As always, the italicized parts are what I'm unsure about:
The joy had been only short. The sun hid itself again, cold days followed. The air was damp and unfriendly, it smelled of rain and mist. Swimming and boating caused no pleasure now, one had transferred to walks.
---66---
Hans had taken the path to Adlershorst. In front of him stept a young couple: his new friend with the Frenchman.
He saw them together often. They sat next to each other at dinner and talkt incessantly, always in French, which she spoke as fluently as German. There was a certain charm in their conversation, which became lively and bubbly but never loud or obtrusive.
Suddenly, they both turned around and stood opposite him.
"Well, that's where I find the best company!" the young girl said! "To be precise, Monsieur Guerard must go back to Zoppot, he wants to pick up his wife from the train station, and I would have liked to go a bit further yet because here is where it first starts to get beautiful. You'll walk with me, pastor, won't you? I'll see you this evening, Monsieur! If you still have time for me then."
"I didn't even imagine that Mr. Guerard would be married," Hans commented after he had left. There was certainly nothing in the world as unimportant to him as whether the Frenchman was married or not, but he wanted to say something.
"He has been for only a short time, his wife ought to be a lovely creature. They come to Zoppot because of the tennis week and now still want to warm themselves up well... but with these roaring waves, one cannot understand his own word. I mean, we're already taking the way to the summit."
Now they went on the dune planted with young conifers, above the sea that now lay far below them. She was wearing the green felt hat again, in which he saw her for the first time, the dark cloth skirt she had gathered up, and around her
---67---
face a thick veil was drawn that should protect it against the storm. But up here in the middle of the protection of the fir trees, it was quieter; they could speak without trouble.
"Now for the third time already we are together, and I know little but something about you. You, however, nothing at all about me. You allow me then to give you my particulars: Nuscha Löwing, 24 years old, born in a small town close to the Russian border, where, as I probably already told you, my mother still lives to-day. I, however, have been around much in the world, was a governess in England and France, and am presently in the same position for a higher Russian official in Petersburg. If you want to know still more, you must ask. Though, whether I will tell you everything, I don't know."
He askt nothing. He had little practice in this type of conversation. Besides the path here close to the edge of the dune was very narrow, so that they could go only behind one an-other. She adjusted her fast, powerful stride to his and recounted further: about her father, who, initially a rich factory owner, through an unlucky venture lost his whole fortune and this so pulled at his soul that he took his life one day. How she now would have just stayed with her mother and a great number of siblings, how she took her teacher examination and provided for her own with her salary that she could send home with free rations. Only because he paid her so well, would she have then gone to the Russian baron. For three years already would she be there. In the winter they lived in Petersburg,
---68---
in the summer the baron would take a long vacation, then they travelled in the mountain region in Switzerland or to the Tyrol. But she would prefer to be in Zoppot.
He had to pay attention, he wanted to understand her words. Because since they left the protection [of the trees] the wind had become stronger and here on the open summit blowed with full breath. Moreover he thought he observed anew what he had noticed even during their first conversation back in the social room of the "Seastar," that there was a quiet foreign tone in her speech.
The baroness would have had to go to Tarasp this summer, but "he" - she always used this short term when she spoke about her employer - wanted to come to Zoppot with the two children. She would have travelled ahead in order to arrange everything. Now she could expect him any day, then her beautiful freedom would have an end. All the more she still wanted to enjoy them now.
For a short stretch the path led close along the beach again. The strong surf and the wind, which was against them, made it difficult, at least for Hans, although he was a good walker. The opposing element didn't bother her. As if she were a part of it, so happily and unconcerned she stept through storm and waves that flooded over her feet and splashed her up to her head.
"It is so beautiful! I love it so!" she cried as she stopt a moment at the start of a hilltop because here, where the path became very narrow, the waves went so high that she could hardly go on.
"I must admit that I would prefer a cloudless
---69---
sky and a quiet, calm sea, at the moment at least for our walk."
"No," she replied lively, "an overcast sky can cause despair, but the eternally blue just makes me very tired and sad. It is right like this: always alternating light and darkness! Always the uncertain that stifles the charm of life. An incessant tipping and rising, just as on this cliff. Only no sunny, quiet rest, always unrest and risk and danger - always playing around life and death!"
She broke off, very suddenly, and as it seemed, not unintentionally. Then her last words came to his consciousness.
"Always in danger?" he repeated. "And always playing around life and death? Do you know anything about it in your youth and secured position?"
"And if I know anything about it! ... Still you are coming, now we want here to go up the cliff again, up there a wonderful path leads through a small forest. I know it from earlier years and will lead you."
"Then we must go back again. No path leads upwards here."
"Why do we need a path and a bridge? Sometimes you really act as if you were an old man... forward!"
