Hertha had a sharp little nose, and she had made therewith a discovery,
a discovery which in happier circumstances would not have signified
much, but which in the troubled condition of affairs carried great
weight.
As she sat at supper, which meal was unusually honoured that day by
step-mamma's presence, she became aware of a peculiar perfume, the same
which was indissolubly associated in her mind with the memory of a
pale, sweetly smiling countenance, and a pair of big blue imploringly
uplifted eyes.
This perfume had seemed to her the crowning distinction of graceful
elegance. She had often tried to recall it, and as the finest scented
soap gave no idea of it, she resolved that she would instantly procure
it in four years and four months' time, when she came into possession
of her fortune. And now, as if wafted by magic from Uhlenfelde, this
perfume suddenly pervaded the supper-table. She sniffed it in
inquiringly, and measured with her eyes one after the other, mamma,
Elly, grandmamma, but missed out Leo.
Johanna, who sat stiffly at the table, immovable as a statue, making
everybody else feel uncomfortable, gave her stepdaughter an astonished
look.
Hertha saved herself by asking leave to hand round the dish of
potato-chips which Christian had left in the lurch to attend to the
cutlets. While she passed from one chair to another she sampled
critically the immediate atmosphere round each. And, sure enough, when
she came with the dish behind Leo's place, the insidious fragrance rose
to her nostrils with threefold power.
But Leo did not like scents--on the contrary, only a short time ago,
when Christian had thought it necessary in honour of the Sabbath to
plaster his grey straggly locks with hair-oil, he had been told, with a
_donnerwetter_! to go and put his head under the pump. Leo helped
himself to potatoes without bestowing a glance on the waitress who
handed them. He seemed distrait and surly, and instead of eating, toyed
with his knife-rest. Mamma's presence truly might be responsible for
his temper, but Hertha suspected other causes.
The conversation was confined to monosyllabic questions and answers.
Grandmamma inquired how many geese were to be stuffed for liver and how
many fattened?
"Do as you like," said Leo.
"Were you at Uhlenfelde to-day?" Johanna asked suddenly.
Hertha sat erect on the _qui vive_. Ah, what would he say?
"No," was the short, sharp rejoinder. He did not like to be
cross-examined, least of all by Johanna, who showed no disinclination
to play the spy on him.
He was still wondering himself how the falsehood had escaped his lips
when he glanced down the table and met Hertha's large shining eyes,
which were fixed on him shocked and reproachful.
"The little one is getting uneasy," he thought; and as he was anxious
to be alone, he rose and left the table, with a "Gesegneter Mahlzeit."
Every one looked after him.
"What can ail him?" asked grandmamma, referring to the food he had
scarcely touched.
"He has had a lot of trouble with the foaling," put in Hertha, acting
on an impulse, dimly felt, that it was her place to stand up for him.
She was quite sure that she hated him; but, all the same, whatever he
did was no business of anybody else's. After supper she rushed into the
dusky garden. She felt as if something had happened within her and
without, the existence of which, up till now, she had not dreamed. She
didn't know what it was, or what to call it, but that it was nothing
good was proved by the anger which stormed in her breast at the thought
of it. What did it mean if the beautiful woman had really poured some
of her perfume on to his coat? But no, that wasn't the question. Why
had he degraded himself by telling a lie? He, the haughty Leo, who had
so loftily disdained her humble love! Why had he made a secret of this
visit to Uhlenfelde, when, as a rule, he came from there openly,
bringing messages of greeting from his friend?
Of course this beauty was a thousand times more beautiful than she was,
and much cleverer, no doubt. It did not need much self-abasement to
accord her the superiority. But the great insoluble problem, the
stumbling-block to all her conjectures, was that she was a married
woman. If only she had not been, then he could have been in love with
her; but as it was, how could he? Women were loved by their husbands,
that was what they married for, but by no one else in the world.
Otherwise you might as well fall in love with Uncle Kutowski, or the
dog, Leo, who at this moment was rubbing his damp nose against her
sleeve, full of consolatory affection.
