He made a stiff bow, and pulled at his moustache.

I led them through the lighted halls to the dining-room.

She looked neither to the right nor the left. All the splendour brought into being for her sake shone unnoticed. Two or three times she reeled on my arm, and at each crisis I looked anxiously about to see if the boy was with us.

Praised be the Lord! He was still there!

In the dining-room the tea kettle was boiling, by my sister's orders before she left.

"Suppose you send for her?" flashed through my mind. "One carriage hurried off to Krakowitz, another to Gorowen--and she might be here inside of an hour."

But I, poor old blade, was ashamed to admit my helplessness. Besides, there was Lothar for me to cling to in my desperation.

Thank G.o.d, Lothar was still with us.

"Well, be seated, children." I a.s.sumed the air of being wonderfully at ease.

I can still see the whole scene. The snowy white tablecloth, the Meissen china, the old silver sugar bowl, the hanging lamp of copper overhead and in its hard light, to my right, Iolanthe, pale, stiff, with half-closed eyes, like a somnambulist; to my left, Lothar with his bushy hair and firm brown cheeks and the sombre fold between his brows, his eyes fixed on the tablecloth.

Seeing that evidently the boy felt _de trop_ and would much rather have run away, I laid my hands affectionately on his shoulders and thanked him from the bottom of my heart for the torture he was imposing upon himself.

"Take a good look at him, Iolanthe," I said. "We three shall be sitting here like this many a time again, enjoying each other's company."

She nodded very slowly and closed her eyes altogether.

Poor thing! Poor thing! And the dread almost took my breath away.

"Be jolly, children," I said. "Lothar, tell us something funny--out of your own life. Come on now. Have you anything to smoke? No? Wait a moment, I'll get you something."

And in my anguish I made for the cigar cabinet in the next room, as though a good smoke would bring everything to a happy ending.

And then, gentlemen, when I came back with the box under my arm, I saw something through the open door that stopped the blood in my veins.

Only once in my life have I experienced a similar shock. That was one evening when I was still a young cuira.s.sier and I came home from a jolly party to find a telegram for me with the pleasant message, "Father just died."

But now as to what it was that I saw, gentlemen.

The two young people were sitting still and stiff on their chairs, as before, but they had, so to speak, dipped their eyes into each other's, and there was a wild, despairing, insane glow in them such as I had never thought could shine out of human eyes. It was like two flames darting sparks into each other.

So there I was. Not yet my wife, and already my friend, my son, my favourite, betraying me with her.

Adultery in the house even before the marriage had really been consummated.

In that look my whole future--an existence of suspicion, and dread and gloom and ridicule, full of grey days and sleepless nights--lay unrolled before me like a map.

What was I to do, gentlemen?

My impulse was to take her by the hand and say to him, "She's yours, my boy. I have no longer any right over her."

But please put yourselves in my position. A look is something intangible and undemonstrable. It may be denied with a smile. And, after all, might I not have been mistaken?

And while I revolved this in my mind, the two pairs of eyes continued to cling to each other in complete oblivion of everything about them.

When I walked into the room, there was not even a twitch of an eyelid.

They even turned toward me as if in surprise and indignation and as if to ask:

"Why does this old man, this stranger, intrude upon us?"

I felt inclined to roar out like a wounded beast. However, I collected myself and offered the cigars. But I felt I had to put an end to the business quickly. All kinds of red suns were beginning to dance in front of my eyes.

So I said, "Go home, my boy, it's time."

He rose heavily, gave me an icy handshake, and made his lieutenant's bow to her with joined heels, and turned towards the door.

Then I heard a cry--a cry that pierced me to the quick.

And what did I see?

My wife, my young wife, lying at his feet, holding on to his coat with both hands, and crying, "You must not die! You must not die!"

Well, gentlemen, the catastrophe at last!

For a moment I stood like a man hit over the head. Then I caught Lothar by the collar.

"Stop, my boy," I said, "that's enough. I won't have any tricks played on me."

Still holding his collar I led him gently back to his seat, closed the doors, and lifted my wife, who was lying on the floor weeping convulsively, to a couch.

But she caught my hands and started to kiss them, whimpering, "Don't let him go! He wants to kill himself--he wants to kill himself!"

"And why do you want to kill yourself, my boy?" said I. "If you had prior rights to mine, why did you not a.s.sert them? Why did you deceive your best friend?"

He pressed his hands to his forehead and remained silent.

Then I fell into a rage and said, "Say something, or I'll knock you down like a mad dog!"

"Do it," he said, stretching out his arms. "I have deserved nothing better."

"Deserved or not--now you must tell me what all this means."

Well, gentlemen, then I learned the whole pretty story from the two of them together, to the accompaniment of self-reproaches, tears and bended knees.

Years before they had met in the woods and fell in love for ever after--hopelessly and silently, as behooved the off spring of two feuding families--Montagues and Capulets.

"Did you confess your love to each other?"

No, but they had kissed each other.

"And then?"