Of ten thousand marks a year, which he was to receive from his
Grand Duke, half was to be hers; he would see her when she would, and she
might follow him about as she would--or not, if she would not. He could
not see that there was anything extraordinary in these propositions. To
him it was the simplest thing in the world that two people should do as
they pleased. Society? What in the name of God had society to do with it?
She remembered her tears, and his blank dismay when he saw them. He
thought that she was unhappy, and so she was; but she was grievously angry
also, that she could not make him see what things would "do" and what
things "never do."
His work had inflamed him; he had marched from place to place,
unencumbered and without a thought or care in the world--inspired with his
scheme, in which plants stood for the words in a poem. He slept out many
nights on the Felsenberg, on the ground, wrapped in a cloak. He
disappeared for weeks at a time in impenetrable forests, sharing the fires
of charcoal-burners, mapping, planning, giving orders to a secretary from
the Botanical Department, as wild as a disciple should be. There was
nothing for her, poor lady, but to sit about in hotel saloons--as the
widow of an English gentleman, occasionally visited by an eccentric
friend.
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