"Not so," said Frau von Salden, shaking her head; "you poor, good child."
"You would conceal it from me--he is your enemy! Therefore you were so afraid, when you saw him--therefore he grew so pale at sight of you! Has he done anything to injure you; has he offended you deeply? Oh, he shall come and beg for forgiveness, upon his knees he shall lie before you; I promise it! So much power my wishes still possess over him--oh, yes, he loves me still; how could his love have vanished in one night! I will tell him that whosoever has offended my mother has no right to my love, that he must first win it by atonement and her pardon. I am still his little forest-fairy; he is still within my magic spell; when my little flower bells ring, let him struggle as he may, he must obey me! But when he comes and renounces his enmity and entreats you for pardon, little mother, then you will grant it him, will you not, perfectly, entirely, without any remains of the old ill-feeling?"
"You are dreaming," said Frau Salden, while she stared with a confused gaze at her daughter's countenance, and stroked her hair with a loving hand.
"You doubt that I still retain my power over him? Oh, I may look very ugly today, quite spoiled with tears; I am not always so, little mother, he knows that I have my good days, too. He thought me good-looking yonder upon the weeping willow-hill! Oh, heavens! The weeping willows bent down over our young love whispering misfortune, but you will talk to one another, of course! Everything will yet turn out well! Oh, those days were so beautiful, so ethereally beautiful! Have mercy, my mother! If it costs you one word to bring them back again, then speak that word; even if it be hard for you. I may acknowledge that great happiness for me depends upon it; control your anger!"
Frau Salden looked at her child with intense emotion.
"It is not that--if it only were so! Nothing would be too hard for me--no word, no deed--if I could found your happiness by them! But that power is not given to me; therefore we are both unhappy! But now go to sleep, my Eva! I am well; I will get up; but you have not closed an eye! How pale you look--where are the roses which yesterday bloomed so freshly in your cheeks? Go to sleep, only for a few hours--it will bring peace, rest, and courage! Who could endure life without sleep? It would be an uninterrupted agony; all pictures would score their burning impress in our brains. Sleep shrouds them beneath the softening veil, and we can confound them with our dreams."
"No, mother! that I can never do! If it were all but a dream my soul would still bleed to death from it."
Frau Salden had risen from her bed; she felt really better; only the internal conflict still remained imprinted in her features.
With unenvious pleasure, Eva contemplated her mother, as she sat before the mirror, in order to arrange her hair flowing down abundantly; she thought herself less beautiful, less bountifully endowed by Nature, than was the mother over whom years had passed tracelessly away; could she compete with that splendid figure, with that nobility, those decided movements, that charm of her fully-developed form?
She could not help it; she must fold her mother to her heart with words of glowing flattery.