"It is perhaps the only one in which you do not reject me," interrupted Reinhold. "May I not, in the hour when we both tremble for our child's life, tell the mother what she has become to me? Even then when I first trod Italy's shore, there lay upon me something like a suspicion of what I had lost. I could not rejoice over the newly-won freedom the artist's career gained at last; and the richer and more brilliant my life became externally, the deeper grew that longing for a home which yet I had never possessed. You, to be sure, do not know the dull pain which will not be still even in the midst of the whirl of passion, in the noise of triumph, in the proudest success of one's creations, which becomes torture in solitude, from which one must fly, even if only by means of intoxication, by the wildest excitement. I believed that it was only the longing for my child; then I saw the child again--saw you--and I knew what this longing craved for; then began the atonement for everything of which I had been guilty towards you."
He spoke quietly, without reproach or bitterness, and the words seemed therefore to act all the more powerfully on Ella; she had risen as if she would flee from his tone and gaze, and yet could not.
"Spare me, Reinhold!" begged she almost imploringly. "I can feel and think of nothing now but my child's danger. When I have the boy safe in my arms, then--"
"Well, then?--" asked he in breathless eagerness.
"I shall perhaps not have the courage any longer to pain his father," added Ella, while a flood of tears rushed from her eyes.
Reinhold did not say another word; but he held her hand firmly in his own as if he would never loosen it again. At the same moment, the carriage appeared on the top of the hill, and the driver stopped to give himself and the tired animals a little rest.
Almost simultaneously, the two peasants who had been visible before on the road, arrived from the other side. They stared curiously at the beautiful pale lady and strange, distinguished-looking gentleman who stepped towards them and asked where they came from. They named a place which lay at the exit of the valley, some miles distant.
"Have you seen no carriage?" enquired Reinhold.
"Certainly, Signor. A travelling carriage like yours; but they had only two horses, you have four."
"Did you see the occupants?" interposed Ella, in a trembling voice. "We seek a lady with a child."