But all around
him the young trees stood mystically blurred in the dim shine; and
in the stock-still quietness the upleaping god appeared alive.
In this dimness and silence of the night, Otto's conscience became
suddenly and staringly luminous, like the dial of a city clock. He
averted the eyes of his mind, but the finger rapidly travelling,
pointed to a series of misdeeds that took his breath away. What was
he doing in that place? The money had been wrongly squandered, but
that was largely by his own neglect. And he now proposed to
embarrass the finances of this country which he had been too idle to
govern. And he now proposed to squander the money once again, and
this time for a private, if a generous end. And the man whom he had
reproved for stealing corn he was now to set stealing treasure. And
then there was Madame von Rosen, upon whom he looked down with some
of that ill-favoured contempt of the chaste male for the imperfect
woman. Because he thought of her as one degraded below scruples, he
had picked her out to be still more degraded, and to risk her whole
irregular establishment in life by complicity in this dishonourable
act. It was uglier than a seduction.
Otto had to walk very briskly and whistle very busily; and when at
last he heard steps in the narrowest and darkest of the alleys, it
was with a gush of relief that he sprang to meet the Countess.
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