"I will put myself in front of the door," she thought. "I will throw myself on him and suffocate him with kisses."
But the desire not to sink in his estimation made her timid and faint-hearted.
"Don't go yet," she besought him, clinging to his hands. "Stay one more hour, just one--a farewell hour."
He disengaged himself gently, and turned to the door.
She stood in the middle of the room, drawn up to her full height, the wide sleeves of her blue Venus drapery fell back from her arms, displaying their matured beauty, as she held them out to him beseechingly.
"If he sees me like this," she thought, "he will yet be mine."
But he did not look back. He staggered, and knocked his forehead against the panel of the door as he opened it; and then all at once it seemed as if he were wiped off the face of the earth, and with him light and everything.... A swarm of bees rose buzzing into the air, and in the darkness that suddenly surrounded her the floor sank deeper and always deeper towards the canal waters ... a hatchet struck her on the head and then all was over.
At first it sounded like a twittering of birds, then like the murmur of an enormous crowd in a wide sunny square, and then there were only two voices left: a man's voice and a woman's whispering eagerly together--the old cook, Grete, and the manservant with the impudent twinkle in his eye. Yes, of course, it was they. The colonel would come in immediately and ask her to be his wife. At the same instant she felt something cool, damp, and soothing on her aching head. Just as she had felt that night.... "Am I to live through it all again?" she thought, startled, and she began to cry, and entreat, "Oh, please, Herr Colonel, let me go. I am far too bad a girl for you. Oh, dear Herr Colonel!"
"Good God! she is delirious," said the masculine voice, which was certainly not that of the impudent manservant.