“Ada!”

She shuddered, and made a protesting motion.

“Not that name.  For you I am only Adelheid von Wallmoden.  I am married; you know that.”

“Yes, married to a man who is standing on the threshold of old age; who does not love you, and for whom you could feel no love even if he were younger.  What does that cold, calculating diplomat know of love?  The Court, his position, his advancement, is all in all to him; his wife is nothing.  He exults over the possession of a treasure whom he knows not how to prize, and to whose happiness and peace he gives not a thought.”

Adelheid’s lips trembled.  She knew only too well that all he said was true.  She did not answer.

“And what binds you to this man?” continued Rojanow, coming closer.  “A word, a single ‘yes,’ which you have spoken without knowing its significance, without knowing yourself.  Shall you permit it to bind you for your whole life?  Shall you allow it to make us both miserable for all time?  No, Ada, love, that eternal, undying right of the human heart, must have its own.  Men prate of guilt, others of destiny.  It is destiny which is beckoning us to-day, and we must follow after.  A feeble word cannot separate us.”

At this moment a lightning flash parted the heavy, distant clouds, and cast a long, narrow, dazzling light over the great forest, and gleamed across Hartmut’s face and figure where he stood.

Surely he was his mother’s son now.  He never looked more like her than at this moment, with his dark, destroying beauty, and his peculiar, passionate, demoniacal glance.  Perhaps it was this glance which brought Adelheid to her senses, perhaps it was the something concealed behind all the fire and passion.

“A freely given and freely received word is an oath,” she said, slowly, “and who breaks it breaks his honor.”

Hartmut breathed hard; keen and cruel like a lightning’s flash, came a memory to his soul, the memory of that hour in which he had freely given his word—­and broken it.

Adelheid von Wallmoden looked straight at Hartmut now; her face was pale, and her voice trembled as she addressed him again: 

“I wish you to cease this persecution, which has been going on for weeks now.  You fill me with horror—­your eyes, your words, your manner.  I feel that everything which emanates from you is false, and no one can love that which is false.”

“Ada.”  There was a tone of passionate entreaty in his voice, but hers had gained in steadfastness now, and she continued earnestly: 

“And you do not love me.  I have seen for some time that your pursuance of me was from hate, not love.  You and your kind have not the capacity for loving.”

Rojanow was silent from surprise.  Who had taught her to read him so nearly aright?

He had not even acknowledged to himself how closely the love and hate were united in his breast.

“And you say this to the author of Arivana?” he exclaimed with bitterness.  “My drama has been called the ode to love, and—­”