Prokop considered whether there was any other way of abducting her, but it was dark inside the stable, and the smell of a horse is somehow exciting. Their eyes gleamed and they kissed passionately. Suddenly she broke away and recoiled, whispering: “Go away! Go!” They stood opposite one another trembling and with a feeling that the passion which possessed them was an unclean one. He looked away and idly turned a rung in the ladder; only then did he regain control of himself. He swung round towards her and saw that she was biting her hankerchief. She pressed it to her lips and handed it him without a word, as a reward or as a souvenir. And he kissed his arm on the place where her distracted hand had rested. Never had they loved one another so wildly as at that moment, when they were unable to speak and feared to touch one another.
Then there was the sound of steps grating in the gravel outside. The Princess made a sign to him. Prokop swung himself up the ladder, seized some hook or other in the ceiling and, feet first, slipped out of the window. When he had reached the ground again Dr. Krafft threw his arms round him in delight. “You’ve cut the horses’ tendons, eh?” he whispered bloodthirstily; he evidently considered this as a necessary military precaution.
Prokop silently made his way back to the guard’s house, impelled by anxiety regarding Holz. When still some distance away he saw the terrible thing that had happened: two men were standing in the gate, a gardener was erasing from the sand the traces of a struggle, the gate was half open,—and
