Elizabeth stood with her hands clasped before her silently engrossed, while Salvé kept her from being pressed upon behind.
"Look!" she said, turning half round to him, but without taking her eyes off the picture,—"the Belgian captain is inviting him to surrender. He has no choice—they are too many for him. But don't you see the thought he has in his mind?—you can read it in his face. And what a fine fellow he looks, with his handsome uniform, and his epaulets, and his short sword!" she said, in a lower tone, with a revival of her old childish enthusiasm for that kind of show.
Her last words were like a dagger's thrust to Salvé. She still had a hankering, then, for all this, and he stood behind her pale with suppressed feeling, while she continued to gaze at the picture and think aloud to him.
"Poor, handsome lad! But he never will surrender—one can easily see that; and so he must go down," she said, in a subdued voice, involuntarily folding her hands, as if in fancy she went with him; "and he blows up Belgian and all into the air, Salvé," she said, turning to him with a fine spirited look in her face, and with moistened eyes.
He made no reply; and supposing that, like herself, he was lost in the scene before them, she turned again to the picture. But while, after giving vent to her feelings, she stood there with a smile on her face, thinking that she knew one who would have been quite as capable as Van Spyck of such an exploit—the man, namely, who was then standing behind her—to him the picture had become a hateful thing; and he could have shot Van Spyck through the heart for his uniform's sake.
The whole of the way home he was silent and serious, and it was not until late in the afternoon that he at all recovered his spirits.
As this was to be his last trip for the year, the following spring was fixed for their marriage; and when he took his leave, it was with the gloomy presentiment that he had a dreary winter before him.
Certainly, for the development of a morbid state of mind, no conditions could have been more favourable than the enforced inactivity to which, with many another, he was condemned for the long dark months during which the ice put a stop to navigation. To his restless, energetic nature, such prolonged inaction was little suited under any circumstances, and in his present condition of mind it was little less than disastrous.
"If she was only here!" he would sometimes inwardly exclaim, as if crying out for help against himself and the thoughts which he felt to be unworthy, but which nevertheless he could not shake off.
He often thought of writing to her, but was so afraid of saying something which he might afterwards regret, that he kept putting it off from time to time, until at last he could restrain himself no longer.