Shivering in the chill autumn wind, and yet with burning cheeks, she
ran up and down the dew-spangled paths, where rustling dry leaves
whirled before her like startled animals. She heard Leo's voice coming
from the yard, raised to a scolding pitch, as he inspected the ploughs
by lantern-light. Leo, the dog, answered with a joyous bay, and bounded
off twice, but returned to her in the end.
"You are better than your master," she whispered, burying her face in
his mane; and she decided that to-day, if possible, she would get to
the bottom of this question about married people being beloved by some
one to whom they weren't married.
First of all she sought information in her library. "The Lamplighter,"
to begin with, then "Goldelse," and "Barefeet." These were the maturist
novels that she possessed. The writings of Clara Cron and Otilie
Wildemuth were as yet not even to be thought of. She couldn't find any
reference to the problem that bothered her, not even a hint that it
existed. So she turned from fiction to the classics. Schiller--Amalia
was a young girl--Luise (now she was coming to it, perhaps) a married
woman--Queen of Spain, of course. But in this case it was clear as
daylight that you couldn't believe the poet; for to be in love with
your stepmother was a thing which could only happen in the world of
imagination, that world in which genius, detached from earth and
intoxicated with inspiration, roams at large. She hadn't written for
nothing a German composition two years ago on "Genius and Reality," in
which this question had been exhaustively dealt with. Those beautiful
phrases, "genius detached from earth," and "intoxicated with
inspiration," were quotations from it.
"Why are you rummaging so amongst the books?" asked Elly, who was
already in bed, and before falling asleep, enjoying herself by
stretching the counterpane tight between her teeth and feet, and
pretending to play the banjo on it. As she alternately tightened and
slackened her hold on the linen, it produced sounds, high and low,
which distantly resembled those of a stringed instrument.
Hertha considered whether she should demean herself so far as to ask
advice from this child. But, in her dire necessity, she did not long
demur.
"Look here, Mouse," she said, sitting down by the head of the bed, "I
want to ask you something. You are in love with a man, aren't you?"
"Oh yes," replied Elly, playing with her fingers.
"And you are quite sure that this man loves you too?"
"Why do you say _man_?" asked Elly. "Kurt is my ideal. Before it was
Benno, and before that Alfred, but now it is Kurt. But, all the same, I
don't think of him as a man."
"What is he, then?"
"Why, a _young_ man."
"Well, young man, if you like. Certainly, he is not my idea of a man."
And her eyes gleamed with enthusiasm. Did she not know what a proper
man _ought_ to be like? "Do you think, Mouse, that any man, or young
man--it doesn't matter which--could love a married woman?"
"Of course ... quite easily," answered Elly, in her superb serenity.
Hertha smiled surreptitiously at such denseness. "No, Mouse, you don't
understand," she said. "I don't mean the woman who is his wife, but the
woman who is married to some one else."
"That's what I mean too."
"And it seems to you quite natural?"
"Really, I should not have thought you so inexperienced," said the
little lady. "One's bound to know such things. In old days it was much
worse. The man who was a brave knight _always_ loved the wife of some
one else. To love his own would have been thought ridiculous.... It is
all in Koenig's 'Unabridged History of Literature.'"
Hertha had become very thoughtful. "Ah! the olden times," she said,
with a faint smile. "It's no good talking of them. They tilted at
tournaments then, and killed each other with their lances for fun!"
"And to-day," said Elly in a whisper, raising herself in bed with the
wide eyes of a child reading a fairy tale, "to-day they shoot each
other dead with pistols for a joke instead."
Hertha felt a stab at her hearty and the little rosy daughter of Eve
went on.
"I should think it lovely to have such an unhappy affair when
married.... For, you know, most of the romantic love stories are of
this kind."
"Who told you so?"
"Don't you remember what Kaethi Graffenstein said about her aunt?"
