"Out with it,—no preliminaries!"
Fräulein Milch drew herself up haughtily and said,—
"If you are in that humor, I can go away as I came."
"Excuse me, what then do you want?" he asked gently.
"I had a suggestion for you."
Sonnenkamp composed himself to listen patiently, and nodded to her to go on. She now said that she could not rest, she did not know whether the Major had suggested it. Sonnenkamp broke off impatiently a blossoming twig, and Fräulein Milch continued,—she thought that the Herr Captain Dournay might perhaps know where Roland was; they ought to telegraph to him.
Sonnenkamp thanked the old dame with a very obliging smile, and said, exercising great self-command, that he would wake up the Major, and send him into the garden; but Fräulein Milch begged that he might be allowed to take his sleep quietly. She turned back to her house, and Sonnenkamp walked on through the park.
The roses had bloomed out during the night, and from hundreds of stems and bushes sent their fragrance to their owner, but he was not refreshed by it. Here is the park, here are the trees, here is the house, all this can be acquired, can be won. But one thing cannot be won: a life, a child's life, a child's heart, a union of soul with soul, which can never be sundered, and can never come to an end.
And again came to him that cutting sentence,—You have killed the noblest impulses in your fellow-men, the feeling of father, and mother, and child. Now it is you who suffer!
Why does the word of that opponent in the New World hover around him to-day, today, as it did yesterday? Is that terrible man, perchance, on board that boat which is now steaming up the stream in the first morning light?