"Stop! If you leave me alone now, Bertha…." said Klingemann, now in a suppliant tone.
Bertha had recovered her senses again.
"Don't call me Bertha!" she said, vehemently. "Who gave you the right to do so? I have no wish to say anything further to you … and here, of all places!" she added, with a downward glance, which, as it were, besought the pardon of the dead.
Meanwhile Fritz had come back. Klingemann seemed very disappointed.
"My dear lady," he said, following Bertha, who, holding Fritz by the hand, was slowly walking away: "I recognize my mistake. I should have begun differently and not said that which seems now to have frightened you, until I had come to the end of a well-turned speech."
Bertha did not look at him, but said, as though she were speaking to herself:
"I would not have considered it possible; I thought you were a gentleman…."
They were at the cemetery gate. Klingemann looked back again, and in his glance there was something of regret at not having been able to play out his scene at the graveside to a finish. Hat in hand, and twisting the ribbon, by which it was fastened, round his finger, and still keeping by Bertha's side, he went on to say:
"All I can do now is to repeat that I love you, that you pursue me in my dreams—in a word, you must be mine!"
Bertha came to a standstill again, as if she were terrified.