Hertha scarcely comprehended, but one thing was clear, and flamed like a torch of certainty through all this night of riddles: "They had been in love ... they loved each other still ... they would always love each other."

After this, she was indifferent to what she and Meta talked about. A yellow mist lay before her eyes, and Meta's voice sounded as if it came from a long way off, and fell on her ear without meaning. She answered, not knowing what she answered.

"How shall I get away?" she kept asking herself, and thought with horror of the time, that for decency's sake she must still stay. But her deliverance was nearer than she expected, although the manner in which it was effected filled her with new terror.

Meta, in the middle of her chatter, turned suddenly pale, gasped for breath, and then tumbled off her chair in a dead faint. Hertha rushed to her with a cry of alarm, seized the water-jug, and poured a stream of water on her face. Meta made a low gurgling sound, breathed heavily through her nose, and then came to herself again.

"Lord have mercy!" cried Hertha, kissing the wet forehead of the reviving girl. "I will go and tell them to send for the doctor at once."

But her friend stopped her. "No, don't go," she said, calmly raising herself. "You can't understand, but it must happen."

"To be married is like being in another world," thought Hertha, startled, "where fainting dead away is quite an everyday event."

Then she reflected how gladly she would have fainted a hundred times a day for the sake of one who despised and spurned her.

"I will go home at once; you ought to rest," she murmured, controlling her excitement with difficulty, and her friend did not press her to stay.

An hour later, when she appeared in the living-room at Halewitz, grandmamma exclaimed, horrified--

"What is the matter with you, child? You are as pale as death."

"Oh, it's nothing, grandmamma," she replied, and tried to laugh. "I have been such a goose as to powder myself."

XXIV

Evening came, and Hertha roamed about as if she were walking in her sleep. When the bell sounded for supper, she felt she would rather creep away and hide somewhere in the wainscot than face him. But in her perplexed and limp condition she made no resistance when Elly came to drag her to the table.

He was in his place, and gave her a friendly nod as usual, but to-day his smile seemed to her expressionless and stony. How different he looked to her eyes from what he had ever looked before!

If fire had shot out of his mouth, she would have hardly been surprised. He seemed now to be really the demoniac person that she had once pictured in her foolish fancies, though what had then filled her with longing dreams now inspired her with dread and horror. From time to time she gave him a shy glance.

"How can any one sit there quietly," thought she, "concealing such awful secrets in his breast?"

He had become very silent lately. Grandmamma gave out that he was working himself to death. The grim line between his brows seemed to grow deeper day by day.

Hertha believed now that she knew the cause of that line. She almost wished it might kill him, for she hated him, and the sin that made him suffer was abhorrent to her.

She abhorred herself too, for the condition of hate and jealousy into which she had worked herself up seemed to her undignified and vulgar.

"If only I knew what I ought to do," she thought, "so that I needn't be ashamed. I must pray," she concluded finally, "and then perhaps I shall find out the right path to take."

Willingly would she have run out there and then into the dark garden to be alone with G.o.d, but the rain still poured down in torrents.

At bed-time Elly vexed her with absurd questions about what one should do if a lover came at midnight to run away with one. The childish chatter of her bosom friend filled her with mistrust of herself.

"Perhaps I am as silly as she is," she mused, and because she didn't want to think of foolish things, she preferred not to think at all, and turned on her side and fell asleep.

In the middle of the night she woke up. The rain seemed to have left off, but a gale had risen, which rattled the shutters, and whistled and moaned through the keyholes. "Didn't I intend to pray and meditate?"

Hertha asked, as she settled herself snugly amongst the pillows. She felt joyously excited at having cheated sleep, for even her troubles could not do more than increase and deepen in her the feeling of infinite zest in mere existence.

She folded her hands, but could not compose herself to pray, for her soul was whirled and tossed on the wings of sublime ideas and lofty resolves. Gradually the chaos cleared, and out of it rose in triumphant purity one solitary resolution.

She would renounce. Renounce all dreams of happiness, all hopes.

Renounce all the empty little pleasures with which thoughtlessly she had been wont to deck her youth; renounce all the glittering tinsel of worldliness. Calm and n.o.ble, she would sacrifice herself to her neighbours' needs, death at her heart and a smile on her lips. Yes, so it should be. And shedding tears of sweet satisfaction, she floated into the realms of sleep once more.

In the morning, when she opened her eyes, sunshine greeted them. What had pa.s.sed in the night seemed to her now as a G.o.d-sent dream, a miracle worked by Heaven to save her soul from despair.

She kissed Elly with redoubled vigour, and exhausted herself in performing little services for others, for this harmonised best with her present angelic mood.

Only during breakfast, as she met Leo's eyes, was she conscious of the bitterness which she thought she had conquered for ever, waking in her again.

This recurrence made her anxious and uneasy. "My resolution is too weak," she thought, "to be able to withstand the temptations of the world; I must strengthen and sanctify it by a solemn vow, so that it will be a positive sin if I fail again."

