She had uttered her cry for romance just as Fairy Fate happened to be
passing by her door. Fairy Fate decided to have a little fun. Stella
wanted a prince. Very well, then, she should have a prince. However, it
was really to the waif in his heart that she belonged, though she did not
know this at first, and afterward would not have it so, but must ever
strive to persuade herself that he had fallen in love with her as he
might fall in love with Irmengarde....
“What a pity it all is,” she thought, as his feverish tongue at length
lapsed speechless. There was a long silence, and she thought: “How fooled
we both were!”
He sat before her, relaxing now, and trembling. His look of ecstasy
darkened and glimmered out, while his eyes took on their old tortured
stare. When he spoke, the softness and breathless simplicity were gone
from his voice, which sounded muddy and harsh. He beat with one fist
against his forehead.
“I’ve been a fool—all my life, such a fool!” he muttered.
The little hectic colour died from his cheeks, and in his eyes she saw
stealing again the awful look of torturing hunger for opium, which no
power could stifle any more.
But she spoke to him very gently. “I understand now, Ferd. I understand
it all.”
And she thought: “It was my price.”
Wearily and mechanically, while he slunk away to the cot where his
smoking materials always were, Stella’s hands took up the work which
had fallen into her lap. She sat sewing, just as she had sat beside
the hearth the day he had begged her not to stop. “You don’t know
how charming it is to see a woman sitting before the fire, busy with
needlework,” he had said. There was a waif in his heart and he had
married her.
But the tears were spent, and there was nothing left now but time and
silence.
X