“Yes,” said I, wincing. I could not bear this any longer, nor to discuss Courvoisier with Frau Lutzler, and the words “his wife,” uttered in that speculatively gossiping tone, repelled me. She turned the subject to Helfen again.
“Herr Helfen must indeed have loved his friend, for when Herr Courvoisier went away he went with him.”
“Herr Courvoisier is gone?” I inquired, in a voice so like my usual one that I was surprised.
“Yes, certainly he is gone. I don’t know where, I am sure.”
“Perhaps they will return?”
Frau Lutzler shook her head, and smiled slightly.
“Nee, Fräulein! Their places were filled immediately. They are gone—ganz und gar.”
I tried to listen to her, tried to answer her as she went on giving her opinions upon men and things, but the effort collapsed suddenly. I had at last to turn my head away and close my eyes, and in that weary, weary moment I prayed to God that He would let me die, and wondered again, and was almost angry with those who had nursed me, for having done their work so well. “We have managed to save you,” Frau Lutzler had said. Save me from what, and for what?
I knew the truth, as I sat there; it was quite too strong and too clear to be laid aside, or looked upon with doubtful eyes. I was fronted by a fact, humiliating or not—a fact which I could not deny.
It was bad enough to have fallen in love with a man who had never showed me by word or sign that he cared for me, but exactly and pointedly the reverse; but now it seemed the man himself was bad too. Surely a well-regulated mind would have turned away from him—uninfluenced.