“Morten,” said Tony, sadly. “You have been angry all the time, then, when you were sitting on the rocks! And I always begged you to come and be introduced.”
“Now you are taking the affair personally again, like a young lady, Fräulein Tony, I’m only speaking of the principle. I say that there is no more fellowship of humanity with us than in Prussia.—And even if I were speaking personally,” he went on, after a little pause, with a softer tone, out of which, however, the strange excitement had not disappeared, “I shouldn’t be speaking of the present, but rather, perhaps, of the future. When you as Madame So-and-So finally vanish into your proper sphere, one is left to sit on the rocks all the rest of one’s life.”
He was silent, and Tony too. She did not look at him, but in the other direction, at the wooden partition. There was an uneasy stillness for some time.
“Do you remember,” Morten began again, “I once said to you that there was a question I wanted to ask you? Yes, I have wanted to know, since the first afternoon you came. Don’t guess. You couldn’t guess what I mean. I am going to ask you another time; there is no hurry; it has really nothing to do with me; it is only curiosity. No, today I will only show you one thing. Look.” He drew out of the pocket of his jacket the end of a narrow gaily-striped ribbon, and looked with a mixture of expectation and triumph into Tony’s eyes.
“How pretty,” she said uncomprehendingly. “What is it?”
Morten spoke solemnly: “That means that I belong to a students’ fraternity in Göttingen.—Now you know. I have a cap in the same colours, but my skeleton in the policeman’s uniform is wearing it for the holidays. I couldn’t be seen with it here, you understand. I can count on your saying nothing, can’t I? Because it would be very unfortunate if my father were to hear of it.”
“Not a word, Morten. You can rely on me. But I don’t understand—have you all taken a vow against the nobility? What is it you want?”
“We want freedom,” Morten said.
“Freedom?” she asked.
“Yes, freedom, you know—Freedom!” he repeated; and he made a vague, awkward, fervent gesture outward and downward, not toward the side where the coast of Mecklenburg narrowed the bay, but in the direction of the open sea, whose rippling blue, green, yellow, and grey stripes rolled as far as eye could see out to the misty horizon.
Tony followed his gesture with her eye; they sat, their hands lying close together on the bench, and looked into the distance. Thus they remained in silence a long time, while the sea sent up to them its soft enchanting whispers. … Tony suddenly felt herself one with Morten in a great, vague yearning comprehension of this portentous something which he called “Freedom.”
IX
“It is wonderful how one doesn’t get bored, here at the seashore, Morten. Imagine lying anywhere else for hours at a time, flat on your back, doing nothing, not even thinking—”
“Yes. But I must confess that I used to be bored sometimes—only not in the last few weeks.”
Autumn was at hand. The first strong wind had risen. Thin, tattered grey clouds raced across the sky. The dreary, tossing sea was covered far and wide with foam. Great, powerful waves rolled silently in, relentless, awesome; towered majestically, in a metallic dark-green curve, then crashed thundering on the sand.
The season was quite at an end. On that part of the beach usually occupied by the throng of bathers, the pavilions were already partly dismantled, and it lay as quiet as the grave, with only a very few basket-chairs. But Tony and Morten spent the afternoon in a distant spot, at the edge of the yellow loam, where the waves hurled their spray as far up as Seagull Rock. Morten had made her a solid sand fortress, and she leaned against it with her back, her feet in their strap shoes and white stockings crossed in front of her. Morten lay turned toward her, his chin in his hands. Now and then a seagull flew past them, shrieking. They looked at the green wall of wave, streaked with seaweed, that came threateningly on and on and then broke against the opposing boulders, with the eternal, confused tumult that deafens and silences and destroys all sense of time.
Finally Morten made a movement as though rousing himself from deep thought, and said, “Well, you will soon be leaving us, Fräulein Tony.”
“No; why?” Tony said absently.
“Well, it is the . My holidays are nearly at an end, anyhow. How much longer can it last? Shall you be glad to get back to the society of your own kind? Tell me—I suppose the gentlemen you dance with are very agreeable?—No, no, that was not what I wanted to say. Now you must answer me,” he said, with a sudden resolution, shifting his chin in his hands and looking at her. “Here is the question I have been waiting so long to ask. Now: who is Herr Grünlich?”
Tony sat up, looking at him quickly, her eyes shifting back and forth like those of a person recollecting himself on coming out of a dream. She was feeling again the sense of increased personal importance first experienced when Herr Grünlich proposed for her hand.
“Oh, is that what you want to