"Pah!" cried Hertha. "Whatever _she_ said about it would sure to be a
lie."
The conversation ceased at this point, for, after Elly letting fall the
much-hated name, Hertha refused to talk any more. But long after the
light had been put out she lay awake pondering, and tried by various
experimental thoughts to penetrate the veil which hung between her
childlike outlook and life. The next afternoon she approached, with
faltering step, kind grandmamma, whose wooden knitting-needles were
busily employed on one of her favourite Shetland wool shawls.
"Have you an uneasy conscience?" asked grandmamma, who thought she knew
what she wanted.
"God forbid! I only wish to know, am I properly grown up, or am I not?"
"Well ... half and half," suggested grandmamma, giving her a smiling
scrutiny over her spectacles.
Hertha drew a deep breath. She had entered on a daring enterprise, she
knew, but, at all costs, she must clear up this matter.
"I mean that I shall probably soon be married, and I----"
"You!" exclaimed grandmamma, in deadly terror.
The unhappy child had evidently come to break to her the proposal of
some saucy youth in the neighbourhood.
"Of course ...," continued Hertha, mouthing her words, ... "of
course ... with all my money I am not likely to be an old maid."
Grandmamma caught hold of her hands. "Child, whom have you got in your
mind?" she cried, beginning to perspire with anxiety.
Hertha blushed to the roots of her hair. "I? ... nobody," she
stuttered, struggling to maintain a nonchalant tone.
"You are talking indefinitely?"
"Yes ... of course ... indefinitely."
Grandmamma ventured to breathe more freely again, and determined
forthwith that she would talk seriously to Leo that very day, and warn
him that the "gold fish" might be snapped up, by some one else under
his very eyes, if he did not look out.
"And ... now let me hear what you want to know."
"I want to know ... about love ... after marriage."
Grandmamma, who was used to these sort of questions, though lately they
had been less frequent than of old, replied lightly, "It's the same
after as before."
"Yes ... I know. But if there's another ... to whom one is not
married ..."
"Gracious! _what_?" Grandmamma let her glasses fall off her nose in
sheer horrified amazement. "What other?"
Hertha felt a sudden collapse of her heart-strings. She had to make
energetic demands on her courage to be able to proceed.
"Can't it happen, dear grandmamma, that some one who isn't married to
us, can get into his head ..."
"Hertha," interrupted the old lady, "look me straight in the eyes and
tell me if you have been reading a forbidden book."
"How could I, grandmamma?"
"What are you reading now?"
"Oh, a yarn that Meta Podewyl lent me."
"We say story, not yarn. Who wrote it?"
"Felix Dahn."
"And what is it about?"
"I hardly know. Some one is always being stabbed dead by some one else.
Some of them come to life again, and some of them are buried. There's
no harm in that."
"No, certainly there is no harm in that," thought grandmamma; and then
she said, "Don't come to me with such stupid questions again, child ...
you are too young by far to understand such things. And now give me a
kiss, and take your crochet."
So another plan had failed. Yet Hertha went on wondering how she was to
solve the dark mystery with which her jealous heart was so blindly
grappling.
The same day at dinner Leo made the unexpected proposal of rowing her
and Elly over to the Isle of Friendship. He knew how long Hertha had
cherished the wish to see with her own eyes the romantic spot, and
thought that by giving her her desire he would improve the relations
between them, which, he didn't know why, seemed to grow more strained
from day to day.
But Hertha slightly curled her lips and remarked, "Many thanks; when I
care to visit the island, I will row myself over."
"You'll try again?" he laughed.
"Yes, why not? There are two boats there now, and you can't want more
than one at a time when you happen to be visiting Uhlenfelde."
There was something in her pronunciation of the last few words which
vexed and irritated him.
"Nevertheless, my dear child," he replied, "I must ask you kindly to
refrain from any more mad escapades; there really is no necessity for
you periodically to rouse the neighbourhood."
"I promise you that I shall give you no further ground for complaint on
that score," she made answer with quivering lips.
