He nodded his head, slowly and softly, not quite satisfied with her remorse, feeling, so to speak, disappointed with something in her manner, which was not what he had expected, but he bent over her, drew her towards him, and kissed her forehead.
“Forgive me, Otto, do forgive me.”
He softly clasped his arm around her, and pressed her for a moment to his bosom, while she still continued her sobbing, and he closed his eyes in order to prevent the tears from penetrating through his eyelashes. For he knew it, he felt it—it was all over.
The evening passed by somewhat gloomily, although Henk, in his frank, kindly tones, assured him that it was all right again. Of Eline he took his leave with a sad smile. Eline then begged Betsy’s pardon in presence of Henk. Betsy gave her a little nod of approval and said nothing. And afterwards when Henk told her how he had forced her to go to Erlevoort, she looked at him almost with admiration—for she would never have thought that in a struggle with Eline her husband would prove the stronger of the two.
Some weeks sped by, and day by day Eline found herself more and more unhappy, for she felt that all was over, that she could not force herself to love Otto, and she nearly died with grief under the reproach of his sad smile. And one afternoon she kept her room, and told Mina to say that she was ill, and was not coming down-stairs. Otto asked if he might come and see her in her room, but she sent word that she was tired and needed rest. And gradually, but distinctly, a determination became fixed in her mind: [[221]]she must do it, she owed it to his happiness and her own. The next day she would not receive him either, much as Henk urged her to do so. She only shook her head slowly; she could not do it. She was ill. Reyer? No, she did not want him. And she kept to her room, while Otto dined down-stairs with Betsy, Vincent, and Henk, and left early.
That evening she remained for a long time lying on her sofa, staring into the darkness. At last she lit the gas, closed the curtains, and sat down at her writing-table. It must be. Calmly and determinedly she commenced to write, stopping every now and then, and reading every word to herself—
“My dearest Otto,
“Forgive me, I beg of you, but it cannot be otherwise. Ask yourself the question if I can make you happy, or if I would not make your life a burden to you. I thought I could have made you happy, and that thought I shall always cherish, for it has comprised my greatest happiness in the past. But now——”
As she wrote the words the tears started to her eyes, and suddenly she burst into a violent sobbing and tore up the paper. She did not feel capable of giving him such pain. Great God, she could not do it! But what then should she do? Let matters rest where they were until perhaps in the end some catastrophe occurred to compel a parting? No, no, a thousand times better to part in friendship with a last sad farewell! But already she had caused him so much pain against her will, she wished in future to give him as little pain as possible, and now—oh! to be swayed thus to and fro in such a struggle as that, alone and forsaken, without any one to support her, without really knowing what she wanted or what was her duty! She was too weak for it, for such a struggle as that. She took up a fresh sheet of paper, however, and once more began to write—
“My dearest Otto.”
A few lines followed easily enough, very similar to the first letter which she had torn up. But how should she tell him further, how? Still, all at once her pen rushed along over the paper, savagely forming as it went letters that were all but illegible, but still she wrote on page after page of wild, almost incoherent sentences, in which she over and over again bitterly reproached herself for the [[222]]way in which she had treated him, and finally released him from his engagement. The long, rambling letter, full of repetitions, and blurred with her tears, she concluded with the pathetic prayer that when one day he should have found a girl who was worthy of him, and who would love him disinterestedly, he would still not quite forget her. Her whole being went out to him in that final entreaty.