His step was still elastic, his face pale but almost cheerful. Not until he had given his servant orders to admit nobody, not even his friend Berger, and until he had bolted his study-door, did he sink down and then give himself up, without restraint, to the fury of a wild, despairing agony.
CHAPTER II.
For an hour or more the unhappy man lay groaning, and writhing like a worm under the intensity of his wretchedness. Then he rose and with unsteady gait went to his secretaire, and began to rummage in the secret drawers of the old-fashioned piece of furniture.
"I no longer remember where it is," he muttered to himself. "It is long since I thought of the old story--but God has not forgotten it."
At length he discovered what he was looking for: a small packet of letters grown yellow with time. As he unloosed the string which tied them, a small watercolour portrait in a narrow silver frame fell out: it depicted the gentle, sweet features of a young, fair, grey-eyed girl. His eyes grew moist as he looked at it, and bitter tears suddenly coursed down his cheeks.
He then unfolded the papers and began to read: they were long letters, except the last but one which filled no more than two small sheets. This he read with the greatest attention of all, read and re-read it with ever-increasing emotion. "And I could resist such words!" he murmured. "Oh wretched man that I am."
Then he opened the last of the letters. "You evidently did not yourself expect that I would take your gift," he read out in an undertone. And then: "I do not curse you; on the contrary, I ardently hope that you may at least not have given me up in vain."
He folded the letters and tied them up. Then he undid them again and buried himself once more in their melancholy contents.
A knock at the door interrupted him: his housekeeper announced that dinner was ready. This housekeeper was an honest, elderly spinster, Fräulein Brigitta, whom he usually treated with the greatest consideration. To-day he only answered her with a curt, impatient, "Presently!" and he vouchsafed no lengthier reply to her question how he was.
But then he remembered some one else. "I must not fall ill," he said. "I must keep up my strength. I shall need it all!" And after he had locked up the letters, he went to the dining-room.