CHAPTER III.
MELANCHOLY.
One bud after another opened on the rose-tree. Timar did nothing but watch the development and blossoming of these rosebuds. When one of them opened he broke it off, put it in his pocket-book, and dried it there on his breast. This was a melancholy task. All the tenderness lavished on him by Noémi could not cure his sadness. The woman's sweet caresses were burdensome to him. And yet Noémi could have comforted him at the cost of a single word; but modest reserve kept back that word, and it never occurred to Michael to question her.
It is characteristic of those whose mind is diseased to occupy themselves only with the past.
At last Noémi said to Timar, "Michael, it would be good for you to go away from here—out into the world. Everything here arouses mournful memories in you; you must go away to get well. I have done your packing, and the fruit-dealers will fetch you away to-morrow."
Michael did not answer, but expressed his assent by a nod. The dangerous illness he had passed through had affected his nerves; and the situation he had brought upon himself, the blow which had struck him, had worked on those nerves so painfully, that he was forced to acknowledge that a longer stay would lead to madness or suicide.
Suicide? There is no easier road out of a difficult position: failure, despair, mental conflict, blasted hopes, heart-pangs, fantastic bugbears, the memory of losses, phantoms of the beloved dead—all these are parts of a bad dream. One touch on the trigger of the pistol, and one awakes. Those who remain behind can go on with the dream.
On the last evening, Michael, Noémi, and Therese sat all three after supper on the little bench outside, and Michael remembered that they had once been four together there.
"What can that moon really be?" asked Noémi.
Michael's hand, which Noémi held in hers, was clinched with sudden violence.
"My evil star," he thought to himself. "Oh, if I had never seen it, that red crescent!"