She measured him with a shy glance. "I beg your pardon, _Herr_," she said, with a graceful bend of her neck. "I found your letter, and I saw everything swimming green and yellow before my eyes, it made me feel so queer. I hardly knew what I was about. I thought perhaps I could help to set you free."
"Stupid child!" he said, and laughed; but a feeling rose within him that had to be forcibly repressed.
"Bring the wine," he ordered, as he sat down to the table.
"The best. It is high festival and holiday to-day!"
"Fetch a glass for yourself," he said, as she uncorked the grey cobwebby bottle.
"Oh, please, _Herr_, I'd rather not. It's too strong."
He poured out the wine. The dark-gold fluid foamed sparkling into the slender-stemmed emerald rummers, which, perishable as they were, had been saved from the ruins.
The glasses as they came in contact produced music like muffled bells.
"The curse of a priest has to-day coupled me with her," he thought, and his eyes sought hers and probed their depths. "How extraordinary! how monstrous!" This woman was to be part of his existence, the old man had said. This woman--why, oh, why this one?
"A curse is a sanction," he meditated further. "Something that never happened, and never would have happened, through him has been substantiated and vouched for before Heaven as if it were an established fact."
And again his thoughts began to encroach stealthily on that forbidden ground, in whose insurmountable barriers the preacher's words themselves had quarried access. "You are master," he repeated the formula over and over to himself, "she the servant;" and then he added, "What is more, she is your slave, and so let it be."
One course of action seemed clear enough at the moment, and that was that progress must be made immediately with his work of retaliation. He bade Regina remove the dishes and bring another bottle of wine. Then he fetched his writing materials and motioned her to sit down in the place she had occupied on Christmas evening. With shy delight she obeyed, for since that night she had spent her evenings till bed-time alone in the vestibule.
"I'm going to ask you, Regina," he began, "to answer very briefly, and to the point, several questions!"