A smile played about her lips, the enchanting smile usually so irresistible, but now without effect. Rodenberg looked her full in the face, and said, harshly, "You know why, Countess Steinrück,--you have long known." "I?" "Yes, you, Hertha; you know your power only too well; and now you drive me to extremes, and leave me no means of escape. So be it,--I am at your disposal!" Amazed, almost dismayed, Hertha looked up at him; she was quite unprepared for this turn of affairs; she had pictured her moment of triumph very differently. "I do not understand you, Lieutenant Rodenberg," said she. "What does this strange language mean,--something it would seem allied to hatred?" "Hatred?" he broke forth. "Would you add sarcasm to your trifling? You have never for an instant been ignorant that I love you." It sounded strange enough, this confession of love, uttered in a voice in which indignation and passion strove for the mastery, and with eyes in which there was no tenderness, but a menacing gleam: the emotion did, indeed, seem allied to hatred. "And is this the way in which to woo?--to seek a woman's love?" asked Hertha, indignantly, while a secret dread, hitherto unknown to her, stirred in her heart. "Woo?" he repeated, with extreme bitterness. "No, it is not; such wooing would hardly be allowed me,--a young, insignificant officer with a bourgeois name, owning nothing save himself and perhaps some hope for the future. It would soon be made clear to me, and that after a ruthless fashion, that I must not dare to lift my eyes to the Countess Steinrück; that her hand has long been promised to another who, like herself, wears a coronet." Hertha bit her lip; the reproof went home,--such assuredly would have been the conclusion of the affair. It had never occurred to the young Countess Steinrück to do more than trifle with the bourgeois officer, but yet she felt disgraced by the discovery that she had been seen through from the beginning. "You do not seem to perceive how insulting your words are," she said, haughtily, "nor how offensive is this confession----"