"You ought to have said so at once," grumbled the latter. "That's quite a different matter. Sit down two minutes, I only want to get my hat. The child in there needn't know anything about it yet."
An instant after he came out of Adèle's room, and not a word, not an expression of his grave face betrayed any remembrance that he had been so rudely interrupted in his bacchanalian levity. When they were sitting together in the droschky, whose driver incited by Mohr's double fare, drove at a furious pace, he said to his silent, gloomy companion:
"Among all the painful and unpleasant tasks expected of us physicians, nothing is more sad, at least to me, than to do my duty in such a case as this. Every one owes Nature a death. But to arouse a poor fool, who thinks he's settled his debt and compel him to count out the whole sum again, because he didn't pay it the first time in the current coin of the country, is really a contemptible business, and enough to disgust one with the whole trade. I've been called in on such occasions four times, and amid all the rubbing and manipulating, have always wished my efforts might be vain."
"I hope this time, you'll--"
"You need have no anxiety. The professional spirit is stronger than philosophy or humanity. Tiat experimentum et pereat mundus, that's in this case: vivat a poor creature who has nothing to live for, but every reason to curse existence. Christiane! Have you any suspicion what induced her to do this? To be sure, we ought to remember that she has a fancy for taking French leave of pleasant company. Is anything known of her circumstances? An unhappy love affair? But you're like the statue of the Commandant!"
"Pardon me if I'm a poor substitute for the society you've just left," faltered Mohr. "I--my nerves are no longer the strongest; this has taken a violent hold upon me; between ourselves, Marquard, this girl, who seemed by no means attractive to the rest of you, I loved very dearly."
"My poor boy!" murmured the physician, as in the darkness he took Mohr's cold hand and pressed it gently. Then no more was said. Mohr threw himself back in one corner of the carriage and buried his face in his handkerchief. When they alighted at the timber-yard, Marquard saw that it was flushed and wet with tears.
The little artist was standing at the open door of the housel "At last!" he exclaimed. "We're nearly dead with anxiety and impatience. However there really seems to be some hope. Leah thinks she's beginning to breathe. Turn to the right, if you please. We've laid her on my bed in the studio."
"Stay outside, Heinrich," said Marquard, "and I don't need the young lady either. I shall manage better alone." He gave a few directions, said a soothing word to Leah, who was gazing at him with a strangely intent expression, like that of a somnambulist, and then proceeded to his difficult task.
The three were now once more together in the very room where, a few hours before they had chatted so comfortably around the tea table. But no one broke the silence. The artist had seated himself opposite to the bust of his dead wife, and seemed to be questioning the mute features about the eternal secret of life and death. Mohr, with his hands crossed behind his back, paced restlessly up and down the room like a caged lion, pausing at every dozen steps as if to listen. Leah sat at the window, gazing out into the storm. She did not move a limb, her eyes were closed, but not for a single second did she lose her consciousness of what was passing around her. The cause of this paralysis was neither bodily exhaustion nor the stupor that often follows great excitement. When she removed the clothing from the stranger's motionless body to wrap it in blankets, she had found under the wet corsets a small, leather case, fastened with a red ribbon. Thinking it might contain a letter which would give some cause for her mad act, or a card with her name, which Mohr had not thought to tell them, she opened it, unnoticed by the others. It contained neither letter nor card, but a photograph stained, to be sure, by the water, but in which she nevertheless recognized at the first glance--Edwin. We need add nothing farther to explain why she sat so absently at the window hour after hour.