“Yes, yes, undress me, do—that cloak, those shoes, oh, I am sick of myself. I am all over mud. Great heavens! oh, that I were dead!” She threw herself, trembling all over, backward in her chair. Frans had come into the room.
“Oh, Frans, just look here,” said Jeanne, shaking with excitement, and pointed to Eline. “I hope she won’t be ill.”
“Without a hat, in that thin, low-necked dress! I shall try and light the fire down-stairs. You undress her.”
He was still as if paralyzed with Eline’s appearance, and he too trembled with pity, quite unable to speak, as he saw her sitting in that chair, the water dripping from her hair on her white face and [[240]]down her throat, her black evening dress clinging to her like a wet flannel. But he went. He must be up and doing.
And outside raged the storm.
She was now in their well-lit sitting-room, lying on a couch which Frans had placed by the side of the flaming stove, and she shivered with fever under her woollen blankets. And yet she felt a grateful sense of well-being in that light, in sight of those flames, intensely grateful that she was saved from the demoniac powers of darkness. Suddenly she raised herself up.
“Jeanne,” she shrieked in a hoarse voice to the little trembling woman, who was preparing a steaming hot drink. “Jeanne! I implore you, forgive me for keeping you up such a night as this. But, in Heaven’s name, where was I to go to? Oh, that rain, that wind! It drives me mad to think of it. I had no idea that a person could be in such distress as I have suffered this night. But really, I could not stay with them any longer. As for that Betsy, oh, how I hate her.”
“Eline, I entreat you, be calm now.”
“Why did she mention Otto’s name? What right has she to mention Otto’s name? I hate her! I hate her!”
“Eline! Eline!” Jeanne cried, clasping her hands.