"Now she's going to be tragic," he thought. But her tragedy was no longer so fatal as it had once seemed. If he could not echo her way of expressing things, he understood only too well the mood which prompted her so to express herself.
"And now I say," Felicitas continued, "all the evil spirits and goblins of hell may attack me; I have got him, he is there; he will stand by me and not desert me, and so hope and peace have dawned in my soul once more."
She sighed, and, digging both her fists into the cushions, she sat there and gazed at him with parted lips, craving for succour, while her mass of fair curls fell about her ears like a confusion of writhing serpents.
"Of course," she continued, "I relied much on you. But when I wanted you most, you did not come. You went away. Oh, Leo, how cruel you have been to me! No, no! I won't hurt you. You are good, good as an angel. You have even forgiven me for forcing my way into Halewitz a second time. It's true, isn't it, you have forgiven me? And I have dared, too, to beard Johanna, to ameliorate her hate for you and me. Why, then, do you shun me? Why may I not call on you when it is all darkness and night within me, and the ghost of the slain----"
He trembled. The ghastly picture that the old pastor's drunken phantasy had invoked rose before his mental vision.
"Does he haunt you too?" he murmured, between his clenched teeth.
"Don't ask.... I must be silent.... It is better for you and for me not to speak of it.... Then how could you have borne to stay away from me, if you had known----"
"Known what?"
"Another time, I'll tell you," she said imploringly. "Another time, when I feel miserable, not now, when I'm happy and breathe freely, because I am so safe with you beside me. Let me enjoy this hour to the full. Look at the sun melting into those red clouds. Doesn't it look as if it were weeping over us tears of blood?"
He grunted, for the simile seemed to him extravagantly poetic.