"Oh, I," he said; "I have not much more to live for. You mustn't worry about me. I have done what I could, and I accept as a special grace what is left to me. Now, give me your hand. My most earnest, heartfelt thanks are yours. Good-bye." For a moment they lay in each other's arms. "Be brave, old fellow," urged Ulrich. "After all, we have only reached the point at which we stood the day you came home."
"Once more, forgive me," Leo half whispered, as if ashamed of the request; and then he rushed to the door.
The soft rain was still falling. A warm wind swept it over the landscape in silvery showers, and from between the banks of cloud a faint golden light shone down on the fragrant earth. Wild ducks quacked as they wallowed in the slime of the pond. In the branches of the blossoming hawthorns, finches and tomtits chased each other, singing and chirruping. The whole of Nature seemed in the humour for jesting.
As if coming from an open grave, Leo faced life again in its changed aspect, and his heart was very sore. There dawned on his mind a sense of the utter uselessness of struggling against the fate which governed so inexorably the human race. His brain was too tired to reason it out clearly, but the bare idea overawed him. Then something began to rise up in revolt within him against the destiny to which he had submitted, without even a show of resistance, and against the prolonging of the paralysing influence of his old sin. The sacrifice to which he had consented with such weak humility would hang that sin round his neck like a millstone for evermore.
There was his boat, receiving for the last time the hospitality of the white sands of Uhlenfelde. For the last time his strong arms pushed it out into the stream. The last time! The pebbles crunched under the grinding keel, and its nose ploughed gaily into the sparkling ripples. Was it really the last time that his foot would touch Uhlenfelde soil? Half hesitating, he jumped into the boat and fixed the oars, with an exclamation of anger. What he had agreed to was absurd--nay, worse, it was a positive crime, a crime against himself and against his friend.
And then, when in mid-current he turned to take a farewell look at Uhlenfelde, he saw at one of the turret windows Ulrich's face. It was unmistakable, framed in its light, scanty goat's beard, and with its great, hollow eyes. His heart leapt. It would seem as if Ulrich had mounted to the tower with the purpose of beaconing him back.
"I'm coming, I'm coming!" he cried jubilantly, and with a frantic pull began to turn the boat round.
But no, Ulrich made no sign; on the contrary, he drew back quickly, as if he did not wish to be seen.
Disappointed, Leo rowed on, yet he felt distinctly happier. At the sight of his friend, in his great, shy, compassionate love, watching him, half hidden by the curtains, there came back to Leo, in a sudden revulsion of feeling, all his new-born strength and energy, which he had felt recently thrilling through body and soul; the old glorious, mighty, unquenchable confidence in conquest, which had been his inheritance and had ruled his life from the beginning, till a woman had shamefully filched it from him.
He jerked the oars out of his hands, drew himself erect, and stretching his clenched fists towards Ulrich, he called out laughingly across the water--