Nevertheless, though she racked her brains, she could devise no method holy and awful enough to endow her with sufficient power of resistance.

At last, in a flash, what she was seeking came to her. She would row over to the Isle of Friendship, the home of all gloomy mysteries. There before the blood-sprinkled sacrificial stone she would kneel in prayer, and at the same time open a vein of her arm and utter a vow over the flowing b.l.o.o.d.y so that her yearning and hate might be silenced for ever.

The hours went by in sacred expectation. Soon after the vesper coffee, she slipped out with the key of the bathing-house in her pocket The wind swept across the wide meadow flats, and above her the sun, blood-red, was half hidden by a ragged fringe of stormy clouds. The gra.s.sy path had been saturated by the rain, and more than once her feet stuck fast in the boggy ground, which oozed and gurgled as she set them free. But, without looking back, she hurried on. Like a phantasmagoria the rich half-submerged pastures melted behind her. The tall sheaves bent before the wind; all the flowers which in the past summer days had made so fair a border to the meadow path, lay on the ground broken and smirched in a liquid _melee_.

As she came in sight of the shining surface of the stream stretching into the distance, she started, for to-day it was swollen to twice its usual breadth, and the current much swifter. The heavy rains of the last few days were responsible. The boats had been drawn up almost on to the top of the d.y.k.e, and water was hissing from the foot of the reeds along which one could generally walk with tolerably dry feet. It was uncanny to hear the dry dark heads of the bulrushes, whipped by wind and wet, sighing and rattling as they struck against each other.

For a moment she had almost a mind to retire from the foolhardy enterprise. But the next her old daring defiance took possession of her anew.

"If I am in earnest about my vow," she said to herself, "no bodily danger should stand in my way."

She loosened the chain of the boat, which slid down the declivity of the d.y.k.e nearly of its own accord. In the bathing-house she found the right oars, and put off into the stream.

Now a desperate struggle began, even before she had got clear of the reeds; the current caught the little craft and drove it into the thickest part of the sedge, so that the keel was set as fast on unbroken rushes as on a sandbank. Here it was impossible to strike out with the oars, and only by pushing herself off with her hands from one clump of bulrushes to another did she at length get into open water.

The boat was instantly caught by a couple of eddies and spun round in a circle. Clenching her teeth, Hertha steered herself with the handle of the oar. Her chest expanded, the blood hammered in her veins, a feverish vapour swam before her eyes. With every stroke of the oars she felt a portion of her life's strength flow out. But what did it matter?

The boat was being mastered; it was making progress.

And by degrees the tumult in her blood subsided; the muscles, instead of slackening, became hard as steel. She dared look round and measure the distance she had come. The Isle of Friendship greeted her with its ma.s.ses of golden-brown foliage, from which whirled swarms of falling leaves. A cry of hopeful longing escaped her breast; but she must look out, or another eddy would catch the boat. Ten minutes might have pa.s.sed, when two withered leaves fluttered over her head and sank like tired birds of pa.s.sage swimming on to the water.

She gave a deep sigh of satisfaction, for she knew that these leaves were envoys that the Isle of Friendship had sent to meet her. And now when she looked round she found that she was within the shadow of its willows.

One more bitter fight with the current, and with a last far-reaching stroke of the oars she shot into the little bay, whose sandy landing-place was quite under water, so that the boat was able to drift right in amongst the alder roots. With a rapid movement she slung the chain round the strongest of the stumps, fastened it firmly, and swung herself, by clinging to an overhanging branch, on to the steep slippery bank.

For a moment she crouched down on the drenched gra.s.s to recover breath, and looked at her blistered palms, which were bleeding. She wiped the blood away with her tongue, and laughed. Then she threw a frightened glance into the thicket where ruddy sunlight lay on the yellow leaves.

The brook which ran down to the river tossed dirty grey rainwater over the slimy stones, between which were heaped stacks of dead damp leaves.

The tongues of fern growing along the edge of the water were nipped and shrivelled up, and they looked as they stood there like little wrinkled old women in their blurred brown rags. Not far off were a greasy company of toadstools spreading their smooth copula-shaped heads, delicately fluted underneath. They shone as if they had been rolling in b.u.t.ter.

In disgust at these rotting excrescences of damp weather, Hertha strode over them and struck into the thick of the th.o.r.n.y shrubs, which sorely thwarted her progress. Everywhere brambles, hung with raindrops like chains of pearls, switched her in the face, and her footmarks on the swampy moss, into which she sank, became glittering pools as she walked on.

It was a path along which the enchanted princesses of fairy tale might have wandered; but she was not in the least afraid, and when she saw a cl.u.s.ter of blue-black s...o...b..rries glistening at her feet, she stooped and gathered them carefully in the palm of her hand.

At last the clearing lay before her, bathed in the purple rays of the sinking sun. She paused, filled with reverent awe, and looked round her.