"No, my friend," said he, "it was an error of your heart, a human weakness, which cannot last in the presence of death--the end of all human joys and sorrows. What, did you intend to leave him alone in the hardest trial of his life? Can you really doubt that he will be truly miserable for the first time, when he loses you? The old disease has attacked him again, but would he have instantly placed himself in your care, if he had not felt that he could only be cured with the aid and under the protection of the old, sacred, eternal powers of true love and faith? And must he now find an empty house, a cold hearth, darkness around him, and the threshold from which hostile spectres are wont to recoil, no longer guarded by good household spirits? And will she, who is about to inflict this pain upon him, attempt to delude herself and him with the fancy that she is making a sacrifice for his sake? For her own sake, she ought to say, for the sake of her pride, her jealous, offended heart, that cannot endure the thought of not making this beloved husband forget every thing beside itself.
"Forgive these harsh words, dear Leah," he pleaded, approaching her and trying to take her hand. "If you were not the woman, whom I have so heartily rejoiced that he obtained for a wife, a woman as high-hearted and brave as himself, perhaps you would be right in what you are doing. One would scarcely dissuade a woman of the ordinary stamp, from making the attempt to bring her husband back to her, by leaving him for a time. But you, dear Leah, ought not to allow any petty arts, any sensitive pouting and reserve, to come between yourself and him. If he has caused you pain, has he not suffered most bitterly himself? Would he have left you again now, if he had not felt how it must torture you to see his condition? He--that I know--feels that he could not be cured anywhere so quickly as near you. If you had heard how he talked to me about you--oh! dear Leah, no man has ever struggled more honestly against the powers of evil, and shall his natural champion, from whose presence he might draw new strength, desert her colors?
"Come. Compose yourself. Turn your eyes away from that glorified face--it moves you too deeply. Oh! dearest Leah, you're not the first who has learned from the dead, what we owe to the living. I've sat in this very chair through many an hour of bitter conflict, when I knew not what to do; and when it has sometimes happened that my dear wife and I did not agree, we came quietly up here, first I, and ere long she, and we soon saw clearly what we ought to do. You know yourself, dear friend, every thing in life is not as plain as a sum in arithmetic, where we only need to write down the fraction that is left over. Therefore we must question our dead, our immortal ones, and they will not leave us long in doubt about the answer."
He had taken both her hands, and was gazing down at her with a look of the tenderest love. She suddenly rose and threw her arms around his neck. "Dear--true--only friend," was all she could falter amid her sobs.
After a time some one knocked gently at the door, and Reginchen's voice said that her father was going and wanted to take leave of Reinhold. As there was no sound from the attic room, the little wife then opened the door and timidly entered.
Reinhold gently released himself from Leah, who was still clinging to him in violent agitation. "Do you take charge of her now," he said to Reginchen, "we shall keep her."
"I knew it, Reinhold," replied the little wife, smiling through her tears; "you don't talk often, but when you do speak, you can move mountains. Has he turned your heart, you naughty woman, when you wouldn't be touched by my fondest words? Now I find her here on the most affectionate terms with my own husband, and must get jealous of my only friend forsooth, in my old age."
Long after Reinhold had left the house and was on his way to the railway station with his father-in-law, who understood nothing about the matter, the two friends remained clasped in each other's arms, Leah seated in the lap of Reginchen, who often pressed her to her heart with almost motherly tenderness. They said nothing, but leaned their heads against each other and looked up to the bracket from which the dead man's gentle face gazed down upon them in pure and calm majesty.
CHAPTER VII.
Meantime the two friends had spent their day in a somewhat grave mood.