Now I grasped the truth.
“Go home, Miss Hallam!” I repeated, faintly.
“Yes, of course. There is no reason why I should stay, is there?”
“N—no, I suppose not,” I admitted; and contrived to stammer out, “and I am very sorry that Doctor Mittendorf thinks you will not be better.”
Then I left the room quickly—I could not stay, I was overwhelmed. It was scarcely ten minutes since I had come upstairs to her. I could have thought it was a week.
Outside the room, I stood on the landing with my hand pressed to my forehead, for I felt somewhat bewildered. Stella’s letter was still in my hand. As I stood there Anna Sartorius came past.
“Guten Tag, Fräulein,” said she, with a mocking kind of good-nature when she had observed me for a few minutes. “What is the matter? Are you ill? Have you had bad news?”
“Good-morning, Fräulein,” I answered, quietly enough, dropping my hand from my brow.
I went to my room. A maid was there, and the furniture might have stood as a type of chaos. I turned away, and went to the empty room, in which my piano stood, and where I had my music lessons. I sat down upon a stool in the middle of the room, folded my hands in my lap, and endeavored to realize what had happened—what was going to happen. There rang in my head nothing but the words, “I am going home next week.”
Home again! What a blank yawned before me at the idea! Leave Elberthal—leave this new life which had just begun to grow real to me! Leave it—go away; be whirled rapidly away back to Skernford—away from this vivid life, away from—Eugen. I drew a long breath, as the wretched, ignominious idea intruded itself, and I knew now what it was that gave terror to the prospect before me. My heart quailed and fainted at the bare idea of such a thing. Not even Hobson’s choice was open to me. There was no alternative—I must go. I sat still, and felt myself growing gradually stiller and graver and colder as I looked mentally to every side of my horizon, and found it so bounded—myself shut in so fast.