He yielded to the hands that drew him towards her, and kissed her, but rather gravely, as though he more than half-doubted her explanation.
"I am not angry, Nora. I only ask you to try and understand. God knows"—she thought his voice changed, and grew less certain—"I would never willingly come between you and any one you cared for, but I have my honour to protect, and your honour is mine."
"Wolff, what do you mean? Have I done anything dishonourable?"
"No, dear. You cannot see things from my standpoint. You have been brought up with other ideas. I have tried to explain before. We have a double task. For our names' sake and for the sake of the uniform we wear we must keep ourselves from the very breath of evil. And that applies to every one connected with us."
Nora drew her hands away.
"I think I understand," she said. "For those two fetishes everything must be sacrificed. I will do my best to satisfy them and you."
"Thank you, Nora. I trust you implicitly."
She went to the door, hesitated, and then stole out. But in that moment's hesitation she had caught a glimpse of him standing at his table in an attitude of dejection, and had heard a smothered sigh of pain.
"I am miserable," she thought, "and I have made him miserable. How will it all end?"
In trembling haste she dressed and hurried out. She had a one all-dominating desire to seek help and comfort from some one who could understand her, some one, too, who held Wolff's happiness higher than her own and could be just to both. She needed a woman's comfort, and she turned now to Frau von Arnim. Hitherto she had shrunk from the inevitable meeting, now she sought it with the desperation of one who knows no other course. She had indeed no one else to turn to. Before Wolff she was tongue-tied. It was not only that silence was forced upon her by a mingled pride and fear; the subtle understanding between them had been rudely broken, and though their love for each other remained, they had inwardly become something worse than strangers. For there is no reserve so complete, so insurmountable, so surcharged with bitterness as that which follows on a great passion. And then, too, what had she to say to him? "I love you; but I have brought ruin upon your life. I love you; but I am not happy with you." Had she even the right to say that to him? Was it not, in any case, useless? Yet she knew she must unburden her heart, if for no other reason than that the power to keep silence was passing out of her hands.