A shot was heard in the Przykop. Mrs. Tiralla gave a shrill scream.
"A gamekeeper is shooting," said Rosa.
"They surely can't have hit him? Oh, if he were in the Przykop and they had wounded him? But that"--Mrs. Tiralla gave an excited laugh--"would not be the worst. If only he comes back, if only he comes back! Do you think he could go away without saying good-bye?" she asked her daughter eagerly, casting an imploring glance at her. If only the girl would say, "He'll come back, mother, don't grieve, he'll come back to you." If only Rosa with her innocent lips would beseech the Almighty to give him back to her.
"Pray, my child," stammered Mrs. Tiralla, as she pressed her daughter's folded hands between her own. "Pray. Let us pray together."
A convulsive movement passed over Rosa's pure face. It looked as though she were going to thrust her mother away. But the struggle only lasted a moment. Fixing her eyes on a crucifix that she had hung over her bed, she said with shining eyes, "What shall I say?" just as she had spoken as a child, when her mother, tortured and full of hate, had knelt in the evenings at her bedside and wakened her with her tears and sighs.
"Pray, pray."
But Rosa's voice had lost its childish cadence; the clear, silvery ring had gone, and there was something austere and coolly calm in it now. "What do you wish me to say?"
"Oh, you know," groaned her mother. "Pray for him--oh, my fear, my fear. Pray that he may return to me. Child, my child, pray for me."
Freeing herself from her mother's clinging hands Rosa began to repeat the Salve Regina. "Hail, Queen, Mother of mercy. Thou our life, our sweetness, our hope, hail!" Her voice gradually rose and lost more and more of its cool austerity, as though she were intoxicating herself with the sweet beauty of the words, until it became warm and soft and melting as she said, "To Thee we call, to Thee we sigh, as we grieve and weep in this vale of tears." And then passing from the Salve to another prayer, she raised her voice in fervent supplication until it almost became a cry, "Be gracious to him! Spare him! Deliver him from all evil, from all sin!"
"Be gracious to him--spare him--deliver him!" repeated her mother mechanically. She did not know what she was praying, she did not understand that the words her daughter had been repeating were from the litany for a departing soul.