There was a great contrast between this room and the dark living room from which he came. The moonlight streamed in through the bedroom windows. The maid had put up freshly washed and starched white curtains which gave a peculiar light. The cheap lace looked like marble openwork artistically carved with a fine chisel. The moonlight lay clear and dazzling, directly across the head of Maria's bed, which had been moved out to the middle of the room. The faded blue-figured pillow case, and the feather puff of the same color shimmered white, overlaid with a faint, shadowy tracery, as if made expressly to throw into relief the noble beauty of Maria's head. As Stephen Fausch entered, he cast a timid glance at his dead wife: It was wonderful to see her lying on the bed as if a halo shone around her. He closed the door quietly behind him, folded his arms, and looked once more at the bed. Then he stepped to the bedside, and stroked one of the dead woman's eyelids that had not quite closed yet, looked at her thoughtfully once more, then lifted her arms, which were bare almost to the shoulders and had been hidden under the bedclothes, and laid them full length on the coverlet. Thus he made Maria appear as if sleeping in endless peace, but he also arranged her beautiful form so that its loveliness was seen more fully than before. And when he had done all this, he stood once more with folded arms by the bed and said aloud, quite calmly: "Yes, you were beautiful, you!"
The moonlight streamed over the bed and over the dead woman, over her pure, white brow, her cheeks, her delicate nose and her almost transparent eyelids and then over her arms that lay so peacefully relaxed on the bed coverings. Her face and the pure skin of her arms were bathed in light as if in clear water. But something glistened like fine pure gold in the light, and here and there outshone it. On Maria's eyelids, above her brow, beside her cheeks, about her throat, and even where the bedclothes scarcely hid her breast. It was the dead woman's gleaming hair and eyelashes.
"Yes, you were beautiful," said Stephen Fausch. His eye wandered over her form with an observant and thoughtful expression similar to the look he had worn a few days before, when he was studying the beauty of the bronze figure. But together with the strangely happy calm with which he enjoyed his wife's beauty, the bull-like stubbornness and a self-willed indifference plainly appeared on his brow and in his bearing. This he had constantly shown to Maria, ever since he had discovered her own and his brother's unfaithfulness. He had in fact treated her as a servant. And yet Maria could have told how he had formerly adored her, as one person rarely adores another. This she had seen long ago when he used to visit her in her native village, which was a couple of hours distant from his own house; he would come almost daily, in all weathers, and often at night, in case he had had no free time during the day! His persistence had finally prevailed and won her consent. And afterward, during the years of their married life, before Ludwig had come home! Although he was a rough fellow and had his bad times, yet he had petted and indulged her--for he had loved her! But--ever since the trouble with his brother, he had, as it were, pushed her out of his way with his heavy shoes, and yet he held her once more to her duties and kept her close to him, making her feel that he was the master, whose heavy hand could drive her where he chose. Even now, when she was dead, he would not let himself feel either pity or grief for her; only the strange joy that he took in her beauty found its place side by side with the sullen resentment that he felt against her. This joy was so great, that after a while, he went slowly out into the passageway and called his maid, beckoned to her, and with his ugly hand, pointed toward the bed.
"See how beautiful she is," and smoothed a fold of the coverlet that seemed to him to break the perfection of the picture.
The maid began to sob, indeed she had been crying all day. She was of medium height, had a withered, sinewy neck, very red cheeks, and kind-looking, watery blue eyes. She was poorly dressed, but more neatly than the smith, or even than Maria when she was living. In the midst of her weeping, she nodded to the smith, to show that she too thought Maria beautiful; but when she saw no signs of grief in him, she stopped crying in surprise, almost in fear. Shaking her head, she looked furtively, and from one side at the smith, and soon went out of the room, as if she were uncomfortable near him. Then Fausch too left the room and slept that night on a leather covered couch in the living room. He did not concern himself about the baby, in fact he had not troubled himself about it since the maid had taken it into her care.
The next day he attended to what remained to be done for his wife and for her last journey to Waltheim. As he was fulfilling the legal requirements concerning his dead wife, it occurred to him that he might save himself a journey by arranging what was necessary for the child at the same time. So he went to the registrar's office and informed the clerk, in one breath, of Maria's death and of the child's birth. The clerk, a pale young peasant, who had not been long in the place, and whose bad health hindered him from earning his living by hard work, wrote down without delay the details concerning Maria: Her name, the date of her birth, of her death and so forth. Then they came to the child. "On this day and date was born ..."
The clerk looked up; as a newcomer he had already a nervous manner, and besides, the smith stood as close to him as if he had to guide his hand in writing.
Stephen Fausch gave the child's name: "Cain Fausch."
"Aren't you making a mistake?" asked the clerk.
"Cain," repeated the smith. His eye rested steadily on the small blank spot in the register, where the name was to stand, as if he were nailing it in place.