“Martin, if our old friendship means anything to you, I beg you to remember that she has come back to us, not for blame or reproaches, but for comfort, for love!”
“I must speak to her alone.” Dr. Barnhelm’s voice was so firm, his manner so full of an iron resolution, that Dr. Crossett could say no more. He turned to Lola with a pitiful attempt at his old lightness of manner, and without again looking back he left the room, only pausing to shut the door behind him.
She did not speak, but sat there, never for a moment taking her eyes from his face and waiting; at last he began.
“Why are you here?”
“I am here because they tell me that I am going to die.”
He had not expected this, and for a moment it broke through the stern repose of his manner.
“What?”
“So they say,” she answered calmly, “the best of them. There is something here.” She put her hand to her side.
“Your heart.”
“Did you think,” she said, her whole face lighting up with a flash of merriment, “that it was my soul?” She laughed then, quite with her old hearty laugh, at his cry of horror and at his look of mortal agony as he shrank away from her, his arms thrown up, as if to ward off some deadly peril. “They told me,” she continued, “that it was not a question of months or of years, but of hours, and so I came to you.”