He had poured it all out hastily, without looking up. Ella's eyes were fixed gravely and searchingly upon his face.
"Hugo, that is an excuse," said she, decidedly; "you have received no news, at least, none so urgent. What has occurred? Why will you go?"
"You interrogate me like a criminal judge," said Hugo, jokingly, with an attempt to regain the old cheerful tone. "Be prudent, Ella! you have to deal with a confirmed sinner, who will indeed confess nothing."
"Yes; I see that something has happened to drive you away," said Ella, uneasily, "and for long I have known that something has come between us which estranges you from Reinhold and me more every day. Be candid, Hugo. What have you against us? Why will you forsake us now?"
She had gone closer to him, and laid her hand upon his arm beseechingly, but perfectly unembarrassed. Captain Almbach's countenance was intensely pale, as he looked silently on the ground; at last he slowly raised his eyes.
"Because I can bear it no longer," he broke out with sudden violence; "I have urged your reconciliation with Reinhold so long, and now that it has taken place, and I must look on at it daily, hourly--now only I feel how little talent I have for being a saint or for platonic friendship. I must go away if I do not wish to be ruined. My God, Ella, do not look at me as if an abyss were opened out before you! Have you really had no conception, then, of the state of mind I am in, and what these last weeks at your side have cost me?"
Ella had shrunk back at these last words, her pallor and the expression of deadly fear in her face gave an answer, even before she opened her lips to reply.
"No, Hugo, I had no conception of it," replied she, in a trembling voice. "When we first met, I felt myself obliged to repel a fleeting fancy. That it could ever be serious with you, I never deemed possible."
"Nor I either," said Hugo, glumly. "At the beginning, I too, believed I could laugh and scoff away this feeling--scoff it away like all others; and now it has become earnest, such bitter earnest, that I was on the high road to learn to hate my brother, to loathe the whole world, until the latter part of my time here became a hell--perhaps it will be better out on the sea, perhaps not either. But go I must, the sooner the better."
Something so wild, so passionate lay in those words, and Hugo's whole manner betrayed so plainly the difficulty with which he had suppressed his internal agony, that Ella found no courage for a harsh reply. She turned silently away. After a few moments Captain Almbach again came to her side.