She pressed herself closer against the pedestal, and made no attempt to get up, as, bareheaded, he stood before her.
"Felicitas!" he cried. His voice sounded hard and threatening, a little harder, perhaps, than he intended.
The answer he got was a tearless sob, which shook the supple, rounded figure on the steps. Without looking up, she withdrew her left hand from her face and stretched it slowly towards him with a limp, helpless action; the hand seemed to fumble for the one that should meet and grasp it. But the intention of greeting her in so friendly a manner was far from him, and so her hand fell, without having found any support, into her lap, as a wounded bird falls to the ground.
"You wished to speak to me, Felicitas?" he said.
Now she let her right hand, too, slide from her face, and the melting and reproachful look she cast up at him seemed to ask, "Have I deserved this of you?"
"She has aged a little," he thought, looking at her more nearly. She had a slightly worn appearance, although the oval outline of her profile curved in soft unbroken firmness into her rounded chin, and the milk-white forehead, over which the hair curled wildly, was of girlish purity and smoothness. But from the corners of the eyes downwards, delicate crow's-feet extended to the cheeks; the mouth seemed to have sunk, and on the brows faint, carefully drawn lines of paint had caught the moisture which glistened there in a chain of dewdrops.
"Extraordinary!" he thought to himself, repeating the reflections of the night. "How completely one can be cured of love for a woman." And then he said again--
"You wished to speak to me, Felicitas?"
In a low, hesitating voice, she asked, "And you, Leo, have not wished to speak to me?"
"No," he answered bluntly.