He nodded, immediately pacified, and grandmamma changed the topic to
household matters.
Towards sunset, when Leo mounted his mare, Hertha, watching him from
the garden, felt all the annoyance and antagonism of the evening before
awake in her again. She would have liked to throw herself on the grass
and tear up the sod with her fingers.
It was true that he rode out in the direction of Wengern, but Hertha
had little doubt that he intended to make a _detour_ the quicker to
reach the stream.
"Oh, if only I knew whether that could be so!" she thought, and gnashed
her teeth.
Then she was seized with a brilliant idea.
Meta Podewyl, who had been transformed these four months into a sedate
Frau von Sembritzky, used to be her confidential friend before her
engagement. They had exchanged all sorts of promises and sealed their
vow of friendship with endless kisses.
The first who, etc., should be the first to, etc.
But, as things had turned out, there had been no talk on either side of
these promises being fulfilled, for the intimate relations between her
and Meta had ceased, as most girls' friendships do in the early days of
betrothal. And although she had followed the fortunate girl to the
altar as her bridesmaid, she had long ago seemed to have vanished into
an unknown far-away world to which she lacked a passport.
But now her happiness and peace of mind were at stake, and only Meta
could help her.
In the evening, at bed-time, she said to Elly, "If I ask you to-morrow
to drive over with me to see Meta, you must say 'No.' You understand?"
The Mouse did not understand in the least, but submitted as usual with
an inclination of her little fair head, and fell asleep.
The next day it rained, and as Hertha had no closed carriage at her
command, she stayed at home. Two more wet days followed, in which
Hertha's devouring curiosity had to rest unsatisfied. But when a fourth
dawned hopelessly grey, with rain pattering on the windows, she
resolved to pocket her pride and petition Leo, through the medium of
grandmamma, for horse and carriage.
"Why these roundabout dealings, Hertha?" he said, as they met at table.
"I should have thought you knew that the conveyances are as much at
your disposal as any one else's."
At two o'clock that afternoon the carriage stood at the door, and she
drove off in pouring rain.
She was lucky in the hour she had chosen. Meta's husband had gone into
Muensterberg, and mamma-in-law, who made the young couple happy by her
presence in the house, was suffering from a bilious attack.
So she found Meta alone in her bedroom, with its heavy satin curtains,
its dainty muslin covers, its comfortable low sofa, and lamp with
emerald-green shade, and all the thousand and one pretty knickknacks,
and mysterious articles which betoken a recently accomplished
matrimonial union, and seem to invite a cosy confidential chat.
Still, the reception accorded Hertha by her old chum was not altogether
encouraging. She rose languidly from the rocking-chair in which she had
been reclining, looking very delicate and fragile, and with a faint
smile extended a cold thin hand, on which the wide hoop of her
wedding-ring seemed conspicuously to inspire respect. A book bound in
brown and gold slid from her lap on to the floor.
Hertha took in at a first glance how much Meta's young fresh-coloured
little face had changed during the months since her marriage. Her nose
had sharpened, and her full lips were pale, and the different way in
which her hair was dressed made her quite a stranger.
"I am delighted to see you," she said, just as one dowager receives
another when she pays her a formal visit. In fact, Hertha felt
intimidated.
"What were you reading?" she asked, picking up the brown-and-gold book
from the floor.
The little wife blushed hotly, and hurriedly took the book out of her
hand, but not before Hertha had deciphered the gold letters on the
back: "Ammon's Duties of Mothers."
"I never!" said Hertha. "May you read that?"
"I must read it," replied the young wife, with a slightly ironical
twist of her mouth.
Hertha burned on the spot to gallop through the remarkable volume. She
would have liked above all things to have laid it on her lap and asked
her friend to leave her in peace for an hour or two. But she was too
embarrassed to give any hint of her wishes.
"What shall we have with our coffee?" asked Meta, momentarily anxious
to display her authority as mistress of the house. "Meringues, jam
pancakes, or apple-fritters?"
