedral which crowns the fortress. The distant ring of fast-moving skates broke the stillness.
“Are you angry with me?” asked Unorna, almost humbly, and hardly knowing what she said. The question had risen to her lips without warning, and was asked almost unconsciously.
“I do not understand. Angry? At what? Why should you think I am angry?”
“You are so silent,” she answered, regaining courage from the mere sound of her own words. “We have been walking a long time, and you have said nothing. I thought you were displeased.”
“You must forgive me. I am often silent.”
“I thought you were displeased,” she repeated. “I think that you were, though you hardly knew it. I should be very sorry if you were angry.”
“Why would you be sorry?” asked the Wanderer with a civil indifference that hurt Unorna more than any acknowledgment of his displeasure could have done.
“Because I would help you, if you would let me.”
He looked at her with sudden keenness. In spite of herself she blushed and turned her head away. He hardly noticed the fact, and, if he had, would assuredly not have put upon it any interpretation approaching to the truth. He supposed that she was flushed with walking.