"Natalie," said he, reproachfully, "do you forget the night you and I heard Fidelio together? And you think I shall regret ever having seen you."
She smiled to herself. Her hand clasped a certain envelope that he could not see.
Then the time came for their seeking out Anneli. But as they were going through the twilight of a corridor she stopped him, and her usually frank eyes were downcast. She took out that envelope.
"Dearest," she said, almost inaudibly, "this is something I wish you to read after Anneli and I am gone. I think you will—you will not misunderstand me. If you think—it is—it is too bold, you will remember that I have—no mother to
advise me; and—and you will be kind, and not answer. Then I shall know."
Ten minutes thereafter he was standing alone, in the broad daylight outside, reading the lines she had written early that morning, and in every one of them he read the firm and noble character of the woman he loved. He was almost bewildered by the proud-spirited frankness of her message to him; and involuntarily he thought of the poor devil of a poet in the garret who spoke of his faithful friend and his worthless mistress.
"One is fortunate indeed to have a friend like Evelyn," he said to himself. "But when and has, besides that, the love of a woman like this—then the earth holds something worth living for."
He looked at the brief, proud, pathetic message again—"I am your wife: why should you go alone?" It was Natalie herself speaking in every word.