"Little mother, forgive me, oh, forgive me!" begged the child, embracing her mother with her soft, warm arms. "Sometimes it seems to me as if you love him as much as I, only you do not wish to. But why do you cover your soul with a veil; why? Oh, why did you separate yourself from him? He was not very much with us without that, but still it was so lovely to expect him and to rejoice over him from one time to another!" And Maschenka burst out in violent weeping.
Natalie remained silent, but she raised the child on her knee and kissed her, ah, how tenderly! Every tear she kissed away from the round little cheeks. And Maschenka never repeated her question.
Once, in the night--Maschenka's little room was next to her mother's bedroom--the child awoke; from the adjoining room sounded soft, whimpering, difficultly restrained sobs.
* * * * * *
She wandered from Venice to Florence, from Florence to Nice, from Nice to Pau--all the European cities of refuge for uprooted existences she sought out. Nowhere could Natalie find rest. Sometimes she tried to distract herself. She never visited large entertainments, but she associated with her old friends if she met them in their different exiles, gradually slid back into the old, aristocratic atmosphere in which she had been brought up; but, strange! she no longer felt at home therein, and in her inconsolable misery a feeling of insensible ennui mingled itself.
His name never crossed her lips. Did she ever think of him? Day and night. The more she tried to accustom herself to other people the more she thought of him. How empty, how shallow, how insignificant were all the others in comparison to him; how cold, how hard!
Her health went rapidly downward. A short, nervous cough tormented her, her hands were now ice-cold, now hot with fever. Associated with that was something else strangely tormenting: she almost incessantly had the feeling that her heart was torn away from its natural place; she felt in her breast something like an uneasy fluttering, like the beating of the wings of a deathly weary, sinking bird.
She slept badly and was afraid of sleep, for always the whole spring of her love, with its entrancing charm and perfume of flowers, arose in her dreams again. Again vibrated through her soul the swelling musical, alluring call--Asbeïn. Little trifles, which in her waking condition she no longer remembered, came to her mind, and when she awoke she burned with fever and hid her face, gasping, in her pillows. She consumed herself in longing; a longing of which she was ashamed as of a sin, and which she fought as a sin.
* * * * * *
Gradually she became wearier and more calm. His picture began to obliterate itself from her memory.