“What do you break off like that for?” he asked. “Is it that you can't bear to hear me speak her name?”
“Tell me,” I said, “what is your honest opinion of Edwarda? I should be interested to know.”
“Perhaps you may have something new to tell me to-day. Perhaps you have proposed, and been accepted. May I congratulate you? No? Ah, the devil trust you--haha!”
“No,” he said, “I have not proposed and been accepted. But you have, perhaps. There's no proposing to Edwarda--she will take whomever she has a fancy for. Did you take her for a peasant girl? You have met her, and seen for yourself. She is a child that's had too little whipping in her time, and a woman of many moods. Cold? No fear of that! Warm? Ice, I say. What is she, then? A slip of a girl, sixteen or seventeen--exactly. But try to make an impression on that slip of a girl, and she will laugh you to scorn for your trouble. Even her father can do nothing with her; she obeys him outwardly, but, in point of fact, 'tis she herself that rules. She says you have eyes like an animal...”
“You're wrong there--it was someone else said I had eyes like an animal.”
“I don't know. One of her girl friends. No, it was not Edwarda said that. Wait a bit though; perhaps, after all, it was Edwarda...”
“When you look at her, it makes her feel so and so, she says. But do you think that brings you a hairbreadth nearer? Hardly. Look at her, use your eyes as much as you please--but as soon as she marks what you are doing, she will say to herself--'Ho, here's this man looking at me with his eyes, and thinks to win me that way.' And with a single glance, or a word, she'll have you ten leagues away. Do you think I don't know her? How old do you reckon her to be?” “She was born in '38, she said.”
“A lie. I looked it up, out of curiosity. She's twenty, though she might well pass for fifteen. She is not happy; there's a deal of conflict in that little head of hers. When she stands looking out at the hills and the sea, and her mouth gives that little twitch, that little spasm of pain, then she is suffering; but she is too proud, too obstinate for tears. She is more than a bit romantic; a powerful imagination; she is waiting for a prince. What was that about a certain five-_daler_ note you were supposed to have given someone?”