Sidonia pushed some branches apart. The player looked up. Their eyes met. Then she forgot to be astonished. She thought she had known it all along. He had come to save her. True friend!
"I knew it was you," she said. She laughed at him through the green palm-stems, her eyes sparkled. How could she ever have thought Geiger-Hans would fail her? She had need of him, and of course he had come!
But Geiger-Hans did not smile back. His face—so dark under powdered hair, so odd over the mulberry uniform, bechained and besilvered, of Jerome's Court Orchestra—was very grave.
"Little Madam Sidonia," he said, "what are you doing here?" He spoke sadly; and under his unconscious fingers his violin gave a sad accompaniment to the words.
Sidonia looked at him with her innocent gaze. She was hurt that he should find fault with her—the Geiger-Onkel who hitherto had always thought all she did perfect! Yet she was pleased that he should dub her "madam" instead of the whilom "mamzell."
"Do you know what sort of a place this is?" pursued the fiddler, with ever-increasing severity. "Do you know with what people you are surrounded? Have you not heard the common saying, that if it be doubtful whether an honest woman—save the unhappy Queen—ever crossed these palace doors, to a certainty no honest woman ever went forth from them? Why are you not with your husband?—with your husband," he repeated sharply.
Sidonia, who had hung her head, ashamed—for in truth she felt the evil about her in every fibre—reared it on the last words.
"Geiger-Onkel," she cried, "I have no husband, and you know it. That is past and done with." Then her heart began to beat very fast and the smarting tears gathered in her eyes. "From what motives I was married, I know not; but that it was all a cheat, I do know. He does not want me. He never cared for me. First it was pity, perhaps, I think; now it is pride with him. On such terms I will be no man's wife. I will have none of it—rather death!"
"Oh, death!" said the fiddler, and struck his strings, "death is the least of evils. Nay, the release of a clean, proud soul ... that is joy. The worst end of life is not death. Beware, little madam!" He had another change of tone: never had Sidonia been rated with such sternness. "Why, what a child you are! Yet none so childish but that you know full well this is no child's mischief, but woman's danger! With what anxiety am I here to save you from yourself; at what trouble! ... Only that the rats are flying already from the falling house; only that I happened to meet the second violin of Jerome's orchestra, an acquaintance of old—a musical rat in full scuttle!—I might still be racking my brains for means to come near you! Here am I this hour, wearing the livery of the Upstart, not knowing if I shall be given the necessary minute for speech. The prisons are stuffed full to-night, and Jerome always was afraid of me. Let but his eye, or that of his spies, turn this way and recognize me, and it is to the lock-up with Geiger-Hans! Oh, then, what of Madam Sidonia? Home to your husband! Home, I say! You know where to find him. You toss your head at me? It was through pride the angel fell—and he was Star of the Morning!"
"I don't know what you mean," said Sidonia.