Everhard looked out on the lake, and seemed not to have heard her last words. Suddenly he said; "you have probably a portrait of your husband: Will you show it to me?"
She took off a delicately worked Venetian chain, which she wore round her neck, opened the locket which was fastened to it, and handed it to him.
He gazed at it for several minutes, and then silently gave it back to her. After a long pause he said, "Was it a youthful attachment?"
"Not quite what is generally so called. I was, certainly very young when I made his acquaintance. Before I saw him no man had ever made any impression on me; but I hardly knew how dearly I loved him till a month after our marriage took place. I only learnt to appreciate him fully during the short period of our union, and my love grew into a passion when I had lost him for ever. Had you known him, you would have become friends; he never had an enemy."
Everhard had risen and was pacing the room with noiseless steps. He stopped before the table and took up a volume which projected from a travelling bag. They were Lenau's poems. On the fly leaf was inscribed the name of Lucille.
"Does this poet please you?" asked the doctor.--
"I hardly know whether he repels, or attracts me; and although I generally have a clear perception in such things, yet I cannot quite discover in his thoughts, what is genuine and what is artificial. He suffered much, yet it often appears to me, as if by continually irritating them, he purposely re-opened his wounds. I hardly know why I took this book on my journey; perhaps as a sort of consolation."
"You seek consolation with a poet so weary of life?"
"Why not? He died mad. When I think of that death, the grief for my husband's seems easier to bear, for what a glorious death was granted to him! Young, loved by all, he died heroically for his country! I carry his image undefaced in my heart, not distorted by illness, and the last agony, nor estranged from me by insanity. How dreadful must it not be to see one dear to us deprived of his senses. Do you not feel the same?"
He was silent for a moment, and then replied by another question: "So you would have thought the death of your husband desirable, if he had been doomed to life long insanity?"