"Can you really order anything you like?" asked Hertha, full of
admiring envy. At this moment she could almost have made up her mind to
accept a husband who was not Leo.
"Naturally I can order what I like," replied her friend, with a
melancholy little shake of the head. Bui; she might have truthfully
added, "That is, when Hans's mamma has a bilious attack."
"Well, then, I should like apple-fritters best!" exclaimed Hertha, with
a sigh of relief, for now they seemed to be getting a more human
footing.
As she threw her hat and cloak in a corner, she caught sight of a pair
of pouter pigeons fluttering from the ceiling, holding a corner of the
bed-canopy in their half-open bills.
"Oh, how perfectly heavenly!" she cried. "If I were married and might
have everything I wanted, I would hang a gold cage up there with a
nightingale in it, to sing me to sleep every night."
Her friend made no answer, but she smiled. And this smile, indulgent
and sad, in which there lay worlds of profound knowledge, told Hertha
that she had said something extraordinarily stupid. She rubbed her nose
in her confusion, then drew herself erect again, for it seemed to her
necessary to recapture her dignity.
A further survey of the room revealed new wonders at every turn. On the
toilette table, which, like the bed, had a canopy of silken gauze
draped above it, was an array of brushes, bottles, round and square
boxes, all made of the same lapis lazuli glass.
She took out stoppers and lifted covers enviously. In one of the boxes
she found a powder-puff. It was the first time in all her young life
that she had held a powder-puff in her hand.
"May you powder too?" she asked.
Meta shook her head, laughing. "I might if I liked," she said, "but I
don't."
Hertha felt a burning desire to guide the white soft ball of down over
her face, but forebore from exposing her vanity before her friend.
"I suppose that you are very, very happy?" she asked.
"Thank God, yes," replied her friend, in a tone of solemn seriousness
which Hertha couldn't understand, because she had always thought
happiness was a laughing matter, and only unhappiness a subject that
required to be treated seriously.
Her eyes began to wander round the room again, for she was keenly
anxious to discover all the curiosities it contained. Suddenly she
gave a start, for there in a corner she alighted on a row of high
button-boots, of dimensions so enormous that no woman's feet could have
filled them.
"How do they come there?" she asked timidly.
"They are Hans's Wellingtons," replied Meta, in a matter-of-course
tone, which crushed her afresh.
It seemed to her as if the Wellingtons grew visibly to a still more
gigantic size, and formed an insurmountable barrier between her and her
friend. She began at the same time to resent the reserve with which
Meta continued to behave towards her.... The days when they had sat in
corners together and giggled and tittered while they crunched
peppermint bull's-eyes out of a bag that lay across their laps, and now
and then flipped each other behind the ear, seemed gone for ever.
"She, too, is going to prove faithless," thought Hertha, and her heart
flamed up within her, as it always did at anything which recalled the
fleeting vision of treacherous Kaethi Greiffenstein.
But that had nothing to do with her mission. Most undoubtedly any one
who was on such familiar and intimate terms with a man's Wellingtons,
must be able to enlighten her with regard to the mystery she was so
eager to have explained. But she didn't dare yet throw out any hints of
her thirst for knowledge. They talked of one thing and another, Meta
maintaining her gentle smile and reticent manner. After about half an
hour, she rose and explained with a sigh that she must go and inquire
how mamma was--if her visitor would excuse her.
And Hertha was left alone. How could she make use of the time? For she
had settled in her mind that she would make use of it, only she was
undecided between duties of mothers and the powder-puff. At last, after
a short but sharp struggle, the powder-puff gained the day. Her eyes
guiltily fixed on the door, she snatched the little implement, and with
a trembling, hasty movement, dabbed it over her forehead and cheeks.
Then she ventured to take a nervous glance at herself in the mirror,
and what she saw frightened her.... It was the face of a corpse!
Now she knew how she would look when she lay in her coffin with a
wreath of myrtle on her hair and with roses in her marble hands--so
pale, so beautiful!
