"I know that you are brave, my Eugénie, but I should be a coward myself before those crowds, if I knew that a stone from their midst might strike you too. I want all my courage to-day, and I should not have it if I saw you in peril and felt I could not protect you. I know why you wish to go with me. You think I shall be safe from that one arm while you are at my side. Do not deceive yourself, that is all over and past since yesterday evening. You share the hatred now with which he has persecuted me, and if it were not so"--here his voice lost its soft inflection and his brow grew dark--"I would not owe my safety to a feeling which is alike an offence to you and to me, and which would in itself be sufficient to call for the man's dismissal, if his conduct in other respects did not make it necessary."
She must have felt the justice of his words, for she drooped her head in silent resignation.
Arthur started.
"The clamour is breaking out again, I must go. We shall only see each other for a few brief minutes at a time to-day, and even they will be anxious minutes for you, my poor wife. You could hardly have come back at a worse time."
"Would you rather have held out against them without me?" she asked in a low voice.
His face brightened, and there came into it an expression of passionate tenderness.
"Without you? I have gone on so far like the soldier of a forlorn hope. I only found out yesterday how one can fight with a will when the prosperity of a lifetime and all one's future are dependent on the result. You brought back to me the desire for both, and now they may assail us on all sides as they like. I believe in success now that I have you at my side once more!"
The officials hushed their noisy debatings as Berkow and his wife entered, and the impression produced on all hands by their appearance was due to something more than mere respect for the master. All eyes were at once fixed upon him, as though they could read in his face what was to be hoped or feared; they all pressed round him, as round a centre where support was to be found, and every one breathed more freely when he came in, as if the danger were half conjured already. This movement, involuntary as it was, showed Eugénie sufficiently the position her husband had conquered for himself, and the way in which he stepped in among them proved too that he well knew how to maintain it. His face, which she had seen but a few seconds before heavily clouded over by care, bore, now that it had to meet all those anxious enquiring looks, no other expression than that of a calm gravity, and there was an assurance in his bearing which would have instilled confidence into the faintest heart.
"Well, gentlemen, things look rather hostile and threatening outside. We must hold ourselves prepared for a sort of siege, perhaps even for an attack; does it not appear so to you?"
"They want to have the prisoners set free," said the Director, with a glance at Schäffer, inviting his support.