“Shall his life be poisoned as well?” she replied. “No, I had rather bear it alone than see him suffer, too. He has a happy nature, and loves her with all his soul—otherwise he is sometimes hasty and excitable, but to her he has never said an angry word—let him hope as long as he can—I will not undeceive him.”
She leaned her head on her hands and stared straight before her.
He remembered his mother’s fairy tale.
“Dame Care—Dame Care,” he murmured to himself.
“What do you say?” she asked, and looked at him with great, eager eyes, hungry for consolation.
“Oh, nothing,” he replied, with a sad smile, “I wish I could help you.”
“Who could do that?”
“And yet perhaps I can,” he said, “you have only wanted somebody to confide in, you are not so badly off as you think—indeed, Dame Care has blessed you, too.”
“What does that mean?” she asked
And then he told her the beginning of that fairy tale which he had kept in his memory so well.