"He thought, perhaps, that the fresh air, the quiet—" began Bertha, and she at once perceived that she was not saying anything very sensible.
Nevertheless Anna answered her quite affably.
"Oh, no, neither rest nor climate could do him any good, but he thought that it would be better for both of us in every way. He was right, too—what should we have been able to do if we had remained in the city?"
Bertha felt that Anna was not telling her the whole story and she would have liked to beg her not to hesitate, but to open her whole heart to her. She knew, however, that she was not clever enough to express such a request in the right words. Then, as though Frau Rupius had guessed that Bertha was anxious to learn more, she quickly changed the subject of their conversation. She asked Bertha about her brother-in-law, the musical talent of her pupils, and her method of teaching; then she took up the novel again and left Bertha to herself.
Once she looked up from the book and said:
"You haven't brought anything with you to read, then?"
"Oh, yes," answered Bertha.
She suddenly remembered that she had bought a newspaper; she took it up and turned over the pages assiduously. The train drew near to Vienna. Frau Rupius closed her book and put it in the travelling-bag. She looked at Bertha with a certain tenderness, as at a child who must soon be sent away alone to meet an uncertain destiny.
"Another quarter of an hour," she remarked; "and we shall be—well, I very nearly said, home."
Before them lay the town. On the far side of the river chimneys towered up aloft, rows of tall yellow painted houses stretched away into the distance, and steeples ascended skywards. Everything lay basking in the gentle sunlight of May.