Helen probably felt that if she added another word she would not be able to keep up her reserve hereafter, and broke off with a suddenness which showed the remarkable control this young creature had already obtained over herself.
"But we are losing time," she said, with a totally changed air, tone, and carriage, "and about most unprofitable things. Come, we must hurry to get back to our music!"
It was not the first time that Helen had thus suddenly given a new turn to a conversation that threatened to become too intimate. Sophie had to submit to it, although she was pained by this want of confidence, and especially as she felt how Helen was entirely left alone, and what a blessing it would have been to her to be able to pour out her overburdened heart into the sympathizing bosom of a true friend. She did not feel offended, therefore, by Helen's haughty reserve; on the contrary, she was more than ever resolved rather to make her way slowly and stealthily into Helen's confidence, than to return pride for pride and reticence for reticence.
There was to be more than one occasion offered her to-day.
They had been playing and singing at Sophie's house, almost without interruption, until it began to grow dark in the large room, which was in the lower story. They paused because they could not see very well any longer, and were walking up and down in the room, arm in arm, while the effect of the music was still vibrating in their hearts, and even Helen's proud heart felt milder and softer. She had been forcibly reminded of the death of her favorite by one of Robert Schumann's beautiful songs, which filled her with sweet pain. The sad, mournful words, with the sad, plaintive melody, continued in her ear--
"Thy face, alas! so fair and dear,
I saw it in my dreams quite near;
It was so angel-like, so sweet,
And yet with pain and grief replete.
The lips alone, they are still red,
But soon they also will be pale and dead."
She thought of the night when Baron Oldenburg had led her from the midst of the dancers to Bruno's dying bed; she saw again how at her entrance the boy's eye flamed up in his deadly-pale face.
"The lips alone, they are still red,
But soon they also will be pale and dead,"
she murmured, as if she were speaking to herself.
"This song seems to have made as great an impression upon you as upon Doctor Stein," said Sophie.