"In God's name, fraülein, what are you doing here? What are you here for?" She could not speak—she sunk on his breast and sobbed wildly. He did not embrace her. "Sit down, fraülein," said he, leading her to the plain leather sofa, and then his first care was to put on his cravat again. He drew a chair near the divan and sat down opposite Athalie. "What do you want, fraülein?"
She dried her tears and looked with her radiant eyes long at the captain, as if thus to tell him why she came. Will he not understand?
No, he understood nothing. When she was obliged to break silence, she began to tremble as if with ague.
"Sir," she said, with a quivering voice, "as long as I was prosperous, you were very devoted to me. Is nothing left of that affection?"
"Fraülein," answered Katschuka, with cold politeness, "I shall always be your devoted friend. The blow which fell on you struck me too—we have both lost our all. I am in despair, for I see no means of resuscitating my hopes reduced to ashes. My profession imposes conditions on me which I can not fulfill: it is not allowed to those of us who have no private means to marry."
"I know it," said Athalie, "and it was not that which I wished to suggest to you. We are now very poor, but there may be some favorable turn in our lot. My father has a rich uncle in Belgrade whose heirs we are; at his death we shall be rich again. I will wait for you—do you wait for me. Take back your ring—take me to your mother, and let me stay with her as your betrothed. I will wait for you till you fetch me away, and will be a good daughter to your mother."
Herr Katschuka sighed so deeply that he nearly blew out the light which stood before him. "Alas, fraülein," said he, taking up the golden circle from the table, "that is, unhappily, quite impossible. You little know my mother. She is an ambitious woman—an inaccessible nature. She lives on a small pension, and loves no one. You have no idea what struggles I have had with my mother about my affaires du cœur. She is a baroness by birth, and has never consented to this union. She would not come to our marriage. I could not take you to her, fraülein—on your account I have quarreled with her."
Athalie's breast heaved feverishly, her face glowed; she seized with both her hands that of her faithless bridegroom, on which the ring was wanting, and whispered, while tears ran down her cheeks, so low that even the deaf walls could not hear, "You—you have braved your mother for me: I will defy the whole world for you!"
Katschuka dared not meet the speaking eyes of the lovely woman. He drew geometrical figures on the table with the golden circle he still held, as if he would decipher from their angles of incidence the difference between love and madness.
The girl continued in a whisper, "I am already so deeply humiliated that no shame can bring me lower; I have no more to lose in this world. If you were not here, I should have already killed myself. I belong not to myself, but to you—say, what shall I be to you? I have lost my senses, and all is the same to me; kill me, if you choose—I will not stir."