"Wait a minute, dearest. I have something to attend to."
She disappeared, softly bolting the door as she went.
Leo still stood on the same spot. "Here I am, at my goal," he thought.
Then he let his eyes wander round the room in dull curiosity. He looked
at the lamp hanging from the ceiling, and noticed that the silken,
befringed shade was rose-pink. At Fichtkampen it had been blue. The
difference impressed itself on his mind, which seemed incapable of
taking in anything else. He wished that she would come back so that he
needn't stand there feeling so stupid and wretched. Then he remembered
the smiling promises with which she had parted from him the other day.
A pang of anxiety, mingled with a weak hope to which he could not give
a name, overwhelmed him. It seemed to him as if she had the power of
paralysing his limbs, and draining the marrow from his bones.
"What am I doing here?" he stammered, looking round with a wild glance.
"Why have I come?"
Five, ten minutes passed, and she did not reappear. He stared at the
door through which she had vanished. It was certain that she had
another scheme on hand. Whatever it might be, she would find him
pliable as putty. How tired he was! He dragged himself to the chair on
which she had been sitting before he came in. He buried his head in his
hands and brooded absently over the papers and letters which were
strewn about the writing-table.
"My Dear Mamma,
"Nearly all the boys are going home for Christmas. Eric Froben will
stay here, because he has no mamma, and Fritz Lawsky because he has
only a guardian, and If., who comes from India, and is as yellow as a
Gruyere cheese. All the other boys are going home. Why mayn't I come
home? Some have a longer journey to their homes than I have. Oh, I do
want to come home so badly. I cry every morning and every night,
because I mayn't come home----"
He had read so far mechanically, hardly conscious that he was not
reading the advertisement column of a newspaper, when suddenly he awoke
to the reality. He took the sheet in both hands, and turned it over and
over, while a sound like a faint whine came from his throat. With
fixed, fierce eyes, he read on.
He read of the distribution of presents beneath the Christmas tree; of
the bell which would be rung when the happy hour came; what If., the
boy from India, was to get. He did not skip one of the childish wishes,
from the lead soldiers to the pocket inkstand and the sweets. He half
rejoiced that each item stabbed his breast like a sharp sword. He
seemed to hear a child's voice crying out of the distance and the
night, "Uncle Leo! Uncle Leo!"
He sprang to his feet. His mind was made up. Lifting his cloak from
the floor, he threw it over his shoulder, and tapped and tested the
double trigger of the weapon that was ready for coming events in the
breast-pocket. And so he waited, armed and prepared. Then, noiselessly,
the door opened. A half-naked figure stood on the threshold with the
rosy light of the lamp cast full upon it. The softly rounded arms were
lifted longingly in an arch above her head, displaying her full
breasts. The white drapery fell from her plump shoulders in straight,
unbroken folds to her pink, bare feet. She stood there like the very
goddess of love, although there was nothing divine truly about the
small, round face, with its tip-tilted nose and sensuous lips.
He looked at her, and she seemed the incarnation of the sin to which he
had been an easy victim from the first--the smiling, flattering sin
that meant no harm yet stalked on its complacent way over all
hindrances, even over the body of the dead. Wrath and disgust convulsed
him. It was for this, then, that he had come, for this!
She, on her side, expected that he would rush at her with an
exclamation of delight, and, as Ulrich was not yet asleep, she gave a
warning "Hush!" Then she let the door fall back in the lock with
experienced caution.
Still he did not move, and, misinterpreting his stupefaction,
she determined to give him courage. She glided across the room,
and, nestling against him, she whispered, half roguishly, half
humbly--"There! Now you have come into your property." Her bare arms
encircled his neck. But he pushed her away from him with swift
decision.
"Listen, Felicitas," he said, fighting for breath, "I have just read a
letter from your boy. After that I have no inclination to make love to
you. Neither can I take you with me now. It would seem like murder. Die
where and how you like. But, excuse me--I must be going."
At the mention of the letter she had started back; but now she smiled
once more and pressed herself against him with renewed ardour.
"But, dearest," she whispered, "don't think any more about that stupid
plan."
"What stupid plan?"
"Why, about death and dying."
"What?"
"Don't you see," she whispered, stroking his cheeks, radiantly
confident of conquest, "it would be utterly ridiculous to die now? Why
should we? Just when we have got each other again? It seems to me that
we shall begin to live now for the first time."
In blank astonishment he gazed at her. He had been so accustomed during
the last twenty-four hours to regard himself and her as destined that
night for death that he could hardly grasp the ignoble course her lips
proposed. When he had grasped it he was threatened by one of his old
furious rages. The blood-red mist floated before his eyes, and a voice
cried within him, "End it."
"Wretched woman," he said, and caught at his breast-pocket.
She noticed his action, and saw the blue gleam of steel flash towards
her. In deadly terror she shrieked for help. Before he had time to cock
the pistol she had fled into the dressing-room, crying in a shrill,
piercing voice--
"Help! Murder! Help!"
"Beast!" he muttered, and put the weapon down on the writing-table.
For a moment he stood irresolute, not sure whether to attempt escape or
let himself be found where he was. Then he raised his eyes and saw
standing on the dark threshold a tall, ghost-like form. It was Ulrich,
and the woman was grovelling at his feet. Leo felt no shock of
surprise.
"Now he knows!" was his first thought--"knows." And he wondered coolly
how he would take it.
"Speak," said Ulrich, in a voice that was strange to Leo. "What are you
doing here?" It seemed as if he grew taller and taller.
"Speak," said the strange voice, a second time.
"He was going to murder me!" sobbed Felicitas, kneeling before him in
her nakedness. "Because--I--wouldn't do--what he wanted, he was going
to murder me----"
Leo came a step nearer. His hands itched to strangle her before she
could lie further. But Ulrich's eyes petrified him.
"Don't listen to her," he stammered. "But shoot me down; here I am."
The figure in the door began to reel, and a long bony hand was
stretched out to the wall for support.
"Can he survive it?" thought Leo, in readiness to catch him if he fell.
But Ulrich, with an effort, pulled himself together.
"Not here," he said; "we will meet at daylight!"
"Where?"
"On the Isle of Friendship, Leo."
"Very well, on the Isle of Friendship." And he turned to the door.
Outside old Minna was waiting in the darkness.
"Make haste, sir," he heard her say; "there are people moving about
already down below."