"I shall never feel toward you, Felix, any differently from what I do now; I shall never feel toward another as I do toward you. I have to thank you for the best and dearest feelings that I have ever possessed and experienced. No lapse of time can change this in the least--as little as it can my resolve.
"Think kindly of me, too--without bitterness. And now farewell!--farewell forever! Irene."
He knew this letter by heart, word for word, and yet he read it through again, word for word, and when he came to the end all the pain, and defiance, and anger against himself and against her blazed up within him, as it had in the hour when he first read it. Her calmness, her gentle strength, that he used to laugh at as artificial, although he knew how free she was from all feminine tricks; her clear comprehension and her courage in asserting it: all this humiliated him anew. Then, indeed, he had comforted himself with the belief that a word from him, a look, her name merely pronounced by his lips, would demolish the barrier that she had raised up between them, as easily as one blows down a tower of cards. He had bitterly deceived himself. Neither by entreaties nor stratagems had he succeeded in again gaining access to her. He had to admit, with a new feeling of humiliation, that she was the stronger. Then at last he too had, as he believed, bound his breast in the seven-fold bands of iron, and had turned away from her. For the last time he wrote to her a short, proud, but not unkind letter, almost like an ultimatum from one power to another. He had felt some hope in regard to it for that very reason. When it remained unanswered, he acknowledged that all was over.
His face had sunk down on the little portfolio, he had closed his eyes and had given himself up, with a kind of ecstasy, to all these bitter-sweet memories. The thought that there was any one near him had passed completely out of his mind, and his dreams began to lapse deeper and deeper into the haziness that usually precedes unconsciousness.
Suddenly he roused himself with a start. A light hand had touched his shoulder. As he turned hurriedly, he saw Zenz standing behind him. She hastily stepped back again as far as the threshold of the door, which she had softly opened, and stood there in the frame thus made in the exact attitude of Jansen's "Dancing Girl," her arms thrown back and holding, instead of the tambourine, the little plate on which Felix had handed her the wine. The candle-light that streamed in from the sitting-room, and the little lamp by the side of Felix's bed, doubly illuminated the slim, youthful figure, and its shadow flickering back and forth heightened the weird charm. She stood there with her profile slightly turned upward, motionless as a statue, gazing straight before her. It was not until quite a time had elapsed, and she had begun to feel tired, that she asked, still without turning her head, whether he was not going to begin to sketch? He rose and took a step toward her, and then stood still again.
"My dear child," he said, controlling himself with difficulty, "it is too late for that. The night has grown cool--you will catch cold. Come, I thank you very much. You are a beautiful girl, and I--am not made of stone. Now go back and go to sleep. To-morrow--tomorrow we will sketch."
She gave a start, and he noticed with amazement that she began to tremble violently. She gave but one timid glance at him. Suddenly, the tears streamed from her eyes, she threw down the plate with such force that it shivered into fragments, rushed back from the threshold into the sitting-room and violently slammed the door behind her.
An instant after, he heard the bolt pushed to.
"For God's sake, child!" he cried, "what has come to you all of a sudden? What have I done to offend you? Open the door, and let us have a sensible talk together. Didn't I tell you that I had a headache? And who ever heard of such an idea as sketching in the middle of the night? Zenz! don't you hear? Won't you make it up again?"
All in vain. After wasting his entreaties and at last his anger, for some time longer, on the tightly-closed door, he was finally obliged to give it up. His blood was in a whirl; he could not conceive now how he could have repulsed the poor creature in such cold-blooded fashion. "Perhaps her anger will pass over, if I leave her to herself for a while," he thought.