At this moment he regained consciousness, and started up. The dead girl's head sank down from his, and bumped on to the floor.
"Robert, my boy!" cried the old man, and rushed towards him.
With wide-open, glassy eyes, Robert stared about him. He seemed not yet to have recovered his senses. Then he perceived one of the arms, which, as the body dropped sidewards, had fallen right across his chest. His gaze travelled along it up to the shoulder, as far as the neck--as far as the white rigidly-smiling face.
Supported by the old man's two arms, he raised himself up. He tottered on his legs like a bull that has received a blow from an axe.
"Good God, boy, do come to your senses!" cried his father, taking him by his shoulders. "The misfortune has taken place; we are men, we must keep our composure."
His son looked at him vacantly, helplessly as a child. Then he bent over the dead body, lifted it up, and laid it across the bed, pushing the fragments of the bier to one side with his foot.
Then he seated himself close to her on the pillow, and mechanically wound a coil of her flowing hair round his finger.
The old man began to entertain fears of his son's sanity.
"Robert," he said, coming close up to him again, "pull yourself together. Come away from here; you cannot bring her back to life again."
Then he broke into a laugh so shrill and horrible, that it froze the very marrow in his father's bones.