"I did not come to endure ill-temper!" she murmured. "Is the boy asleep?"
"Yes, we have taken him into the sitting-room, he is coughing again and his head is burning, so I wanted to have him in a warmer room."
"Isn't it warm here?"
"Since the funnel fell out, we cannot heat these rooms; Freyer tried to fit it in, but it smokes constantly. I wrote to your Highness last month asking what should be done. Freyer, too, reported a fortnight ago that the stove ought to be repaired, and the child moved to other apartments before the cold weather set in if Your Highness approved, but--we have had no answer. Now the little boy is ill--it is beginning to be very cold."
Madeleine von Waldenau bit her lips. Yes, it was true, the letters had been written--and in the whirl of society and visits she had forgotten them.
Now the child was ill--through her fault. She entered the sitting-room. Freyer stood waiting for her in a half defiant, half submissive attitude--half master, half servant.
The bearing was unlovely, like everything that comes from a false position. It displeased the countess and injured Freyer, though she had herself placed him in this situation. It made him appear awkward and clownish.
When, with careless hand, we have damaged a work of art and perceive that instead of improving we have marred it, we do not blame ourselves, but the botched object, and the innocent object must suffer because we have spoiled our own pleasure in it. It is the same with the work of art of creation--a human being.
There are some natures which can never leave things undisturbed, but seek to gain a creative share in everything by attempts at shaping and when convinced that it would have been better had they left the work untouched, they see in the imperfect essay, not their own want of skill, but the inflexibility of the material, pronounce it not worth the labor bestowed--and cast it aside.
The countess had one of these natures, so unconsciously cruel in their artistic experiments, and her marred object was--Freyer.