She flushed scarlet, and bowed lower over her work. "Yes, _Herr_, once!" she said softly.

"What was it?"

She was silent, and dared not lift her eyes.

"Good heavens! why do you look so ashamed about it?"

"Because--I ... have it still."

"Oh, not really!" He smiled. A feeling of pleasure shot through him.

Without answering, she felt in the pocket of her dress, and laid before him on the table a little straw box plaited out of coloured blades. It was hardly bigger than a baby's fist.

He held it in his hand, and examined it all over attentively. Something rattled inside.

"May I open it?"

"You needn't ask, _Herr_!"

It was a ring of gla.s.s beads--blue, white, and yellow, such as a little girl, following the first instincts of vanity, threads for herself. He took it out, and tried to force it on his little finger, but it was far too narrow, and he couldn't get it over his nail.

"Did I give you the ring too?" he asked.

"No, _Herr_, it belonged to my dear mother. It cut into her flesh once, and that's why I used to wear it day and night till the thread broke.

Then she had been dead a long time, and as it was the only keepsake I had of her, I threaded the beads again, and have never parted with the ring, and I always have it on me."

"In my little box?"

She nodded, and her head drooped. "Why shouldn't I, _Herr_?" she said in a whisper, "it brings me luck."

He looked at her with a compa.s.sionate smile. "Luck? Brings _you_ luck?"

"I'll tell you how, _Herr_," she exclaimed triumphantly. "Every bead you count----"

But at that moment he leant back in his chair, and the ring slipped through his fingers on to the floor.

Regina started up and hurried round the table to pick it up, but could not find it.

"The earth seems to have swallowed it up," she said in alarm, and she dropped on to all fours close by Boleslav's side.

He saw the nape of her beautiful neck with its fringe of crisp, dark curls, gleaming near his knee. His heart began to beat, a cold shiver thrilled through his limbs. He stared down on her with a fixed smile.

"Here it is!" she exclaimed, and raised herself into a kneeling position to hand him the treasured bauble.

He lifted his hand. He felt as if some occult power had lifted it for him, and that it weighed hundreds of pounds. Then with a timid, caressing touch he laid it on her cheek.

She drew back trembling. A great light swam in her eyes, that rested on him in dreamy inquiry. His arm sank heavily to his side.

"Thank you," he murmured hoa.r.s.ely.

She went back to her place, and there was a profound stillness. It seemed to him that he had committed a crime, and that every moment of silence between them made it worse. He must force himself to speak.

"What was I asking you? Ah! to be sure. Who taught you to sew?"

She had unthreaded her needle, and was trying hard to pull the cotton through the eye again. But the small glittering shaft oscillated between her unsteady fingers like a reed shaken by the wind.

"I learnt at the parsonage, _Herr_," she replied. "Helene had a cla.s.s----" She paused, embarra.s.sed, for at the sound of the beloved name, which he heard for the first time from her lips--such lips--he winced as if from the lash of a whip. She took his excitement for anger, and added apologetically, "I mean the Pastor's daughter."

"Never mind," he said, controlling himself with difficulty. "Go to bed now."

That night Boleslav fought a severe battle with himself. He felt as if his ideal of exalted purity had been polluted since his eyes had rested with favour on this abandoned woman. And he himself was polluted too by that involuntary caress.

It was absolutely necessary to regain his peace of mind and purity. He must come to some distinct understanding with Helene without delay, in order that he might be strengthened in his struggle against his treacherous senses and benumbing doubt.

So urgent did it seem that his resolutions should at once be put into force, that he rose in the middle of the night, and by the glimmer of his night-light wrote to Helene a.s.suring her of his undying love and eternal devotion, and imploring her to make some sign to show that she stood by him in trouble as she had once done in happiness, so that he might know for certain it was worth while his continuing to wage for her sake the fight against such enormous odds. With every line he wrote, his anxiety lessened, and when he lay down in his bed again, he felt that, through bracing his energies for the task, he had relieved himself of a load of care that had long heavily oppressed him.

"Can you undertake, Regina," he asked the next evening, "to deliver this letter unseen to the _Fraulein_ at the parsonage?"

She regarded him for a second with wide eyes, then looking down, she murmured, "Yes, _Herr_."

"But supposing they attack you down in the village?"

"Pah! What do I care for _them_?" she exclaimed, shrugging her shoulders contemptuously, as she always did when the villagers were in question.

Soon afterwards he saw her glide by the window like a shadow and disappear in the gloaming.

Hours pa.s.sed. She did not return. He began to reproach himself for having engaged her in his amatory mission when her life was at stake.

At last, towards midnight, he heard the front door latch click.

She appeared on the threshold with chattering teeth, blue with cold, the letter still grasped in her cramped fingers.

He made her sit down by the stove, and gave her Spanish wine to drink--and gradually she found her voice.

"I have been lying all this time in the snow under the parsonage hedge," she said, "but there was no possibility of getting at her. Just now she put the light out in her bedroom, so I came home. But don't be vexed, _Herr_. Perhaps I shall have better luck to-morrow."

He wouldn't hear of her repeating the adventure, but when she came to him the following evening equipped for her walk, he did not forbid her to go.

This time she came back with glowing cheeks, panting for breath. Two peasants on their way home from the Black Eagle had seen her and given chase.

"But to-morrow, _Herr_, to-morrow, I shall succeed."

She was right. More breathless than the evening before, but radiant with delight, she came into the room, and stood at the door, stretching out two empty hands in triumph.

"Thank G.o.d," he thought, "that I shan't have to send her a fourth time on a fool's errand."

In joyous excitement she told him all about it. Sultan, the big dog in the kennel, knew her; and as a hostage she had taken him a bone, then he had permitted her to stand at the back door and look through the keyhole. She had seen Helene standing at the great store-cupboard. "I knew that Helene,--I mean the pastor's Fraulein,--went to the store-cupboard every night to put out coffee and oatmeal for the morning," she explained, "and sure enough I just timed her right, for there was her candle flickering in my face, and she standing within three steps of me----"