‘Greif, Greif!’ she cried in anguish. ‘What is it, my beloved? Speak, darling—do not look like that!’
‘I am in great pain,’ he answered, not opening his eyes, but faintly trying to press her fingers.
She saw that he was ill, and that his suffering had nothing to do with his previous emotion. She opened the door quickly and called for help. Her mother’s room was very near and Frau von Sigmundskron appeared immediately.
‘Greif is ill—dying perhaps!’ exclaimed Hilda dragging her into the little sitting-room to the young man’s side.
The baroness leaned over him anxiously, and at the touch of a strange hand his purple lids opened slowly and he looked up into her face.
‘It is in my head—in the back,’ he succeeded in saying.
Greif had fallen in harness, fighting his battle with the morbid energy of a man already ill. To the very end he had held his position, resisting even that last tender appeal Hilda had made to him, but the strain upon his nerves had been too great. He was strong, indeed, but he was young and not yet toughened into that strange material of which men of the world are made. The loss of sleep, the deadly impression made upon him by the death of his father and mother, the terrible struggle he had sustained with himself, all had combined together to bring about the crisis. At first it was but a shooting pain in the head, so sharp as to make his features contract. Then it came again and again, till it left him no breathing space, and he sank down overcome by physical torture, but firm in his intention as he had been in the beginning. It was all over, and he would not argue his case again for many a long day.
‘Take me home—I am very ill,’ he gasped, as the baroness tried to feel his pulse.
But she shook her head, for it seemed to her that it was too late.
‘You must stay here until you are better,’ she answered softly. ‘The jolting of the carriage would hurt you.’