Bernhard turned away and walked to the window. He felt that all his doubts would have vanished like morning mists if Thea had met him as usual and wept out her pain and grief upon his breast. Now they arose again before him, and took firmer, clearer shape. For a few moments he stood motionless at the window, then suddenly he approached Thea again.
"You know why Lothar shot himself?" he asked, in a voice that sounded hoarse and unlike his own.
She bent her head lower upon her hands and made no reply.
"He lost a large sum at play last night," Bernhard continued. "But----"
Then Thea looked up. For an instant her face looked transfigured with hope, like that of a criminal reprieved when under sentence of death. Involuntarily she seized Bernhard's hand, and asked, with a passionate excitement such as Bernhard had never before known her to express, "Do you believe that that was why he shot himself? Do you believe it? Can it be?"
Her eyes as she looked up at him were full of imploring anguish, and he, in his turn, thrust away her hand, and said, in a cold, hard voice, "No! I see you do not believe it, and I--neither do I believe it!"
At this moment Alma entered with Herr von Rosen, who had come over immediately upon hearing the sad news. This put an end to Bernhard's and Thea's tête-à-tête, and neither of them at this time could have wished it prolonged.
Nor was there any opportunity for renewing it during the next few days. The dowager Countess had hastened to Eichhof upon hearing of her son's sudden death, and her grief and suffering were of so exacting a nature as to employ the time and energies of at least one member of the family, and sometimes several of them, all the time. She called herself the unhappiest, the most sorely tried of women; but when Bernhard proposed that she should remain at Eichhof with Thea, she thought it but right to inform him that she had been offered the position of abbess in the aristocratic institution of B----, and that she intended to accept it and retire thither as soon as possible, since it seemed to offer her the advantages to which her birth and rank entitled her.
Thea suffered terribly, but she was cold and repellant towards Bernhard, who was very much occupied and rather avoided her than otherwise. The physician shook his head; he was far from satisfied with his patient's condition, although he still maintained that she was only suffering from prolonged nervous agitation.
On the day after Lothar's funeral Thea was lying back on her lounge, not sleeping, but with closed eyes. She could not sleep either by night or by day, for so soon as she began to dream she saw either Lothar or Bernhard before her, and the thought of them banished repose. Was she not guilty of Lothar's death? Ought she not, instead of turning angrily away, to have tried gently to lead him back to the right path? If there had been no shadow between Bernhard and herself, this torturing self-reproach would not have taken shape; her conscience would not have been so morbidly sensitive, inclining her to the gloomiest reflections. But the shadow was there, and it was therefore impossible for her to seek refuge with her husband, and be consoled and soothed in his arms. Agitated as she was, she saw Bernhard's relations with Frau von Wronsky in the darkest light. She attributed his altered demeanour entirely to these, and never for an instant suspected that he too was tormented by doubts and suspicions with regard to herself. And Bernhard? All through these days he scarcely thought of Julutta; he never suspected that his friendship for her could have given rise to remarks and comments which Thea had overheard, and if he had suspected this he would have been indignant that Thea should give ear to such scandal. In all that concerned that 'poor persecuted woman' his conscience felt perfectly pure, and the struggle between his love for Thea and his dead brother, and the hate which now threatened to arise within him for both of them, left no space for thoughts of aught else.