And why should he not? The quiet weeping turned into a merry waltz. "There he is! Now the fun will begin"—the words rang triumphantly from the "Red Eagle Tavern" in the distance, into his sleep.
But the quiet steps and the quiet voices were real, and they continued; and there was a dead body in the next room, the beautiful, dead body of a child. The breach between the parents had made the child ill; pain at her father's savage attack on her mother had broken her little heart.
When the new day sent its first glimmer of light through his window, Apollonius rose from the chair on which he had sat ever since his return to his room. There was something solemn in the manner in which he stood upright. He seemed to say to himself: "If it is as I fear, I must act for us both; it is for that that I am a man. I have sworn to uphold my father's house and his honor, and I will do what I have sworn to do, in every sense."
Fritz Nettenmair woke at last. He knew nothing more of the dream-scenes of the night. He only knew that his wife had magnified the "spy's" desire to be coddled into an illness so that she might have an excuse for being together with "him." He began to think of how he should put an end to this coddling. With this idea in his mind he stepped through the door and stood—before a dead body. A shudder ran over him. The dead child lay there before him like a sign to warn him: "You shall not go farther on the way that you have taken!" There the child lay, his child, and she was dead. The child stood before him, an accuser and a witness. She bore witness for her mother. The mother had known that she was dying; and at the deathbed of her child not even the lowest creature would do what he had thought her capable of doing. The child accused him. He had struck a mother at the side of her child's deathbed. No man can do that, not even if the woman were guilty. And she was not; the child testified to that. Now he knew that the pale, dumb countenance of the mother had cried: "You will kill the child; don't strike!" And he had struck nevertheless. He had killed the child. That thought fell on him like a thunder-bolt, so that he collapsed before the child's bed, across which he had struck her mother, before the bed in which his child had died because he struck her mother.
There he lay a long time. The bolt that struck him down had lighted the past with cruel distinctness: he had seen them both innocent whom he persecuted. And there was no guilt but his. He alone had built up the misery that lay crushingly upon him, load on load, guilt on guilt. But after all it was not yet too late! He heard his wife's quiet step in the hall coming toward the door of the room. He heard the door open. If little Annie had been standing in the door of the bedroom then, she would have smiled. He meant to be kind, he meant to be again as he had been before little Annie had been taken sick. He held out his hand to the woman as she entered. She saw him and started. She was as white as little Annie's body, even her lips, usually so crimson, were white. Her neck, her beautiful arms, her soft hands were white, her eyes that were always so shining, were dull. All the life in her had withdrawn to the deepest recesses of her heart and there wept for her dead child. When she saw him her whole body began to tremble. In two steps she stood between him and the body; as if she still wanted to protect the child from him. And yet it was not that. Neither fear nor dread quivered about her little mouth; it was firmly closed. It was a different feeling that drew her beautifully arched eyebrows together and flamed in her usually so gentle eyes. He saw: this was no longer the woman who had spoken melting words of peace; she had died with her child in the terrible night just past. The woman who stood before him was no longer the mother who looked at him with hope, whose child he could save; it was the mother whose child he had killed. It was a mother who drove the murderer away from the holy place where her child lay. He spoke—Oh, if he had but spoken yesterday! Yesterday she had yearned for the words; today she did not hear them.
"Give me your hand, Christiane," he said. She drew her hand back convulsively, as if he had already touched her. "I have been mistaken," he continued; "I will believe you, I see myself; I will not do it again! You are better than I."
"The child is dead," she said, and even her voice sounded pale. "Don't leave me without comfort in my terrible fear. If I can become different I can only do so now, and if you give me your hand and raise me up," said the man. She looked at the child, not at him.
"The child is dead," she repeated. Did that mean it was indifferent to her what became of him now that his improvement could no longer save the child? The man half raised himself; he gripped her hand with a strength full of fear and held it fast.
"Christiane," he sobbed wildly, "Here I lie like a worm. Don't tread on me! Don't tread on me! For God's sake, have mercy. I could never forget it, if I had lain here like a worm in vain. Think of it! For God's sake, think of it; you have me in your hand now. You can make of me what you will. I hold you responsible. You will be to blame for anything that may come after this."—She had finally succeeded in withdrawing her hand from his grasp; she held it away from herself as if she looked at it with loathing because he had touched it.
"The child is dead," she said. He understood that she said: "Between me and the murderer of my child there can never be anything more in common, neither on earth nor in heaven."