"Hartmut!"
"Father knows it. He allowed me this meeting, and then----"
"Then he will grasp you again, and you will be lost to me forever, is it not so?"
Hartmut did not answer; he folded his mother in his arms, and a wild, passionate sob, which had in it as much of anger as pain, escaped his breast.
It had now grown quite dark; the night had commenced; a cold, gloomy autumn night, without moon or star shining, but over there upon the marsh where lately the veils of mist floated, something now shot up with a bluish light, glimmering dimly in the fog, but growing brighter and clearer like a flame; now appearing, now disappearing, and with it a second and a third. The will-o'-the-wisp had commenced its ghostly, uncanny play.
"You weep," cried Zalika, pressing her son closely to her; "but I have seen it coming long ago, and if your Eschenhagen had not betrayed us, the day you had to return to your father would have brought your forced choice between separation or--decision."
"What decision? What do you mean?" asked Hartmut, perplexed.
Zalika bent over him, and, although they were alone, her voice sank to a whisper.
"Will you bow feebly and defenselessly to a tyranny which tears asunder the sacred bond between mother and child, and which stamps under foot our rights as well as our love? If you can do that, you are not my son; you have inherited nothing of the blood that flows in my veins. He sent you to bid me farewell, and you accept it patiently as a last favor. Have you really come to take leave of me, perhaps for years? Actually, have you?"
"I have to," interrupted the youth despairingly. "You know father and his iron will. Is there any possibility of anything else?"