nly tortured her brain for a whole fortnight in
order that she might find an excuse to release her from her promise, and
not one could she find. Unfortunately, she was so well that she could
not even complain on that score. What she feared above all happened.
Flora did not forget the promise that had been made, and when the great
day was only a week off, she wrote to her friend that she should rely
upon her at the end of that time. And so for a whole week Fanny,
resigned to her fate, but with the torment of her secret passion in her
bosom, suffered in silence at the thought of going to the house of him
whom she loved as her soul's ideal, but who would not have been too far
away from her, so she thought, if he had lived in another planet.

Flora welcomed her friend with great joy, her satisfaction was
unmistakably visible on her honest, lovely face as she pressed Fanny
between her arms. Rudolf's manner was kindly and courtly, but nothing
more. He was glad to see his pretty neighbour in his house and anxious
to make her comfortable, but she did not interest him in the very
least.

And indeed Fanny herself found the situation much less dangerous than
she had imagined. Ideals, especially ideals of the masculine gender, in
their domestic circles lose very much of the nimbus which they carry
about with them elsewhere. At home you hear them whistle and shout, and
bully their servants and domestics, and see them immersed in everyday
household affairs. You see them eat and drink and look bored. You see
them with imperfect or unaccomplished toilets, and often with muddy
boots, especially when they look after their own horses. You begin to
realize that ideals also are as much subject to the petty necessities of
life as ordinary men, and do not always preserve the precise postures
you are wont to see them in when their portraits adorn the
picture-galleries. With women it is quite different. Woman is born to
beautify the domestic circle, woman is always fascinating whether she be
dressed up or domestically dowdy, but man is least of all fascinating at
home.

In a word, Fanny felt the danger to be much less when it was actually
before her than it had seemed to be when seen from afar, and she looked
at Rudolf much more calmly with her bodily eyes than she had been wont
to do with the eyes of her imagination.

Thus the first week which Fanny spent at Szentirmay Castle was by no
means so very painful, and after that Rudolf had to go