Ursula slowly lifted her eyes to his excited face.
“At the ‘Hemel,’” she said, firmly. “Vrouw Zaniksen was ill again. And her baby, too. They were absolutely destitute. So I went.”
“The baby is dead,” burst out Otto. “It is a case of malignant diphtheria. I met the doctor just now. He warned me.” The father sprang forward, placing himself between wife and child. “Leave the room!” he cried. “Don’t come back to-day. Leave the child to me!” He caught the boy so violently to his breast that Ottochen began to cry. Ursula hurried away, unresisting, with that wail in her ears.
A few hours later, when they were alone together, she said, very meekly, “Forgive me, Otto.”
He looked up wearily.
“I forgive you this,” he answered. Then, with an effort as of one who breaks through a hedge, “But not,” he added, “the having married me when you did not love me.”
She was a very proud woman, yet in this moment of his misery she knelt down by his side. “Dear husband,” she said, “if I wronged you it was in innocence. How, except by loving, can a woman’s heart learn love?”
Otto sighed, crushing down the accusation that she had learned the lesson since, but from another teacher.
“Ursula,” he said, “there is a foreboding in my heart to-night of coming trouble. God grant it prove only a foolish fancy. But, if not, then let us at least lighten each other’s load. Ursula, look into my eyes. Tell me, dearest, that it is not true, this story of your hunting for a husband, of your marrying me because others had drawn back!”
“It is not true,” she said, bitterly, still kneeling, but with scornfully averted glance.