"Are you my friend?"
"Of course. You know that I am."
"Leo, I can't go on living. Leo, you must get me poison."
He took comfort from her words. After all, then, she had seriously wished to take her life. For that he thanked her from the bottom of his heart.
A quiver of pain passed over her drawn features, which the grief of the last few days had lengthened and pinched. Her face was now marked by lines, which made it look older, but gave it more character. This was not the pink-and-white laughing face of the syren who lured him on to the edge of a precipice, but the woe-struck face of a madonna who had endured and come through much tribulation.
And it was fitting that the partner of his guilt should be thus. He felt for the first time how thoroughly she belonged to him, and his hate gradually evaporated.
"Don't sin against yourself, Felicitas," he said, for the sake of saying something.
"Sin against myself!" she repeated, speaking in a low, hopeless monotone. "Oh, my God! As if there was anything worse for me to do! Could I sin more than I have done? My little Paul is dead, and I am still alive. I sentenced my child to death, and am allowed to live. Matricide; isn't that the most horrible of crimes? How can I go through life with such a burden of guilt weighing upon me? How can any one who cares for me wish me to do it?"
"Matricide!" he exclaimed in bewilderment. "What do you mean?"
"I know what I mean," she said, and smiled.