"But no!" cried Eva suddenly, "what did I say of you? It is quite different for you, quite different. A question has long been hovering upon my lips; why, then, did you not become man and wife, if you loved one another? I must ask, I must; I can no longer endure the obscurity which o'ershadows everything! Life must be transparent for me, transparent--even if, like glass, it should break within my hands."
Frau Salden pressed her hand upon her heart; "We parted, he no longer shared my faith! In that faith only I could live!"
"Oh, mother, you will, you shall still be happy!"
"I cannot, now! Too much has happened since I submitted to the decree of sanctification, that must have appeared to him like doing wrong. He measures with a worldly measure--therefore, I am not worthy of him!"
"I will away to him, will entreat him, if still a particle of love for me--"
"Stay, stay, my child; never, never!"
"He shall make you happy, you! You have a prior right to him. Then I will forget everything myself, then, when you are, I will be happy."
"Foolish child! And if the past were dead; the daughter's lover to marry the mother, that is impossible, it would challenge all the scorn that in society lies ever watching for its prey. And he shall not become the victim of such scorn."
"The daughter, the daughter," said Eva, buried in quiet meditation, "she is the obstacle!"
"No, the mother alone it is, and if that weird spectre disappeared that stands between your felicity, if it vanished away into night from which it arose so inopportunely, if time with its increasing oblivion buried it--then, perhaps, once more, even if not to-morrow, nor the day after, but when a year had elapsed, the roses of love might bloom again upon this tomb."