“He had no thought but of me, Herr Doctor, and I have none but of him.—I see you understand,” she finished in a tone of involuntary sympathy. “You also have loved?”
“Ja, gnädige Frau,” he replied with a grave and enigmatic smile. “I also.”
Her eyes went past him to the mantelpiece, rested with a curiously fixed expression on the clock. Suddenly, as though moved by an uncontrollable impulse, she jumped up, took the clock from the mantelpiece and thrust it into the doctor’s hands.
“Please accept this!” she said appealingly.
The doctor fixed his grave eyes upon her.
“Why?” he asked.
She stammered, evidently at a loss for her reason.
“Because—because I want you to have it—because I feel, I do not know why, that you have protected me from something——” She stopped, puzzled by her own words. “That is absurd, I know!” she exclaimed. “But it belonged to two lovers, Herr Doctor—you, who understand love, will value it, I know. I—I feel you ought to have it!”
She left him standing with it. Then she turned to the other officers with her appealing little smile and bowed slightly in farewell.