“And what has caused it?”
“Must you know, friend?” he asked. “If I did not need to tell it, I should be very glad.”
“I must know it, or—or leave you to it!” said I, choking back some emotion. “I can not pass another day like this.”
“And I had no right to let you spend such a day as this,” he answered. “Forgive me once again, Friedel—you who have forgiven so much and so often.”
“Well,” said I, “let us have the worst, Eugen. It is something about—”
I glanced toward the door, on the other side of which Sigmund was sleeping.
His face became set, as if of stone. One word, and one alone, after a short pause, passed his lips—“Ja!”
I breathed again. It was so then.
“I told you, Friedel, that I should have to leave him?”
The words dropped out one by one from his lips, distinct, short, steady.