“Why not?”
Barlasch turned and looked at her thoughtfully over his shoulder.
“In some of the big houses down in the Niederstadt there are forty and fifty soldiers quartered—diseased, wounded, without discipline. There are others coming. I have told them we have fever in the house. It is the only way. We may keep them out; for the Frauengasse is in the centre of the town, and the soldiers are not needed in this quarter. But you—you cannot lie as I can. You laugh—ah! A woman tells more lies; but a man tells them better. Push the bolts, when I am gone.”
After his dinner, Sebastian went out, as Barlasch had predicted. He said nothing to Desiree of Charles or of the future. There was nothing to be said, perhaps. He did not ask why Mathilde was absent. In the stillness of the house, he could probably hear her moving in her rooms upstairs.
He had not been long gone when Mathilde came down, dressed to go out. She came into the kitchen where Desiree was doing the work of the absent Lisa, who had reluctantly gone to her home on the Baltic coast. Mathilde stood by the kitchen table and ate some bread.
“The Grafin has arranged to quit Dantzig to-morrow,” she said. “I am going to ask her to take me with her.”
Desiree nodded and made no comment. Mathilde went to the door, but paused there. Without looking round, she stood thinking deeply. They had grown from childhood together—motherless—with a father whom neither understood. Together they had faced the difficulties of life; the hundred petty difficulties attending a woman's life in a strange land, among neighbours who bear the sleepless grudge of unsatisfied curiosity. They had worked together for their daily bread. And now the full stream of life had swept them together from the safe moorings of childhood.
“Will you come too?” asked Mathilde. “All that he says about Dantzig is true.”
“No, thank you,” answered Desiree, gently enough. “I will wait here. I must wait in Dantzig.”
“I cannot,” said Mathilde, half excusing herself. “I must go. I cannot help it. You understand?”