"And then?" said Paul, and his breath came rather fast. "And then?"
"He was a man, you see, Paul; so when he had won her love, he did not value it--he threw it away."
"Oh, no! I don't believe it!" Paul exclaimed vehemently. "It was just this brute Huldebrand. But you don't know men--to think they do not value what they win--you don't know them, indeed!"
She looked down straight into his face, as he gazed up at her, and to his intense surprise he could have sworn her eyes were green now! as green as emeralds. And they held him and fascinated him and paralysed him, like those of a snake.
"I do not know men?" she said softly. "You think not, Paul?"
But Paul could hardly speak, he buried his face in her lap, like a child, and kept it there, kissing her gloved hands. His straw hat, with its Zingari ribbon, lay on the grass beside him, and a tiny shaft of sunlight glanced through the trees, gilding the crisp waves of his brushed-back hair into dark burnished gold.
The lady moved one hand from his impassioned caress, and touched the curl with her finger-tips. She smiled with the tenderness a mother might have done.
"There--there!" she said. "Not yet." Then she drew her hand away from him and leant back, half closing her eyes.
Paul sat up and stared around. Each moment of the day was providing new emotions for him. Surely this was what Columbus must have felt, nearing the new world. He pulled himself together. She was not angry then at his outburst, and his caress--though something in her face warned him not to err again.
"Tell me the rest," he said pleadingly. "Why did he not value Undine's love, and what made the fool throw it away?"
"Because he possessed it, you see," said the lady. "That was reason enough, surely."
Then she told him of the ceasing of Undine's wayward moods after she had received her soul--of her docility--of her tenderness--of Huldebrand's certainty of her love. Then of his inevitable weariness. And at last of the Court, and the meeting again with Hildegarde, and of all the sorrow that followed, until the end, when the fountains burst their stoppings and rushed upwards, wreathing themselves into the figure of Undine, to take her Love to death with her kiss.
"Oh! he was wise!" Paul said. "He chose to die with her kiss. He knew at last then--what he had thrown away."