As nimble as a chamois she clumb up the steep elevation, now and then she graspt one of the numerous shrubs with her hand in order to pull herself up by it. At the same time she spoke and joked, turning back to him without stopping, although now he didn't even hear a syllable. Everything was in her movement: every muscle of her lithe body, the black curly hair that the wind
---70---
tousled, and the cherry-red lips from which the words fell as smoothly and easily as pearls.
Now they walkt again on level, well-kept paths through deciduous and coniferous woods, through the trees they saw the foam-crowned water, the dull thunderous [Geprall] of the waves prest on their ears.
"I went here almost every day last year. He workt then on his veranda, and the children played on the beach."
"And his wife?" he askt casually.
She glanced at him with a quick look: "She lay in her hammock in the South Park and read Dostoyevsky's 'Raskolnikov.'"
Gradually the forest disappeared and then thinned out completely. Now there were only individual knotted and withered trunks in the dense dune-sand.
They walkt along the edge of a cornfield with cheeky blue and red invaders that swayed on the slender stalks like dreaming idlers. With a strong hand the window swept over the high ears, they duckt down and rose again and murmured like the waves of the water. Under the clouds, which piled up darker and thicker, flew a flock of ravens toward the sea, and over a fallow field a shepherd with his flock moved to the horizon; the polyphonic bleating of the animals united with the excited screeching of the ravens. Loudly the dpg barkt. The first houses of Adlershorst became visible.
"Now, first we will got into the Kur House and drink a cup of coffee," she suggested," and then I will lead you through the small [uckige] village high up on the summit of the Adlershorst. There we will have the most beautiful view of the world."
---71---
In the large hall of the Kur House, it was empty and uncomfortable, he felt a little cosy, she however with visible desire spooned up the chocolate that she had ordered for herself and polished off a mountain of cake besides; now and then the tiny tip of her tongue slid over her red lips in order to wipe up the remains of the cake crumbs from them. A certain craving was in her way of eating, nothing elegant, but also nothing off-putting. Even here appeared, as in all expressions of her character, the true child of nature that had borrowed from culture and society only as much veneer as was unavoidably necessary for the people of our days.
"I once read a Russian novel," he said, "it was very sad, but good. The heroine was a young girl of the steppe. She has stirred up in my memory again since I've been together with you."
Again the quick glancing look.
"It was very sad?"
"Yes."
"Like life - no, not to-day, to-day it is beautiful and full of strength like the storm outside. I am full, we can go outside again."
He paid, she let it happen as a matter of course and didn't even thank him.
The storm had gained strength, as it does here on the coast only seldom, especially at the beginning of July. With long-winded pushes the sea came thundering against the shore, the swirling waves blew like a pack of mad dpgs, they lashed against the posts of the small swimming pool. And when their white [Gischtköpfe] smashed on them, then they roared, irritated through the resistance, like a wild animal up to the sky
---72---
that now - stuffy and leaden without any view of the light, almost without a hue - hung over the excited waters.
They had stept onto the sea-bridge. Blue-green, as if boiled, the water rolled under them, stretcht itself up to them with swelling crests, reeled back in the deep in thundering collapse - a sight of indescribable grandeur, on which the range of hills all around the shore lookt down silently and rigidly.
Hans stood fascinated. Even his companion couldn't take her eyes off the raging elements; she had pulled up the collar of the fur-garnished jacket, her hand held it firmly claspt, she had pushed the felt hat tightly down to her forehead, under it her bright cheeks shone. Suddenly she wriggled around.
"There is something in the air around us," she said with a voice whose serious tone befit her wonderfully, "something big, foretelling disaster. And do you even know what is it? It's the war!"
For a long while they didn't speak a word, not even as they rose from the bridge behind the Kur house up the steep path paved with rough stones, which at first went between low houses with neat, flowering front gardens and later went through a small yet dense and dark forest up to the summit of the cliff.
The rain-heavy clouds had dropt very low. Soon they settled on the hills and mountains with pressing force, soon they settled like a cap made of gauze on the chief of the two foothills that jutted out directly in front of them into the sea.
---73---
"Here it's almost like in the mountains when one has finally reached a height with effort and sees nothing," she said with the bad mood of a child, one which obstinately destroys a pleasure that has long pleased it. "But," she lookt for her way of consoling, "it is like that everywhere. We never see without a haze, not in our whole life... I don't see you and you don't see me. What do we two know of each other? And if we went on such a hike together for a whole summer long, would we therefore become closer?"
"See," he thought to himself, "she is not at all so unintellectual, like you thought, she philosophizes in her own way, and what she just said there didn't sound so insensible at all." Aloud, however, he replied: "You are right. We know nothing of others and least of all of ourselves. The nearness withdraws, the far off brings near, that is the wonderful law of life that we will never explore and would be to us the age of the sea or of the eternal mountain."
But now she was already no longer concentrating.
