Even then he would not look at her; dared not, because of that weak courage, but answered swiftly:
"Yes. It will only be for a time, until I can see you and not blurt out the story of my love at every breath, a story which could not but be hateful to you. But you will let me come back then, will you not? You will still let me be your friend?"
She did not reply, she could not. Stolliker's words were dancing before her excited vision in letters of fire:
"If you lose sight of him, everything will fail."
Was she to keep her oath to her dead lover, or was she to let this man escape? She knew but too well that everything depended upon her.
For one moment her heart cried out madly:
"Why should you sacrifice everything that is womanly and honest in your nature because of your revenge?" And then she understood that she was lying to herself, deceiving her own soul in order to save herself from her own loathing.
And all that time he was standing there staring through the window, thinking of what he was giving up, of the loneliness of life when he should be able to see her no longer, and of the necessity that demanded it. He did not even hear her rise, did not see the awful, strained pallor of her countenance as she approached him, step by step, as if each one were attached with the most ghastly pain, but he did feel the touch of her fingers upon his arm, did hear the sweet tones of her lovely voice, hoarse and dulled as it was:
"It is necessary that you should go—until I—send you?"