"What a pity that I did not know him at that time," said she, and then added, shrugging her shoulders, "at that time he would scarcely have wished to have anything to do with me."
When Felix returned from his ride he found in the vestibule, among other letters arrived in the morning, an old newspaper in a wrapper addressed in very poor writing to his wife.
He looked at it, read the post-mark, Marienbad--he recognized Juanita's writing. His heart throbbed violently. The idea of suppressing the paper flashed through his mind; he seized it, then a kind of fury with himself overcame him. He was weary of striving to prevent his last great humiliation, and like one in deep water who, when the waves reach up to his throat, weary of exertion, defiantly flings himself into the horrible element in order to make an end of it, so he sent the paper to his wife himself, by a servant. Then he went to his room. He seated himself at his writing-desk, and resting his head on one hand, with the other mechanically smoothing a newspaper which lay before him, he waited, half with dread, half with longing, like a criminal condemned to death, for the message which should summon him to the gallows.
Then he heard a fearful, piercing scream. "Ah!" said he, "she knows it!" Will she come to him? There is a rustle in the corridor, the door of the room is flung open, and Linda enters, or rather bursts in. Her face is distorted; a lock of loosened hair hangs over her ashy pale cheeks.
"It is a calumny, it cannot be true!" she cried, and threw the paper which Juanita had sent her before him upon the table.
He is silent. Her vanity believes in him until the last moment; has expected an explanation from him, but he is silent.
She grasps his shoulder. "For God's sake is it true that you were sentenced to two years' imprisonment for forgery?"
Then he murmurs so softly that his voice seems only an echo, "Yes!"
She staggers back, remains speechless for a moment, and then bursts into not convulsive, not hysterical, no, only indescribably mocking laughter. "And I was proud to bear the name of Lanzberg," she murmurs. "Now at last I know how I came by that honor." She feels not one iota of pity for the mortally wounded man who has quivered at each of her words as beneath the blow of a whip; she feels nothing at all but her immense humiliation. The wish to pain him as much as possible burns within her, and for a moment she pauses in her speech because she can think of nothing that is cutting and venomous enough. "And if you had even informed me of the situation, had given me the choice whether I would bear a branded name or not," she at length begins again.
Then he who had until this moment sat there perfectly silent, with anxiously raised shoulders, his hand over his eyes, raises his head wearily. "Linda, I begged your mother to tell you of my disgrace--she assured me that she had done so. On my word of----" he pauses, a horrible smile parts Linda's lips.