She let her head fall as far back as possible on her neck, and dropped
her lids so low that only a misty slit between her lashes was left for
her to see through. Both her neck and the back of her head began to
ache, but she did not stir.
"Had I been one quarter so fair in my lifetime," she thought, "as I am
in death, he would not have disdained my love." A sweet longing to shed
tears came over her, but she did not give way to it for fear of
disfiguring her snow-white cheeks with brown channels.
"If he saw me like this," she went on, talking to herself, "he would be
bound to repent his coldness.... While every one else was asleep, he
would come on tiptoe to stand by my bier ... he would throw himself on
his knees and cover my rigid face with passionate kisses."
She shuddered. The fire-light from the inn hearth on that
never-to-be-forgotten summer evening flickered before her. "And suppose
I only appeared to be dead and wasn't really," she went on, "or that
his newly awakened love had the power of bringing me to life again. If
I opened my eyes and stretched out my arms and drew him to me in full
forgiveness."
And as she instinctively spread out those forgiving arms, she felt so
much life and movement in her that the illusion of being dead vanished.
"What a pity!" she thought. "All that is beautiful passes like a
dream."
She set to work at once to remove the powder from her face. With a
handkerchief rolled into a ball she rubbed and scrubbed cheeks,
forehead, and nose; and the harder she rubbed, the greater became her
fear that she might not be able to wipe off all traces of her misdoing.
Her heart beat loudly. She seemed to herself like a criminal on the
verge of being discovered. At the sound of footsteps in the corridor,
she let the handkerchief fall and retired to the most shadowy corner of
the room behind the bed-curtains, where she pretended to be engrossed
in the study of a picture.
"Mamma is asleep," said Meta, coming in, "and coffee is ready."
"Oh, is it?" replied Hertha, in confusion. She would have given worlds
to be able to stay in that dark corner, but of course it was not
possible.
On the way to the dining-room she gave her cheeks a few more vigorous
rubs, and then gallantly faced the light. She fancied that the old
mamselle, who greeted her with a smile as she brought in the coffee,
was mocking at her secretly; and when Meta's glance rested on her for
more than a second, she could hold out no longer, and burying her hotly
blushing face on her shoulder, she confessed her crime.
Meta smiled and kissed her, saying, "Never mind. We all do that some
time in our lives."
"You too?" asked Hertha, daring to breathe freely again.
Meta nodded, and as mamma's going off to sleep had put her in a more
cheerful humour, she added the confession that on the second morning of
her wedded life, she had hardly had the patience to wait for Hans to go
out of the room before flouring her face, so eager had she been to
operate with the new powder-puff.
"But one soon gets over that sort of thing," she went on, with a
thoughtful, hard look in her eyes.
Now the ice was really broken, and when the apple fritters arrived,
frizzling crisply in their juice, Hertha thought the atmosphere was
favourable for her great question. Still she struggled twice with
herself before she was sure that she could combine the right moment
with the right words. For she felt that her friend's new smile did not
mean joking.
"There's one thing I want to ask you," she began, in a careless, casual
sort of tone, though there was a choking sensation in her throat.
"Wives love their husbands ... that's taken for granted; but do you
think it's possible that wives ... can be ... loved by men--men who are
not their husbands?"
Her friend didn't smile this time, but laughed outright, and Hertha
felt a stone fall from her heart. Here was some one who was not going
to be shocked, she thought.
"How funny you are," Meta said. "No one can prevent people loving whom
they choose."
"I know.... But a man, don't you see, ought not----"
"No; he _ought_ not, but often does."
"Does any one else love _you_, then?"
Meta coloured. She looked into space. Perhaps she was thinking of the
man who had first captured her maiden fancy.
"I don't ask," she said. "It is more than enough that I please Hans;
and, of course, I shouldn't allow anything of the kind."
"Then it isn't allowed?"
"Of course not, when they tell you so straight out."
"What? Do they ever tell it?"
