Betsy, too, was boiling with rage. Gerard left the room, but she made no reply and restrained herself.
“Nily, dear,” said Otto, “I bear Vincent no ill-will, although I don’t feel much sympathy with him, but still I shall be glad too when he is gone.”
“Indeed—you too, eh?” she hissed.
“May I finish?” he resumed, clasping her icy hand in his. “Yes, I shall be glad when he goes, at least if his presence in the house is able to excite you like this. You are quite beside yourself. You don’t know what you are saying, Nily; at least not with what force you are speaking.”
His quiet words drove her frantic.
“And you—you—with your eternal calmness, your eternal phlegmatic calmness!” she burst, nearly shrieking, as she rose from the table and flung down her serviette. “It drives me mad—that [[217]]calmness! Great heavens, it drives me mad! Betsy crushes me with her egoism, and you with your calmness—with your calmness, yes, your calmness! I—I—I can’t bear it any longer—it suffocates me!”
“Eline!” cried Otto.
He rose and grasped her wrists, and looked her straight in the eyes. She expected something very terrible, that he would fling her down, strike her. But while he continued to hold her hands he only shook his head slowly, and his voice sounded full of sorrow, as he simply said—
“Eline!—for shame!”
“Great God! I—I am going mad!” she screamed in a fit of sobbing, and she tore herself away from his grasp, and rushed out of the room, as she went, dragging some glasses from the table, which fell with a tinkling noise in shatters on the ground.