Still she kept her place without stirring, and looked as if she would not and could not believe that this coarse, common-looking individual was one and the same with the ideal being upon whom her youthful affections had been set.
"No explanation is needed," said she, with a tranquillity incomprehensible to herself. "I only desire you to answer me a few questions. Are you really the husband of the woman who received us just now; the father of the children playing in the garden down there?"
"Highly rational and practical!" growled the doctor approvingly outside. "No sign of convulsions! Matters are progressing quite well."
Leonie's question seemed utterly to confound Herr Willmann. "Do not condemn me, Leonie!" he implored stammeringly. "The force of circumstances--an unfortunate chain of peculiar----"
"Do not address me in the familiar tone of long ago, Herr Willmann," said Leonie, cutting him short in the midst of his sentence. "How long have you been married?"
Willmann hesitated. He would have gladly given as recent a date as possible to his admission into the order of Benedict; but there were his children making their presence noisily manifest out of doors, his eldest, a boy of ten, being likewise in the game of romps. "Eleven years," he finally said in a low voice.
"And twelve years ago you wrote me that you wanted to go as missionary into the interior of Africa, and from that time your letters ceased. Immediately afterwards you must have returned to Germany--without letting me know?"
"It was done only for thy--for your sake, Leonie," Engelbert assured her, with an attempt to give a tender intonation to his voice. "We were both poor, I had no prospects, years might elapse ere I should be in a situation to offer you my hand. Should I allow you to waste your youth, mourning over me, and perhaps forfeiting a different and a happier fate? Never! And since I knew your magnanimity, knew that you would never have broken your word to me, with a bleeding heart I did what I had to--I restored your freedom to you through my supposed death----"
"Give yourself no trouble. I am not to be deceived again," replied she, contemptuously. "Pray remember, Herr Willmann, that all is at an end between us, and we have nothing more to say. I only ask one thing of you: if accidentally our paths should ever cross again, pass me as a stranger and never show by any sign that we were ever friends."
Engelbert secretly breathed more freely at this declaration, for he had not hoped to be let off so easily, and now prepared to depart in a very dignified manner. "You condemn me--well, I must bear it!" said he softly, and in an aggrieved tone. "Farewell, Leonie, appearances are against me, but for all that you have been my first and only love!"