Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler Read Free Book Online Page A

dance?"
    Fridolin, seeing two noblemen watch fixedly from another corner, suspected that this woman with the boyish and slender figure, was sent to put him to the test. In spite of it he meant to dance with her, but at that moment another woman left her partner and walked quickly up to him. He knew at once that it was the same one who had already warned him. She pretended that she had just seen him and whispered, in a voice loud enough to be heard in the other corner: "Returned at last!" Laughingly, she continued: "All your efforts are useless. I know you." Then turning to the woman with the boyish figure, she said: "Let me have him for just two minutes, then he shall be yours again until morning, if you wish." In a softer voice she added: "It is really he." The other replied in astonishment: "Really?" and with a light step went to join the cavaliers in the corner.
    Alone with Fridolin, the woman cautioned him, "Don't ask questions, and don't be surprised at anything. I tried to lead them astray, but you can't continue to deceive them for long. Go, before it is too late—and it may be too late at almost any moment—and be careful that no one follows you. No one must know who you are. There would be no more peace and quiet for you. Go!"
    "Will I see you again?"
    "It's impossible."
    "Then I shall stay."
    "My life, at most, is at stake," he said, "and I'm ready at this moment to give it for you." He took her hands and tried to draw her to him.
    She whispered again, almost despairingly: "Go!"
    He laughed, and he heard himself laughing as in a dream. "But I know what I'm doing. You are not all here just to make us mad by looking at you. You are doing this to unnerve me still more."
    "It will soon be too late. You must go!"
    But he wouldn't listen to her. "Do you mean to say that there are no rooms here for the convenience of congenial couples? Will all these people leave with just a courteous 'good-bye'? They don't look like it."
    He pointed to the dancers, glowing white bodies closely pressed against the blue, red and yellow silk of their partners, circling, in the brilliant, mirrored room adjoining, to the wild tunes of the piano. It seemed to him that no longer was any attention paid to him and the woman beside him. They stood alone in the semi-dark middle room.
    "You are hoping in vain," she whispered. "There are no such rooms here. This is your last opportunity to leave."
    "Come with me!"
    She shook her head violently, despairingly.
    .. He laughed again, not recognizing his laughter. "You're making game of me. Did all these men and women come here merely to fan the flames of their desire and then depart? Who can forbid you to come away with me if you choose?"
    She took a deep breath and drooped her head.
    "Oh, now I understand," he said. "That's the punishment you impose on those who come here uninvited. You couldn't have invented a more cruel one. Please let me off and forgive me. Impose some other penalty, anything but that I must leave you."
    "You are mad. I can't go with you, let alone anyone else. Whomever I went with would forfeit his life and mine."
    Fridolin felt intoxicated, not only with her, her fragrant body and her red-glowing mouth—not only with the atmosphere of this room and the voluptuous mysteries that surrounded him—he was intoxicated, his thirst unsatisfied, with all the experiences of the night, none of which had come to a satisfactory conclusion. He was intoxicated with himself, with his boldness, the change he felt in himself, and he touched the veil which was wound about her head, as though he intended to remove it.
    She seized his hands. "One night during the dance here one of the men took it into his head to tear the veil from one of us. They ripped the mask from his face and drove him out with whips."
    "And—she?"
    "Did you read of a beautiful young girl, only a few weeks ago, who took poison the day before her wedding?"
    He remembered the incident, even the name, and mentioned it. "Wasn't it