"It was a long time coming. The hours of the day passed and she still lived. Her pulse had long ceased to beat, her heart seemed to stand still, and yet her breath continued to come and go in short feeble gasps. While I was lying in a morphia sleep, they had given her as a last resource an injection of musk to revive her strength once more. This was what she was existing on now. But the odour of musk, mingling with the carbolic vapours, filled the room like some heavy, tangible body, weighed on my brow and seemed to crush my temples. I felt as if with every breath I were drinking in increasing burdens.
"In the afternoon Robert's parents came. I, who had yesterday shown my aunt only pride and contempt, to-day kissed her hand in humiliation. This was the beginning of the penance which I had inflicted upon myself at Martha's death-bed, and which shall endure as long as I live.
"Evening came on. Marta still continued to breathe. With wide-open mouth, her dead eyes covered with a film, she stared at me. Her body seemed to get smaller and smaller, quite shrunk together she lay there. It almost looked as if in death she did not venture to take up even the small space which she had occupied during her lifetime.
"Aunt filled the house with her loathsome sobbing, and the others, too, were weeping; I alone remained without tears.
"When towards eleven o'clock she had drawn her last breath, I fell into a delirium.
* * * * *
"Just now I have returned from the manor.
"He was good and kind towards me, and in his eyes there gleamed a half-hidden, bashful tenderness, which my soul drank in eagerly. I feel as if a new spring-time must be coming, my heart is full of smiles and laughter, and when I close my eyes golden sunlight rays seem to be dancing round about me. But now away with this enervating dream of happiness!
"If he should learn to love me, all the worse for him! I gave him no occasion--no, indeed not! I should feel I must despise myself like a very prostitute if I had done so. Since my convalescence I have managed his household for him truly and faithfully, for more than a year, without claiming his approval, without wishing to grow indispensable to him. Even my dear aunt has had to recognise that, who almost forces her hospitality upon me, in spite of my being personally so hateful to her. She is much too good a housekeeper herself not to know that, but for me, the household would have gone to rack and ruin in those days, when Robert forgot everything in gloomy mourning for his dead--not even taking any interest in the child, which she had left him as a pledge. But for me, the poor little thing would be lying under the ground long ago. I will not enumerate all I did and worked during this time. It is surely not meet for me to play the Pharisee.
"Nor will I speak of expiation. How pompous the word sounds, and what miserable self-deception generally hides behind it! How shall I wash away what defiles me? One may expiate some tragic guilt, one can even expiate some great crime, but a piece of baseness such as I committed, cleaves to the soul for ever! Ah, if I did not know what secret desire lurks in the depths of my heart!