Uhlenfelde was nearest, but he recoiled with horror from the idea of delivering him into the woman's hands again. He had him, and he would keep him in defiance of her and the whole world.
A warm glow of new-born energy suffused his limbs. He laid the head of his unconscious friend against the pedestal and sprang to his feet.
And as he looked round him into the white, dripping duskiness, in which everything seemed indistinct and shapeless, the knowledge grew on him, "You live--and you may live."
He put both hands to his brow and staggered above the prostrate form.
It was a happiness that pained. And then he ran off straight to Halewitz to fetch help.
XL
A time of heavy trial followed. Ulrich must have carried the germs of typhoid about with him since he left his stepson's sick-bed, and the excitement of that memorable night had developed them into activity. He lay in Leo's study hovering between life and death.
In the first hours after conveying him there, Leo half feared that Felicitas might dispute his right to nursing the patient. But his anxiety on this account proved quite superfluous. The messenger whom he had despatched to Uhlenfelde brought back word that the "gnädiger Frau" had driven to the station early that morning with luggage, and had left no address behind her.
It was with a feeling of release that he threw himself on his knees by the sick-bed, and swore over his friend's thin burning hand a thousand oaths to which he could not give words, but which all meant the same thing: "See, I am my old self again, and so I shall always be!"
His one plan for the future now was to live with him if he lived, and to die with him if he died.