When she had grown a little quieter he sat near her, and said, gently, “Will you unburden your heart to me, Elsbeth?”
“Yes, I will,” she cried; “I have waited to do so these three long years. So long have I borne it, Paul, and I was almost choked with the burden, and have found no pitying soul in whom I could confide. Yonder in Italy and at beautiful Capri, where everything laughs and rejoices, I have often crept down to the sea in the middle of the night and cried out in my agony, and in the morning I have come back and laughed, even more than the others, for my mother—oh, mother, mother!” she cried, sobbing afresh.
“Be calm; you have me now, to whom you can tell it,” he whispered to her.
“Yes, I have you, I have you,” she gasped, and leaned her face on his shoulder. “You see I have always known that; but what good did that do me? You were far away, I was often nearly writing to you, but I feared you might have become a stranger to me and would misunderstand me. And since we are back I have only one thought: ‘I must confide in him, he is the only one who has known grief, he will understand me.’”
“Tell me what it is, Elsbeth,” he urged.
“She will die,” she cried out aloud.
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Who told you so?”
“The professor in Vienna who examined her. He wore quite a cheerful face before her, and said, ‘If you are careful, you can live to a hundred years old,’ but afterwards he sent for me, and asked me, ‘Are you strong, young lady? Can you bear the truth?’ ‘I beg you to tell me all,’ I answered, ‘I must confide it to you,’ he said, ‘for you are the only one who nurses her.’ And then he told me that she might die any day—unless—and then he gave me a number of rules which she must observe about eating and drinking and climate and excitement, and much more. Since that day I tremble from morning to night, and tend her and watch and find no rest. Sometimes the feeling comes over me, and I say to myself, ‘You are young and want to enjoy life,’ and then I try to be merry and sing, but every note chokes me and I collapse again. Of course, I must show a cheerful face to mother, and to father as well.” “But why do you not confide in him?” he interrupted her.