“What are you going to call it?” asked Eleanore.
“If it is blond and has blue eyes like yours, I am going to call it Eva.”
“Eva!” cried Eleanore, “no, that won’t do.” She herself had chosen the name of Eva for the child of the maid at the Rüdigers’. That he should now want to call Gertrude’s child by the same name seemed so strange to her.
“Why not Eva?” he asked. “There is something back of this objection on your part. Women always have something up their sleeve. Out with it! Why do you object to Eva?”
Eleanore smiled, and shook her head. She would have liked to make a clean confession to him, but she was not certain how he would take it: she was afraid he would turn back, enraged at her cunning. Once the child had been born and lay there before him, it would captivate him, and she knew it.
They had stopped and were looking out over the sunlit plains. “How alone we are!” said Daniel.
“Everything is easier here,” said Eleanore thoughtfully. “If one could only forget where one comes from, it would be easy to be happy.”
III
“I have been away for seven years,” said Daniel as they passed through the village gate. Everything seemed so ridiculously small—the Town Hall, the Church, the Market Place, and the Eschenbach Fountain. He had also pictured the houses and streets to himself as being cleaner and better kept. As he passed over the three steps at the front gate, each one of which was bulging out like a huge oyster shell, and entered the shop with its smell of spices, the past dwindled to nothing. Marian was so happy she could not speak. She reached one of her hands to Daniel, the other to Eleanore. Her first question was about Gertrude.
In the room sat a four-year-old child with blond hair and marvellous blue eyes. Its little face was of the most delicate beauty, its body was delicately formed.