“It’s nothing!” muttered Swithin.

“Father fought with a chair, but you had no chair,” she said in a wondering voice.

He doubled the fist of his sound arm and struck a blow at space.  To his amazement she began to laugh.  Nettled at this, he put his hand beneath the heavy table and lifted it.  Rozsi clapped her hands.  “Ah I now I see—­how strong you are!” She made him a curtsey and whisked round to the window.  He found the quick intelligence of her eyes confusing; sometimes they seemed to look beyond him at something invisible—­this, too, confused him.  From Margit he learned that they had been two years in England, where their father had made his living by teaching languages; they had now been a year in Salzburg.

“We wait,” suddenly said.  Rozsi; and Margit, with a solemn face, repeated, “We wait.”

Swithin’s eyes swelled a little with his desire to see what they were waiting for.  How queer they were, with their eyes that gazed beyond him!  He looked at their figures.  ‘She would pay for dressing,’ he thought, and he tried to imagine Rozsi in a skirt with proper flounces, a thin waist, and hair drawn back over her ears.  She would pay for dressing, with that supple figure, fluffy hair, and little hands!  And instantly his own hands, face, and clothes disturbed him.  He got up, examined the pistols on the wall, and felt resentment at the faded, dusty room.  ‘Smells like a pot-house!’ he thought.  He sat down again close to Rozsi.

“Do you love to dance?” she asked; “to dance is to live.  First you hear the music—­how your feet itch!  It is wonderful!  You begin slow, quick—­quicker; you fly—­you know nothing—­your feet are in the air.  It is wonderful!”

A slow flush had mounted into Swithin’s face.

“Ah!” continued Rozsi, her eyes fixed on him, “when I am dancing—­out there I see the plains—­your feet go one—­two—­three—­quick, quick, quick, quicker—­you fly.”

She stretched herself, a shiver seemed to pass all down her.  “Margit! dance!” and, to Swithin’s consternation, the two girls—­their hands on each other’s shoulders—­began shuffling their feet and swaying to and fro.  Their heads were thrown back, their eyes half-closed; suddenly the step quickened, they swung to one side, then to the other, and began whirling round in front of him.  The sudden fragrance of rose leaves enveloped him.  Round they flew again.  While they were still dancing, Boleskey came into the room.  He caught Swithin by both hands.

“Brother, welcome!  Ah! your arm is hurt!  I do not forget.”  His yellow face and deep-set eyes expressed a dignified gratitude.  “Let me introduce to you my friend Baron Kasteliz.”