She bit her lip. "Your definition is harsh and not correct; the bond between us was not indissoluble, and I know that no other image has thrust yours from my heart. Do not smile so contemptuously, Bruck! By heaven, I love no other man!" she exclaimed, passionately. "But I will accept all reproach," she added, more calmly, "sooner than that we should both be miserable."
"Leave my happiness or misery out of the question. You cannot understand the meaning I attach to those words, but you must admit that they are not to be weighed in the balance when a man's honour and self-respect are at stake. And now let me entreat you, for your sick sister's sake, to be silent for the present." He turned away and walked to the nearest window.
She followed him. "Henriette does not hear," she said. The sick girl had fallen back exhausted among her pillows, and was whispering to herself incessantly, like a child telling itself some story; it was true that she did not hear. "You have said nothing decisive," Flora continued, in a tone of melancholy depression. "The final word must be spoken. Why postpone what one quick resolve will accomplish?" And as she spoke she turned and twisted the betrothal ring upon her hand.
Doctor Bruck looked down upon her over his shoulder. Kitty could not but be struck, as they stood thus, with his youthful air, which even his manly strength and vigour could not diminish. Beneath his moustache the lips showed a delicate, almost feminine outline, and there was something boyish in the moulding of the brow about the temples, in the graceful, easy carriage of the head, and in the quick, melting fire of the eyes. Now, however, his glance rested coldly upon the beautiful woman appealing to him.
"For what do you propose to exchange a life by my side?" he asked, so suddenly, so sharply, that she started involuntarily.
"Do you need to ask, Bruck?" she exclaimed, stroking the curls from her forehead and taking a long breath, as if freed from an intolerable burden. "Can you not see how my whole soul is thirsting to embrace an author's profession? And could I ever succeed there as my gifts, my special endowments, so imperatively demand that I should, if I took upon myself the duties of a wife? Never! never!"
"Strange that this inextinguishable thirst should assail you for the first time within the last few months, after you——"
"After I have lived without this fame twenty-nine years," she completed his sentence with a burning blush. "Account for that as you please; call it a result of the feminine nature, which gropes and errs until it finds the right path——"
"Are you so sure that it is the right path?"
"As sure as that the needle seeks the pole."