"Cat and dog, in fact."
"Leave off making stupid jokes and come and sit down."
He did as he was bidden, and seated himself on the edge of the furnace, so that he could look down on her outstretched form.
"Aren"t we like Hansel and Grethel?" she asked, struck by the poetry of their situation. "Now tell me a pretty story of knights and princesses, and we shall be fifteen years old."
"You can feel so innocent?"
"Yes," she answered, "and so in love; not with you, you vain person, but with that chivalrous knight whom you are to have the honour of presenting me to. In old days it was the same, and don"t you remember how furious it made Johanna? How furious!"
The grim picture of his sister rose spectre-like before him. He sank into a gloomy reverie, while she continued chattering.
"To speak honestly, I was gone on you then. You were such a thorough boy, but--what shall I say?--rather green. It seemed as if you wouldn"t, or couldn"t, see. Every evening I threw beautiful kisses out of the window down to your room, but you never noticed them. Yet all the same you were madly in love, and that annoyed Johanna terribly, and no wonder, as Ulrich was another bad case."
Ulrich"s name that she thus let slip playfully over her lips made her pause. She gave Leo an anxious glance, and then gazed thoughtfully into the flames.
"Ah!" she sighed after a while, "who would have thought things would turn out as they did?"
"And are going to turn out," he muttered, shaken by impotent rage.
"What do you mean?" she said navely.
"Woman! have you no suspicion of the abyss towards which we are drifting?" he exclaimed, holding out his clenched fingers.
"Please don"t tease me," she begged, and turning away from him, she half hid her face in the furs.
"Speak out! I will at least know whether you have any idea of the dangerous game you are playing with yourself and me."
"Ah, Leo!" she murmured. "I don"t want to think; I won"t think. It is so sweet to be together. That is all I know, and all I care about."
"At first we were to repent," he scolded further, "and to do nothing else. We were to go in sackcloth and ashes and scourge our bodies and souls. And G.o.d knows I have carried out my part of the programme. My remorse has so lacerated and bruised me that I feel as if there wasn"t an honest fibre left in me. I seem to myself so corrupt and rotten that when any one offers me his hand, I almost cry out, "Don"t defile yourself by touching me." If that was the object of it all, then it has been attained. But is what we are doing now remorse? Tell me that, woman--isn"t it, rather, fresh infamy?"
"I don"t know," she repeated, sighing. "I only know that it is sweet."
"And you are satisfied?"
She nodded three times in blissful silence. Then she said, "You are here, and that is enough."
"But you don"t ask what I have had to endure before I came. Can you conceive what it is for a man to cling wildly to the last straw of self-respect that he has left. I have spent whole nights tramping the woods; I have run till the soles of my feet bled; I have tried to tire myself to death so as not to come here. But I have come."
Like a hungry, helpless child, he put out his hands to her in beseeching appeal, and she drank in his words with burning eyes.
"My poor, poor boy," she said, in a low tone, and reaching up to him she caressed his feet.
And then he buried his face in his hands and wept bitterly. She stared at him in terror and alarm. In all the sixteen years that she had known him, she had never seen a tear in his eyes before.
She jumped up, and taking his head between both her hands, whispered, "Leo, dear, dearest Leo."
She tried to loosen his fingers, and as she could not succeed, pressed her lips to them. He did not stir. Her anxiety grew ever greater, and she sprang upon the steps to kneel beside him, so that she could put her arms about his neck. A dim inkling of her guiltiness towards him dawned on her as she saw this giant so crushed in body and soul. To make good the harm that she had done and to drown her own compa.s.sion, she could think of nothing better to do than to kiss him. And she kissed every bit of his face which she could reach. She kissed his hair, his hands, his throat. Then she drew his head down on her lap, and unlocked his hands with caressing fingers.
He lay like a man asleep, with closed eyes and relaxed muscles. His breath came in short, heavy gasps, and she kissed him long and pa.s.sionately on the lips.
He opened his eyes shivering, and gave her a half-dazed look. Then closed them again.
"We must go now," she whispered, gently raising his head. "The gardener might come and surprise us, and then it would be all up indeed."
He rubbed his forehead, rose slowly, and shook himself, and then reeled against the wall.
"Come, come," she implored, drawing her furs over her shoulders.
"Yes, I am coming," he said, and stumbled obediently behind her out into the snow.
He paused at the hall door.
"You are not going home?" she asked, shocked at the idea.
"Yes, I shall go home," he responded.
There was something monotonous, almost mechanical, in his way of speaking, which prevented her pressing him to come in.
"Ah, how sweet it was," she murmured, seizing his hand and pressing it to her heart.
He made no reply, but turned from her and walked away into the darkness with uncertain steps.
She heard his voice once more, coming from the stables; then the tinkle of a sleigh-bell, and all was silent.
As old Minna opened the door to her mistress, she beheld a pair of eyes radiant with delight, and parted lips smiling blissfully.
"Now G.o.d be praised!" said she; "all is right again."
Felicitas glided past her in silence, and locked herself in her bedroom. It was too late to think any more of Paul"s Christmas parcel that night.
x.x.xI
Christmas Eve was drawing very near, but Hertha Prachwitz was still not quite ready with her presents. For her stepmother she had painted a hymnbook cover of punched leather, with mottoes and emblems; she had embroidered a table-centre for grandmamma, and crocheted an Irish lace collar for Elly. Now she was at work till late at night on a pocket-book, which was to be sent anonymously to Leo, and which, besides places for letters, contained a memorandum table and a frame for photographs.
This frame was designed specially to hold a picture of Felicitas von Kletzingk.
Hertha had not come any nearer solving the problem as to whether she was wicked or not, but one thing she knew for certain, that he loved her, and so she hoped his love might not be in vain.
She herself had quietly renounced all thought of him. Perhaps she would become a Catholic again, and go into a convent, or perhaps, as sick-nurse, succ.u.mb to the first epidemic. There were, indeed, numbers of opportunities of seeking the death of the superfluous.
Her intention of becoming a hospital-nurse Hertha had not been able to keep to herself. Her stepmother, unfortunately, encouraged the idea. At this time she wore black dresses with white turn-down collars and cuffs, after the style of English nurses, and in secret made the sign of the cross over herself and Elly.