He spoke calmly, even pleasantly; but every word was an icy rejection, an impatient shaking off of the irksome bond. Hugo was right; he lay already too firmly under the influence of his passion to listen to any other voice--it was too late. A cold, pitiless, "You must resign yourself," was the only answer to that touching prayer.
Ella drew herself up with a determination at other times quite foreign to her, and there was also a strange sound in her voice; there lay in it something of the pride of a wife, who, trampled upon and kept down for years, at last revolts when extremities are resorted to.
"To the separation, yes," replied she, firmly. "I am powerless against it. But not to your return, Reinhold. If you go now, go with her, notwithstanding my prayers, notwithstanding our child, so do it. But then, go for ever!"
"Will you make conditions?" roared Reinhold, passionately. "Have I not borne the yoke which your father's so-called kindness forced upon me for years, which embittered my childhood, destroyed my youth, and now, at the threshold of man's estate, compels me to conquer, only by means of endless struggles, what every one requires as his natural right, free decision for himself? You all have kept me apart from everything that by others is called freedom and happiness; have bound me to a hated sphere in life with all possible fetters, and now think yourselves sure of your property. But at last the hour has come for me when it begins to dawn, and if it penetrates like lightning to my soul, and shows in flaming clearness the goal, and the reward at the goal, then one awakes out of the dream of long years, and finds oneself--in chains."
It was an outbreak of the wildest passion, most burning hatred, which welled forth without restraint, without asking if it were poured over the guilty or the innocent. That is the horrible fiendishness of passion, that it turns its hatred against everything which it encounters, even if this hatred meet the nearest, most sacred--if it even meet bonds voluntarily made.
A long pause, still as death, followed. Reinhold, overpowered by excitement, had thrown himself on a seat and covered his eyes with his hands. Ella still stood on the same spot as before; she did not speak or move; even the tremor which, during the conversation, had so often passed through her, had ceased. Thus passed a few moments, until at last she approached her husband slowly.
"You will leave me the child, though?" said she, with quivering lips. "To you it would only be a burden in your new life, and I have nothing else in the world."
Reinhold looked up, and then sprang suddenly from his seat. It was not the words which moved him so strangely, not the deadly, fixed calm of her face; it was the look which was so unexpectedly and astoundingly unveiled before him as before his brother. For the first time he saw in his wife's face "the beautiful fairy-tale blue eyes" which he had so often admired in his boy, without ever asking whence they came; and these eyes, large and full, were now directed towards him. No tear stood in them, neither any more beseeching; but an expression for which he never gave Ella credit, an expression before which his eyes sank to the ground.
"Ella," said he, uncertainly, "if I was too furious--What is it, Ella?"
He tried to take her hand; she drew it back.