»But what are you?« he asked amazed.
»I?—perhaps a cur! And all of us curs! But dearie, be careful! You've been able to take shelter behind us, and so be it. But do not try to hide from Truth; you will never elude her. If you must love mankind, then pity our sorry brotherhood.«
She was sitting with her hands clasped behind her head, in an attitude of blissful repose, foolishly happy, almost beside herself. She moved her head from side to side, her eyes half closed in a daydream, spoke slowly, almost chanting her words.
»My own! My love! We will drink together! We will weep together. Oh, how delightful it will be to weep with you, dear one. I would so weep all my life. He has stayed with me. He has not gone away. When I saw him today, in the glass, it burst upon me at once: This is he!—my betrothed!—my darling! And I do not know who you are, brother or bridegroom of mine. But oh, so closely kin, so much desired....«
He, too, remembered that black dumb pair in the gilded mirror,—and the passing thought: as at a funeral. And all at once the whole thing became so intolerably painful, seemed so wild a nightmare, that he ground his teeth in his grief. His thoughts travelled farther back; he remembered his treasured revolver in his pocket, the two days of constant flight, the plain door that had no handle, and how he looked for a bell, and how a fat lackey who had not yet got his coat on straight had come out in a dirty printed linen shirt, and how he had entered with the proprietress into that white hall and seen those three strange girls.
And with it all a feeling of growing freedom came over him and at last he grasped that he was, as he had ever been, free—absolutely free—that he could go wherever he liked.
Sternly now he surveyed that strange room, severely, with the conviction of a man aroused for an instant from a debauch, seeing himself in foreign surroundings and condemning what he sees.
»What is all this? How idiotic! What a senseless nightmare!«
But—the music was still playing on. But—the woman was still sitting with her hands clasped behind her head, smiling, unable to speak, almost fainting under the load of a happiness beyond sense and experience. But—this was not a dream!
»What is all this? Is this—Truth?«