"The physician begins to be anxious; there is not much to say. Entire relaxation of the nervous system,--want of vitality,--no love of life----"
"No love of life! Nonsense!" exclaims Goswyn. "Life must be made dear again for her."
Suddenly they hear a low rustle. The door leading into Erika's bedroom opens; on the threshold stands a slender figure in a long white dressing-gown, her hair loosely knotted at the back of her head.
What is there in the poor thin face, in the large melancholy eyes, that suddenly reminds Goswyn of the unformed, timid child whom he met on the staircase in Bellevue Street on the evening of Erika's arrival in Berlin?
"Goswyn," she stammers, gazing at him, "you here? What are you doing here?"
He goes to her and takes her hand. "I heard that you were ill, and I came to help your grandmother to carry you back to your home."
Her pale lips quiver, and her weak slender form sways uncertainly, and then--before he is conscious of it himself--he does what he ought to have done years before: he takes her in his arms and kisses her forehead.
A wondrous sensation of perfect content, of blissful freedom from all desire, overcomes her; she clasps her emaciated arms about his neck, and murmurs, "Goswyn, do you really want me now,--now, after all the pain I have given you?"
He only clasps her closer to his heart. He, who for years has been dallying with opportunity because his courage failed him in view of little obstacles which would never have daunted another man, now leaps at a bound over the first real obstacle in his way. "What!" he cries, "do you suppose I blame you for that folly, Erika? No; for me your illness began weeks before it did for the physicians."
Meanwhile, he has tenderly conducted her to a lounge, upon which, exhausted as she is, she sinks down.