pleases you. Names don't kill. And if I am a hag, you're a rascal,
that's what you are! The way you treat that poor, good creature makes
one's blood boil."

Krafft waved her away, and opening the window, leaned out on the sill:
a wave of warm air filled the room. Maurice rose with renewed
decision, and sought his hat. But Krafft also took his down from a
peg. "Yes, let us go out."

It was a breathless August night, laden with intensified scents and
smells, and the moonlight lay thick and white on the ground: a night
to provoke to extravagant follies. In the utter stillness of the
woods, the young men passed from places of inky blackness into bluish
white patches, dropped through the trees like monstrous silver
thalers. The town lay behind them in a glorifying haze; the river
stretched silver-scaled in the moonlight, like a gigantic fish-back.

Krafft walked in front of his companion, in preoccupied silence. His
slender hands, dangling loosely, still twitched from their recent
exertions, and from time to time, he turned the palms outward, with an
impatient gesture. Maurice wished himself alone. He was not at ease
under this new companionship that had thrust itself upon him; indeed,
a strong mental antagonism was still uppermost in him, towards the
moody creature at whose heels he followed; and if, at this moment, he
had been asked to give voice to his feelings, the term "crazy idiot"
would have been the first to rise to his lips.

Suddenly, without turning, or slackening his pace, Krafft commenced to
speak: at first in a low voice, as if he were thinking aloud. But one
word gave another, his thoughts came rapidly, he began to gesticulate,