"I am so glad that you are here," she answered, and she did not lie.
"This time it will be no joke. We shall not drink toothache drops."
Again those words of Leo's occurred to her unpleasantly. She lighted her husband upstairs, closed the shutters in his room, and looked at the thermometer to see that he was neither too warm nor too cold for the night. Then, saying good night once more, she left him and went down again to give Minna some last hints.
When she entered her bedroom half an hour later she heard Ulrich still pacing up and down. That was fatal. She dared not put on the crêpe de chine peignoir yet, lest he should surprise her in it, for though their present relations were such that he would not come to her for conjugal reasons, he might, hearing her move, at any moment open the door and ask some question. So she contented herself with arranging her hair à la grecque, and giving her face a soft film of powder. The peignoir lay spread out ready in the dressing-room. The clock struck eleven. Still another hour!
What should she do to kill time? She sat down at the writing-table, and began to turn over old papers with a tremulous hand. A happy idea came into her head. She would begin a new existence from this hour, an existence full of glorious joy and imperishable youth, a masque of spring, a midsummer's night dream, a revel of sweetest, lightest laughter. For this end, all that had any connection with years of shame and tormenting anguish must be destroyed and burnt. Nothing should be left, nothing but him, whom, after what sacrifices God only knew, she had at last reconquered.
She tore letter after letter into little pieces. They contained declarations of love of every description, ranging from the sentimental balderdash of young Neuhaus to the cynical quips of old Stolt. As she read them she laughed.
"If he had not come home," she thought, "I should have had to give myself to one or the other."
Then her hand fell on her dead boy's little packet of letters. A cold shiver ran through her. But she wouldn't be sad. She would not. He was happily at rest for ever, her dear Paulchen. Still, it was not easy to destroy his letters. But it must be done, for it was more necessary than anything else. She kissed the poor little packet, then slowly tore the first sheet across, and the second. The clock chimed half-past eleven, and she started up and listened, breathing hard, into the darkness of the dressing-room. Ulrich's tired footsteps still echoed from the room beyond--up and down! Up and down!
The minutes flew, and there lay the Greek costume waiting to be donned. Might she, dare she, array herself in it now? With bent ear she listened and listened. It was too late to turn back.
Punctually at midnight Leo von Sellenthin entered the bedroom of Ulrich Kletzingk's wife, to take her with him to meet death, as they had agreed to meet it.