Without answering, she ran out of the room.

He made a movement as if he were about to follow her; then set his teeth and sat down again. A dull resentment devoured him. He could not forgive her for depriving him of the illusion on which for weeks he had been building so many vague hopes.

Now there was nothing for it but to drink the cup of degradation to the dregs, no matter how bitter the bottom might taste.

In a little while Regina appeared again, in her outdoor things.

"You wish to go out to-night, then?" he asked harshly.

She kept her head half averted, so that he should not see she had red eyes.

"To-morrow is Christmas, _Herr_--the holy feast day; and the grocer says that on Christmas night he would rather not be disturbed."

Christmas! holy feast! How strange and like a fairy tale that sounded.

Then there was still rejoicing and festivity going on in the world!

People still joined hands and frolicked round glittering fir-tree!

"You wish to get your Christmas presents, I suppose, Regina?" he inquired, smiling bitterly.

"Oh no, _Herr_," she replied. "That has never been the custom here.

Besides, now I should take no pleasure in such things."

"Why not?"

She hesitated, and then said in some embarra.s.sment, "Let me go, _Herr_."

"I have a great deal to ask you yet, Regina."

"Please, not now, else----"

"Very well, go."

"Good-night, _Herr_."

"Good-night." Then he called her back. "Tell me first, what did that sob mean just now."

A ray of half-ashamed happiness shone in the eyes that were swollen from weeping.

"Can't you guess, _Herr_?"

He shook his head.

"I had been so anxious about you. I thought perhaps you weren't coming back, and then when you did----" She turned and fled through the door.

Her footsteps died away in the night....

The following morning Boleslav was awakened by a great rushing and roaring that had for some time mingled with his dreams. A terrific storm was raging. The topmost branches of the poplars lashed each other in fury. Huge white clouds were swept along the ground, but the air was clear. Another fall of snow seemed improbable. To-day he could not rest in the desolate, cold little house, and went out to wrestle with the elements.

"She will have a bad time of it," he thought, as the north wind hurled in his face a shower of fine icicles that p.r.i.c.ked like needles and almost took his breath away. In the wood it was more sheltered. There the tempest crashed and crunched in the tops of the trees, seeming to vent all its fury on them. He walked on, not knowing where he was going, and then found himself on the road to Bockeldorf.

"It looks as if I were running after her," he murmured, chiding himself; and he struck into the pathless thicket.

He thought how remarkable it was that this degraded being should creep so much into his thoughts. Of course it was because he had been thrown with her day after day, and depended upon her entirely for human society. Yet he was alarmed, for he realised now, perhaps more than he had ever done before, how he felt himself every day more drawn towards her, and how much there was in her that began to appear comprehensible, excusable, and even n.o.ble, that once had only seemed to testify to her innate coa.r.s.eness, and repelled him from her in disgust.

But without a doubt contact with her was doing him no good. She was drawing him down into the slough of her own worthless existence.

Something must be done. Above all, it was necessary to stand in less familiar relations with her, to repress her, and lower her again to her old position of humble and despised servant-girl. The festival of Christmas was a good opportunity of paying her off with a loan, the handsomeness of which would discharge his obligations to her for all time. With a stroke of the pen he would provide for her future, and thereby purchase the right to regard her as what she actually was--his humble dependant and menial. She should give him her company to-day for the last time. She had not yet finished her evidence, and as he had once broken the ice he might as well know everything. Of those two awful nights of guilt and shame, in which she had been a witness of bloodshed and arson, he would hear the worst.

"And then when she has confessed all," he said to himself, "she shall keep to her green-house, which is her proper place, even if she has to burn all the timber in the park to prevent herself from freezing."

It was not seemly that in this solitude he should a.s.sociate so much with her, and he made up his mind to put an end to the intimacy once for all.

A hare crossed his path and turned his thoughts into another channel.

He aimed and hit it. The little animal rotated three times, and then lay motionless on its nose.

"She will be pleased," he thought, as he slung his booty over his shoulder. Ah! there he was thinking of her again already.

The sky meanwhile had clouded. A sharp shower of p.r.i.c.kly white flakes cut through the trees; a wild hiss now mingled with the roar of the wind that made him shiver involuntarily in every limb. By aid of his compa.s.s he found the way home. When he entered the open fields the snow-storm was in full swing. He could scarcely stand against it. The air was dark with the falling ma.s.ses of snow. There was not a trace visible of the shrubs in the park only three hundred feet away.

"It's to be hoped she's got home," he thought, as he struggled on.

Freshly fallen snow lay thick on the Cats' Bridge; there were no footprints in it, but they might easily have been obliterated.

With a sinking heart, he ran to the house and called her by name, but got no answer. The hearth was unswept, the fire out, the beds unmade as he had left them.

She had been overtaken by the storm, that she feared more than she feared the Schrandeners. A torturing uneasiness took possession of him.

He rushed from one room to the other, lit the fire and extinguished it again, tried to eat, and then threw down his knife and fork impatiently. It struck him as ludicrous that he should be so anxious.

Had she not for six winters gone backwards and forwards in wind and rain and snow, and never yet met with an accident? Why should anything happen to her to-day? To kill time he sat down to his desk, and with numb fingers made out a cheque. The sum amounted to three figures.

Regina ought to be satisfied.

Darkness set in. The hand of the clock pointed to three, and yet it was already like night. He could contain himself indoors no longer. He would at least go as far as the Cats' Bridge and see if there was any sign of her. To prevent the wind pitching him over, he was obliged to hold on with all his might to the bal.u.s.trade. The rickety woodwork shook in all its joints. On the ice beneath him danced a maze of spiral patterns; lily-stems grew upwards and sank again in heaps of white dust, which in their turn were whirled away to make room for other fantastic forms. The Madonna's garden rose for a moment and then vanished; for a figure drew nearer and nearer out of the twilight, casting its shadow before it.

"Regina, thank G.o.d!"

He was on the point of rushing to meet her, when he was overcome with a sensation of shame that paralysed his limbs and drove the blood to his heart.

On this very spot where he now waited for her, she had yesterday waited for him; looking out into the dusk because she had not been able to rest for anxiety about him, just as to-day he could not rest for anxiety about her.

For a moment he felt a strong inclination to dive behind the bushes, so that she should not see him; but the next he was ashamed of being ashamed, and stepped forward to meet her on the Cats' Bridge.

"You have had a bad time of it, Regina," he called out; and tried to relieve her of the sack she carried on her back.

But she quickly dodged him, holding out her elbows in protest. She was m.u.f.fled to the eyes in shawls, and could not speak. They walked to the door in silence. On the threshold she turned and tore the wraps from her face.

"I have a favour to ask, _Herr_," she said breathlessly.

"Well, what is it?"

"Would you mind staying out another half-hour, or going into the kitchen, so that I can warm the room and tidy up a little?"