The house, built of logs, was of two stories; on the ground floor were
two living rooms, and the domains of Babette, who amongst her other
accomplishments turned out to be not only a most capable valet, but a
first-class cook. On the second story there were two large rooms. The
whole house was furnished after the manner of a hunting lodge, with
stags' heads on the walls, and skins on the floors. In the drawing-room
there was a piano and a few etchings of the wild boar by Schaffein.
I dressed for dinner in my "smoking," though under ordinary
circumstances I should have considered this rather formal, but I was
glad I did, for she appeared in full evening _tenue_. She wore a violet
gown, and across her forehead a black satin bandeau with a Z in
diamonds upon it. It must have cost two thousand marks, and I wondered
with a dull kind of jealousy whether the Colonel had given it to her.
I cannot remember of what we talked during dinner. We have a hundred
subjects in common, and we look at so many aspects of the world through
the same pair of eyes; I only know that when I have been talking to her
for a period--there is no exact measurement of time for me when I am
with her--I leave her presence feeling "completed." I feel that a sort
of gap within my being has been filled, that a spiritual hunger has
been satisfied, that I have got something which I wanted, but for which
I could not have formulated the desire in words. I had resolved that on
this first night I would bring matters between us to a head and end
this delicious but intolerable uncertainty as to how we stood; yet,
when old Babette had served us with coffee in the drawing-room, as I
call the second living-room, and we were alone together, I could not
bring up the subject.
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