Ernestine turned away.
"Are you still determined to go?" Johannes asked after a pause.
Ernestine pondered for one moment of bitter agony. She knew only too well that he was right. But what should she do? He had no idea that her fortune was actually lost,--that she would be forced to earn her bread if she stayed as surely as if she went,--that she must labour incessantly, if she would not be a dependent beggar. Think and reflect as she might, she saw nothing before her but death in a hospital! And she would far rather perish in a foreign land than here, where all knew her, and where all would triumph over her downfall, that they had prophesied so often. No! she must fly! Like the dying bird in winter, hiding himself in his death-agony from every eye, she would conceal, in a distant quarter of the globe, her poverty, her degradation and disgrace, from the arrogant man of whom she had been so haughtily independent in the day of her prosperity.
At last she raised her head, and, with a great effort, said, "There is no choice left me. I must fulfil my contract,--I must go to America!"
Johannes had awaited her decision with breathless eagerness. He lost almost entirely his hardly-won self-control. "Ernestine," he exclaimed, seizing both her hands, "Ernestine, I plead for life and death. Do you not hear?--I tell you there is no hope for you but in absolute repose. Will you voluntarily hurry into the grave yawning at your feet? I have watched you with the eyes of a physician and a lover, and I swear to you, by my honour, that I have been continually discovering fresh cause for anxiety. You look as if you were in a decline at this moment. You have the feeble, capricious pulse and the cold hands of a victim of disease of the heart. Yesterday I heard from Frau Willmers of symptoms that filled me with alarm for you,--I grasp at the hope that they may be only the effects of your unnaturally forced manner of life. But these effects may become causes, in your present exhausted condition, causes of mortal disease, if you do not spare yourself I cannot, in duty or conscience, let you go without, hard as it is, enlightening you with regard to your physical condition. I would have spared you the cruel truth, but your determined obstinacy extorts it from me. Have some compassion upon me, and do not go before you have seen Heim. He is a man of experience, let him judge whether I am right or not. I entreat you to see him. Do, Ernestine, do, for my sake, if you would not leave me plunged in the depths of despair."
Still he held her hands firmly clasped in his. His chest heaved, his cheeks were flushed with emotion. All the strength of his passionate affection for her seethed and glowed in his imperious and imploring entreaties.
Ernestine stood pale and calm before him. No human eye could divine her thoughts.
Whilst they stood thus silently gazing into each other's eyes, there was a sound as of a carriage driving from the door below. Johannes, in his agitation, never heard it. Ernestine thought it was possibly her uncle, but she did not care. She had suddenly grown strangely indifferent to everything in the world.
"Ernestine, have you no answer for me?" asked Johannes.
"I will--reflect--until to-morrow."