She stood up and sighed deeply. Not grief, but anger flashed in her eyes. Her white teeth bit into her lip, she paced up and down the room, her hands pressed upon her bosom, as if to still the raging storm threatening to break her heart.
Then she stood still before her writing-table, and looked angrily at von Stielow's portrait.
"Why did you come into my life," she cried, "to rob me of my peace, and to make me purchase a few hours' happiness with such frightful tortures?"
Her looks rested long on the portrait. Slowly and gradually the angry expression passed from her features; a mild, sorrowful light shone in her eyes.
"And my short happiness was so fair," she whispered. "Is it then possible that those true eyes could lie? Is it possible that at the very time---"
She sank into a chair near her table, and half involuntarily following the sweet habit of the last short time, she opened an ebony casket, enriched with mother-o'-pearl and gold.
In this casket were the letters her lover had written to her from the camp. They were all short, hurried notes, many of them very dirty from the numerous hands they had passed through before they reached her. She knew them all by heart, those love greetings that said so little and yet so much, that she had waited for with such longing, that she had received with such exulting joy, that she had read and read again with such happiness.
Mechanically she took one of the letters, and allowed her eyes slowly to follow the lines.
Then she threw away the paper with a movement of horror.
"And with the same hand," she cried, "with which he wrote these words--" She did not finish the sentence, but gazed gloomily before her.