"'Speak, speak!' he cried, 'I will blindly do whatever you wish.'
"Then, as I looked at him, it made me sigh with mingled pain and bliss, for the thought kept coming to me: 'He has held you in his arms.' I should have liked best of all to sink back once more with closed eyes into the sofa-corner, and simulate fainting a little longer, but I pulled myself together and said: 'I am pretty certain that Martha will not close her eyes to-night, but be on the watch to see you go. She will want to look after you; and as her room lies towards the garden she will either go into yours or the one adjoining. When you get downstairs wait a little while, and then do as if you had forgotten something, and then--and then----' I could not go on, for all too mighty within me was the sobbing and rejoicing: 'He has held you in his arms.'
"I feared that I should no longer be able to master my excitement--without a word of farewell I turned to take to flight precipitately. When I opened the door--Martha stood before me. She stood there, barefooted, half-dressed, as pale as death, and trembling. She was unable to stir; her strength probably failed her.
"And at the same moment I heard behind me a glad cry, saw him rush past me and clasp her tottering form in his arms.
"'Thank God, now I have you!' That was the last I heard; then I fled to my room as if pursued by furies, locked and bolted everything, and wept, wept bitterly.
* * * * *
"Over the days that now followed, with their crushing blows of fate, with their lingering sorrow, I will pass with rapid stride. In them I became matured: I became a woman.
"Eight months after that night papa was carried home on a waggon-rack. He had fallen from his horse and sustained grave internal injuries. Three days later he died. In the misery that now beset the household, I was the only one who kept a clear head. Martha broke down feebly, and mama--oh, our poor dear mama! She had been sitting for so many years comfortably and placidly in the chimney-corner, knitting stockings and chewing fruit-jujubes the while, that she would not and could not realise that it must be different now. She spoke not a single word, she hardly shed a tear, but internally the sore spread, and even had the brain fever, which attacked her four weeks later, spared her, her sorrow would still have broken her heart.
"There, now, those two lay in the churchyard, and we two orphans were left helpless in our desolate home, and waited for the time when we should be driven forth. I, for my part, knew which way my path lay, and knew that the future would have nothing to offer me but the hard bread of service; I did not despair and did not quarrel with my fate. I knew that I possessed sufficient strength and pride to hold my own even among strangers, but it was for Martha--who now less than ever could dispense with love and consolation--that I trembled.
"Her marriage still lay in the far distance; Robert must not let her wait much longer or she might easily waste away in her misery and one morning silently die out like a little lamp in which the oil is consumed.