"It is becoming cold up here," she said while she beat the ground with her sturdy shoes, "and you are devoted to your thoughts and don't for a moment care if I, poor child here next to you, am freezing to death. We'll want to look for a sheltered little place for ourselves in the forest, then you can continue to philosophize on my account. Although I would prefer to hear something funny from you - I think you can't be funny at all."
They had found the wished for place of rest: a small moss-covered hill under a low beech tree whose branches shut behind them like a door.
---74---
"And now come and warm me up a little with your big loden coat!"
She moved close to him, took half of his coat, threw it around her shoulder and, now with
her teeth chattering perhaps more deliberately than involuntarily, crouched by his side. He felt the warm rush of her blood, which - enlivening - flowed over to him; he had never felt a feminine body so close.
Above them, the storm caught its song in the branches of the trees. From under, however, the surge of the sea forced its way up to them like an organ tone in the deepest registers. From the nearby fields the strong draft carried the scent of the rye bloom, which united with the damp mossy and earthy smell.
Still she sat nestled close to him. "You Germans are everything: clever and rational and even good, yes very good. But gallant you are not, it is not given to you; you don't know the soft, delicate tenderness of the French, which one can have without thinking and wanting something wicked and which certainly does one good, especially when one is freezing to death - like I am now."
Her hand searched for his under the thick coat, ice-cold it lay between his fingers. Ardently it rose in his heart... all of a sudden she jumpt up, very quickly and abruptly: "Homeward!" she cried with a choked, alarmed voice. "The sun is already sinking, it will be night before we are in the 'seastar.'"
She didn't choose the well laid out path that they had gone up; dropping sharply, she rushed in zigzag through tree and brush, she jumpt down the slope with such an agility that he was not able to follow her. She ran as if a mob of pursuers
---75---
were behind her, as if hunted. But with a confidence at the same time, she infallibly went out of the way of every small obstacle, every tree root, and every stone. Finally at a sharp bend of the path she stopt in her wild run, sat on a boulder a few meters above the sea, and waved to him, who was far above her. Now she waited quietly although it was a short while until he had reached her vicinity.
"Why did you rush down the mountain like a maniac? And why didn't you choose the path that all people take?" he askt half indignantly, half joking.
"Because it suddenly came over me!" she answered, laughing.
"Came over you?"
"You even said it yourself: the maniac. My blood must have a diversion then, otherwise it becomes rebellious. No, don't look at me so shockt, now it is very calm and sensible again... support me, please, at least with this short descent here! I believe I've hurt my foot. But it's not worth mentioning."
"Look, the punishment for your recklessness! These uneven paths down the steep cliff are, if one doesn't know them exactly, not at all harmless, especially not in such a jumping step."
A short, flickering glance between the thick, silky eyelashes: "In my life I have walkt completely different paths that I knew even less and that were a good deal more dangerous."
"Yes, you explained earlier. You were in Switzerland a lot. Are you a mountain tourist?"
"She smiled her graceful, superior smile. "Oh no, I didn't mean that."
---76---
And now her face only half turned towards him: "Do you know that there are people similar to those animals that see better in the dark and move as in the light? People who only because of that never fall and stumble, because they don't know danger?"
He didn't understand her question. Was it a joke or - ? But already a silent smile flew around her sharply-cut mouth again: "I must think about our philosophical conversation, earlier on the cliff there: that no person has an idea of the other, and yet they walkt so close next to each other. And isn't it good like that? If one knew the other, even only the slightest of the known, what happens in him - how terrible like would be! You see, pastor, if you knew whom you took into the protection of your storm coat up there, to whom you are now offering your supporting hand - no, you don't need to take your arm away from me because of that - I still really need it. Didn't you also not want that at all? Yes, but suddenly it twitcht like that at the same time. And honestly, your hand, which earlier was so very warm, has become completely cold. Just admit it: you are afraid of me! And who knows if not rightly so?"
He felt ashamed. He held her hand tighter in his own, he forced his face into cheerfulness. But he didn't have a funny feeling about it at all. Her words like her being were beginning to become puzzling to him. It might have been his fault again and his poor knowledge of the female soul. A saying of Fritz occurred to him. "You can believe me," he once said to him, "every woman, even the seemingly simplest, becomes a puzzle as soon as you begin even to step a little closer to her." With that he calmed himself down.
---77---
They had left the beach and had arrived on the promenade. Now she took her hand out of his with a short word of thanks and walkt by herself at his side. He saw that she dragged her left foot a little, now and then a painful wince also ran over her face. But he noticed that she didn't want anything to appear and did not offer his arm to her again.
New cloud formations were always piling up in the sky, the dark red fire of the dying sun literally drowned in them. Nuscha quickened her pace. She had suddenly become very quiet. In the sharp evening light, her black hair had a metallic luster and the severely-molded characteristic around her red lips emerged more strongly.
