Impossible--it was a fevered dream, an agonising fevered dream--it could not be so.
What then has happened? With convulsive terror she thought of possibility after possibility--nothing remained for her but the dull weight of dismal, fearful foreboding.
Inquiringly she looked up at Kalzow; he shrugged his shoulders.
It was true, then, she was disgraced before everybody. With a heartrending cry she sank into her mother's arms.
"I shall follow you, mother!" cried she, in a tone of despairing resignation.
She turned towards Blanden; he came up to her, pressed her hands--she saw a tear in his eye.
"Good-night, Eva," said he, with overflowing emotion, in a suffocating voice.
"Good-night"--she felt as in a dream, where, wandering through subterranean passages, one door is shut noisily after another, and the sneck closes clatteringly--ever farther on into the deep abyss of night.
And no word of elucidation--all shared that secret--all kept silence, even he--was that his love?
Pressing her hand upon her heart, she followed her mother; she looked round once more.