My heart was hissing within me. I said offendedly: “But at least you owe me an explanation...”
She rose, took both my hands, and said earnestly:
“But not to-day; not now. I am so miserable. Heavens, how you look at me. We were friends once...”
Overwhelmed, I turned right about, and went in to the dancers again.
A little after, Edwarda herself came in and took up her place by the piano, at which the travelling man was seated, playing a dance; her face at that moment was full of inward pain.
“I have never learned to play,” she said, looking at me with dark eyes. “If I only could!”
I could make no answer to this. But my heart flew out towards her once more, and I asked:
“Why are you so unhappy all at once, Edwarda? If you knew how it hurts me to see—”
“I don't know what it is,” she said. “Everything, perhaps. I wish all these people would go away at once, all of them. No, not you—remember, you must stay till the last.”
And again her words revived me, and my eyes saw the light in the sun-filled room. The Dean's daughter came over, and began talking to me; I wished her ever so far away, and gave her short answers. And I purposely kept from looking at her, for she had said that about my eyes being like an animal's. She turned to Edwarda and told her that once, somewhere abroad—in Riga I think it was—a man had followed her along the street.