"Often. It happens if the man is a very bold lover."
"Good gracious!" exclaimed Hertha, in horror. "If such a thing happened
to me, I should show him the door pretty quick."
Then she became suddenly silent. She was asking herself the question,
"What might _he_ have said to her? What might she have answered?"
"Would it be possible," she inquired again eagerly, "for there to be
women ... who--who wouldn't mind?"
"Oh yes," replied Meta.
"Who in the end might return such a bold man's love?"
"Yes; even that."
The world seemed to spin round in Hertha's brain, and with all the
energy of innocence she cried, "Meta, I won't believe it!"
"There is a good deal that you would not believe, that I now know to be
facts."
"Tell me, tell me. What, please?"
"No; most of it can't be told," said her friend, guardedly. "Not to any
one, at least, who is not married."
Hertha thought of the vow they had once exchanged, but an undefinable
feeling of shyness stopped her from reminding the forgetful Meta of it.
"All I can tell you," she continued, "is that things are very different
from what we girls think they are. Do you remember, for instance, how
all our heads were turned once about your uncle?"
"Which uncle?" asked Hertha.
"Leo Sellenthin," replied Meta, glancing sideways.
Hertha sighed. She was only too willing to forget the relationship
which gave him authority over her. And then, all at once, her heart
seemed to stand still, for she understood that the next minute would be
pregnant for her with revelation. She was to hear something terrible.
"Do you know what people said after that duel, when he shot Herr von
Rhaden dead?"
"No," she murmured.
"They said that he and Felicitas were in love with each other, and that
Rhaden found it out. Good Heavens! What is the matter?"
Hertha, with parted lips and dilated eyes, had raised her hands as if
to ward off the blow that was about to fall on her.
"For goodness' sake, calm yourself!" cried Meta, stroking her face with
both hands. "It was only gossip. Of course, it's not true, and no one
believes it now."
"Why is it not true?"
"Because, if it were, Ulrich Kletzingk, who is his bosom friend and
knows all about him, would not have married her."
"But if he hadn't known?"
"Then Leo would have confessed it to him before the marriage."
"But, suppose he had not confessed?"
"He would have been absolutely obliged to do it. If he hadn't, Leo
would have behaved shabbily to his friend."
Hertha scarcely comprehended, but one thing was clear, and flamed like
a torch of certainty through all this night of riddles: "They had been
in love ... they loved each other still ... they would always love each
other."
After this, she was indifferent to what she and Meta talked about. A
yellow mist lay before her eyes, and Meta's voice sounded as if it came
from a long way off, and fell on her ear without meaning. She answered,
not knowing what she answered.
"How shall I get away?" she kept asking herself, and thought with
horror of the time, that for decency's sake she must still stay. But
her deliverance was nearer than she expected, although the manner in
which it was effected filled her with new terror.
Meta, in the middle of her chatter, turned suddenly pale, gasped for
breath, and then tumbled off her chair in a dead faint. Hertha rushed
to her with a cry of alarm, seized the water-jug, and poured a stream
of water on her face. Meta made a low gurgling sound, breathed heavily
through her nose, and then came to herself again.
"Lord have mercy!" cried Hertha, kissing the wet forehead of the
reviving girl. "I will go and tell them to send for the doctor at
once."
But her friend stopped her. "No, don't go," she said, calmly raising
herself. "You can't understand, but it must happen."
"To be married is like being in another world," thought Hertha,
startled, "where fainting dead away is quite an everyday event."
Then she reflected how gladly she would have fainted a hundred times a
day for the sake of one who despised and spurned her.
"I will go home at once; you ought to rest," she murmured, controlling
her excitement with difficulty, and her friend did not press her to
stay.
An hour later, when she appeared in the living-room at Halewitz,
grandmamma exclaimed, horrified--
"What is the matter with you, child? You are as pale as death."
"Oh, it's nothing, grandmamma," she replied, and tried to laugh. "I
have been such a goose as to powder myself."