"What a trouble you are making, Zenz!" he shouted to her. "What are you running about in the lonely wood for all the forenoon, when there is enough to be done in the house? Old Katie has worked as hard to find you as if you had been a needle in a haystack."
The girl had hastily sprung from the mossy seat on which she had been crouching, and seemed to be holding herself in readiness to dart away. Her round cheeks had suddenly flushed crimson.
"Who? Don't be so childish, Zenz. The idea of running away from a good old man, as if he were Satan himself!"
"I won't go home till he has gone," she said, with a defiant shake of her head. "I know what he wants. He wants to lock me up in his hateful, lonely house, where no sun or air gets in. But I have never done him any wrong, and I won't go--I won't bear it--I'd rather have him kill me right here."
"You're out of your senses, girl! Do you know him? What do you know about him?"
She did not answer immediately. He saw how wildly her young breast heaved, how her eyes were fixed on the ground, and how her teeth bit the little twig she held in her hand.
"He is the father of my mother!" she finally burst out, her face taking on a look of intense hatred. "He drove my poor dear mother out of his house because of me--that is, before I ever came into the world. Oh, he is so stern! My mother never dared to go back to him as long as she lived. Then, when she was going to die, she wrote a letter to her father asking him to take care of me, and she made me promise by all that was holy to carry this letter to my grandfather as soon as she was dead; and I promised I would, though I never could get up much love for him, and no one can blame me for it either. But, when I came to Munich, I felt terribly forlorn and forsaken at first, for I didn't know a soul, and I thought to myself I'll just take a look at him and see what he's like. So I waited in front of his house, with my packet in my pocket, until he went out in the evening. I tell you truly, Herr Lieutenant, I was so miserable and unhappy that even if he had only looked just the least bit kind I would have been very glad to go up and say to him: 'I am Zenz; people say I am the very image of my poor dear mother, and my dear mother was your daughter, and now she is dead and sends you this letter!' But when he came out of his house so stern and still, and looked neither to the right or left, but only stared at the ground, just as if he didn't care anything at all for the dear world all about him--hu! it made my flesh creep! Nothing in the world shall ever force me to have anything to do with him, thought I to myself; and I let him go by as if he had been a perfect stranger. Still, I thought I would leave the letter for him, so I made some inquiries about him of his landlady; And I heard from her that he hides in his lodgings like an owl in a hollow tree; no one comes to see him, and he goes to see nobody; he gets no letters and he writes none. There was a little looking-glass hanging in the landlady's room, and I happened to see my face in it, and it looked to me as if I had an ashy-gray skin and faded hair. I think most likely the glass was colored blue, but for all that I felt as if it was warning me--'This is the way you'll look before long, if you shut yourself up with your grandfather in his dark den where no sunbeam will ever reach you.' So I went away and took good care not to deliver my packet, for it might have betrayed me. And that very same evening I got acquainted with Black Pepi, and went to live with her, and never sent him my poor, dear mother's packet until I went into the country. But how he found out where I was, or what he wants of me--for he must have the sense to see that I don't want to have anything to do with him--I--"