He sighed; he felt the use of argument, the futility of entreaty.
“Are you not too proud a woman,” he said at length, “to sit in the dust, with ashes on your head, smitten to the ground by an unjust sentence?”
“I have told you. All my pride is dead; not for a year like Sully Prudhomme’s flowers, but for ever.”
“And you forgive the man who killed it?”
The blood mantled in her face.
“That is a question I cannot allow, even to you, dear Ernst.”
He was silenced.
“And you are going back to the owls and the bitterns of Schloss Lynar?” he asked, as he took his leave of her half an hour later. “What a life for you, that Swabian solitude!”
“The bitterns and owls are very good company, and at least they never offend me.”
“Let me be as fortunate!” he said with a sigh. “I may return to-morrow.”