on purpose to talk to her and to Andor; for now she stood
deliberately in front of them both with arms crossed in front of her and
defiant eyes fixed now upon one and now upon the other. Andor too was
beginning to look cross and sullen; this meeting coming on the top of
that lovely walk seemed like a black shadow cast over the radiance of
their happiness, and this thin, tall girl, all in black, with black hair
fluttering round her pale face, seemed like a big black bird of evil
presage: her skirts flapped round her knees like wings and her voice
sounded cold and harsh like the croaking of a raven.

But Elsa's kindly disposition did not allow her to be too obviously
unkind to the Jewess. Perhaps after all the girl meant no harm, and had
only run out now like a released colt, glad to feel freedom in the air
around her and the vastness lying stretched out before her to infinity
beyond. Perhaps she had only sought the company of the first-comers in
order to get a small measure of sympathy. But now, though Elsa's gentle
words should have softened her mood, she retorted with renewed
fierceness:

"Curse him! I don't want his forgiveness! and if ever he wants mine--on
his deathbed--he won't get it--even if he should die in torment for want
of a kind word from me."

"Klara, you mustn't say that," cried Elsa, horrified at what she
considered almost blasphemy. "Your father is your father, remember--and
even if he has been harsh to you . . ."

Klara interrupted her with a loud and strident laugh.

"If he has been harsh to me!" she exclaimed. "Didn't I tell you that he
thrashed me like a dog, so that I was sick for days. But I wouldn't mind
that so much. Bruises mend sooner or later, but it's that abominable
marriage which will make me curse him to my dying day."

"Marriage? . . . what marriage? . . ."

"With a man I had never seen in my life until it was all settled. Just a
man who is so ugly and so bad-tempered and so repugnant to every girl
whom he knows that nobody would have him--but just a man who wanted a
wife. The rabbi at Arad knew about him and he spoke about him to
father--it seems that he is quite rich--and father has given me to him
and I am to be married within a fortnight. Curse them! curse them all, I
say! Oh! I wish I had the pluck to run away, or to kill myself or do
something--but I am such an abominable coward--and I shall loathe to
live in Arad in a tiny secondhand clothes shop, with that hideous
monster