How could he leave her in the lurch--she who clung to him with the deadly terror of a guilty woman? Besides, he was full of longing for her. There was not a fibre of his being that did not crave to possess her. He was incapable of picturing an existence without this horrible, agonising desire, which must remain for all eternity unfulfilled.
The next afternoon he set out for Uhlenfelde. He was drawn there by the effects of a sleepless night, a wretched day of dull despair, and, not least, by a malicious curiosity to know how she would take the threatened blow. If she set him free, he would start the same evening for the New World.
A groom informed him that the Baroness had gone forth alone, on foot, more than an hour ago.
Where had she gone? The man could not say. Yesterday and the day before she had done the same, and not returned home till long after dark.
His first emotion was one of unworthy, miserable jealousy, but he shook it off.
"To Münsterberg," was his command to the coachman, as he got into the sleigh.
It drove out of the courtyard, and in a few minutes he was surrounded by the snow-covered fields. It was just at this hour yesterday that he had gone to see Johanna.
The sky hung heavily over the landscape, like a brownish-grey canopy. Another fall of snow was coming, but the clouds were not yet low enough to open. Evening shadows were beginning to colour the vast expanse of monotone whiteness, and a soft wind stirred the bare brambles that flanked the ditches, and it made the remains of their dried, withered berries shiver as if they felt the cold. Through the silence rang out in stately measure the music of the moving sleigh. No other sound broke the stillness. From the hazel-wood which skirted the road for some distance, a covey of crows had slowly risen, and now hung noiselessly floating in the clouds. The pointed poplars by the roadside seemed every second to grow more black and massive.
Here he hoped to meet her, and he was not disappointed. He had scarcely turned into the wide main-road, when he saw a dark figure in flowing draperies of crape, walking towards Münsterberg. He quickly overtook her. She turned round. The wind had brought colour to her cheeks, and beneath the brim of her mourning hat, which cut a dark tricom on the fairness of her forehead, her face looked girlishly fresh and sweet. The tired, dark-rimmed eyes alone showed that she had suffered. They shone when she saw him, and she held out her hands as of old, charmed and radiant. His soul responded to her in jubilation. He sprang out of the sleigh, and bidding the man walk the horses slowly up and down, he offered her his arm.
"What are you doing here, Felicitas?" he asked.