Then she raised her head, and rested her large, feverish, shining eyes upon him. "I forgive you," cried she with failing voice, and starting back from him. "I forgive you, but go--go--leave me."
His eyes met hers.
"You have nothing to forgive me," said he gravely, almost sternly. "But if you promise solemnly, very solemnly, to be very much ashamed of yourself I will forgive you."
She stared at him without understanding, confused, stupefied; then he took hold of her dress; he was frightened to feel how cold and wet it was.
"For God's sake!" cried he, violently, and with efficacious inconsiderateness, "before everything else see that you take off these wet things; there is time enough to speak of your mad freak later." With that he picked her up and carried her across, as he had done on the day of Linda's arrival.
She did not resist him. At first she did not even know what had happened to her; then, when near the castle, she suddenly heard a gentle voice, kindly and reprovingly, as one speaks to an imprudent child, "Why, Snowdrop!" she looked around; this sudden exclamation recalled her to reality, which had been far from her confused mind. "How comes Sempaly here?" she asked, hastily.
"We were at the fire in Billwitz together," said Erwin, without standing still. "He returned with me."
"Fire--Billwitz----" murmured Elsa, then she trembled violently and burst into a flood of tears of relief.
A little later Elsa lay in her pretty white bed feverish and hoarse, but with a light heart, and her soul full of a sweet mixture of remorse, happiness and shame. Erwin sat near her, and tried to be angry with her, and yet was only worried. But Scirocco had found that this was not the evening to take tea in Steinbach, and had gone away.
And while Elsa with touching conscientiousness now confessed all the particulars of her hideous mistrust and her obstinate jealousy, and upon Erwin's lips, at first closed sternly, a smile had become more and more plain, Linda sat in her boudoir with scornfully curved lips and angry, staring eyes, which thirsted for spite. She wore a white gown, whose hem was slightly soiled, only as if it had perhaps brushed the dew from a flowerbed. On her breast rested a bunch of dark red roses. Some of them were withered, and others began to fade, others still to fall, and the red petals strewed her gown. To her excited gaze they seemed like drops of blood. She shuddered at sight of them; she shuddered to-day at everything, even at herself. Her whole being rose against the huge wrong which had been done her--the wrong which forced her to be wicked. That there was another outlet for her she did not acknowledge; that it was beautiful to forgive, she did not understand; that one has duties even toward those who have sinned against one, she did not believe.