"Oh, that is cool and kind!" Henriette said, with a sigh. "But do you remember how Flora used to thrust your hand away from my aching head? She was terribly jealous."
A half-suppressed laugh of contempt came from the window. Henriette did not hear it: she was deaf to the outside world.
"I cannot sleep, for distress at what must come!" she moaned, clasping Kitty's hand, locked in her own, passionately against her poor breast. "You will avoid us all and be a miserable man, never even uttering our names. Ah, Bruck, what can satisfy her boundless vanity, which she calls ambition! She wants to sever the bond between you, cost what it may."
Involuntarily, Kitty moved her hand as if to lay it upon the sick girl's lips. Henriette screamed. "Not on my mouth, like that terrible boy in the forest!" she gasped, turning away.
At this moment Flora stood by the bed and thrust aside her young sister; her face, her whole attitude, expressed a sudden determination. "Let her speak out!" she said, authoritatively.
"Yes, let me speak out!" Henriette repeated, in a voice hoarse from exhaustion, but in the tone of a child content at being indulged. "Who should tell you, Bruck, except myself,—myself? Who else should pray you to be upon your guard? Keep your eyes open! She will fly from you like the dove from the tree, white coquette that she is; she wishes to be free——"
"In all her delirium she tells one truth," Flora interrupted, resolutely advancing a step towards the doctor. "She is right: I cannot be to you what I promised. Let me be free, Bruck!" she added, imploringly, raising her clasped hands. For the first time Kitty heard how indescribably sweet her voice could be.
The decisive words were spoken for which she had planned and plotted for months. Kitty had supposed that their first utterance would annihilate the betrayed lover; but the lightning produced no visible effect; the man's unshaken composure was as inexplicable to Kitty as if one apparently struck by a murderous bullet should walk unharmed out of the smoke of the explosion. Grave and silent, he looked down at the imploring figure; but he was pale, pale as death. He withheld his hand which she tried to grasp. "This is not the place for such an explanation——"
"But it is the moment. Other lips have spoken what has hovered upon my own for months, refusing to be clothed in words——"
"Because it is a notorious breach of faith!"