The castle
was built on the edge of a perpendicular cliff. On this side it was
impregnable. Any object dropped from the breakfast-room window would
fall a clear two hundred feet to the brawling Oster River. The rock was
black, and shining like the topmost crags of an Alpine mountain where
snow and ice have polished the bare stone. Beyond and across the river
lay the boundless steppe--a sheet of virgin snow.
Etta stood looking over this to the far horizon, where the white snow
and the gray sky softly merged into one. Her first remark was
characteristic, as first and last remarks usually are.
"And as far as you can see is yours?" she asked.
"Yes," answered Paul simply, with that calm which only comes with
hereditary possession.
The observation attracted Steinmetz's attention. He went to another
window, and looked across the waste critically.
"Four times as far as we can see is his," he said.
Etta looked out slowly and comprehensively, absorbing it all like a
long, sweet drink. There was no hereditary calmness in her sense of
possession.
"And where is Thors?" she asked.
Paul stretched out his arm, pointing with a lean, steady finger:
"It lies out there," he answered.
Another of the little incidents that are only half forgotten. Some of
the persons assembled in that room remembered the pointing finger long
afterward.
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