Part 14

Hilda was trembling with apprehension. "What is it, Carl? You can tell me. Let me help you bear it."

"No! no! I must bear it alone. I must take my dark shadow from your young life. I ought not to have come. I should have fled. But love makes me a coward."

"But I love you, Carl," she said gently.

"And I have missed you--dreadfully, dreadfully!"

He rolled his eyes wildly. "You torture me!" he exclaimed, seizing her hand in a dead man's clutch. "How CAN I speak?"

Hilda's heart seemed to stand still. She was pale to the lips, and he could see, even in the darkness, her eyes grow and startle.

"What is it?" she murmured. "You know I--can bear anything for you."

"Not that tone," he groaned. "Reproach me! Revile me! Be harsh, scornful--but not those tender accents."

He felt her hand become cold and he saw terror in her eyes. "Forgive me," she said humbly. "I don't know what to say or do. I--you look so strange. It makes me feel all queer inside. Won't you tell me, please?"

He noted with artistic satisfaction that the band was playing passionate love-music with sobs and sad ecstasies of farewell embraces in it. He kissed her, then drew back. "No," he groaned. "Those lips are not for me, accursed that I am."

She was no longer looking at him, but sat gazing straight ahead, her shoulders bent as if she were crouching to receive a blow. He began in a low voice, and, as he spoke, it rose or fell as his words and the distant music prompted him. "Mine has been a luckless life," he said. "I have been a football of destiny, kicked and flung about, hither and yon. Again and again I have thought in my despair to lay me down and die. But something has urged me on, on, on. And at last I met you."

He paused and groaned--partly because it was the proper place, partly with vexation. Here was a speech to thrill, yet she sat there inert, her face a stupid blank. He was not even sure that she had heard.

"Are you listening?" he asked in a stern aside, a curious mingling of the actor and the stage manager.

"I--I don't know," she answered, startling. "I feel so--so--queer. I don't seem to be able to pay attention." She looked at him timidly and her chin quivered. "Don't you love me any more?"

"Love you? Would that I did not! But I must on--my time is short. How can you say I do not love you when my soul is like a raging fire?"

She shook her head slowly. "Your voice don't feel like it," she said. "What is it? What are you going to say?"

He sighed and looked away from her with an irritated expression. "Little stupid!" he muttered--she didn't appreciate him and he was a fool to expect it. But "art for art's sake"; and he went on in tones of gentle melancholy. "I love you, but fate has again caught me up. I am being whirled away. I stretch out my arms to you--in vain. Do you understand?" It exasperated him for her to be so still--why didn't she weep?

She shook her head and replied quietly:

"No--what is it? Don't you love me any more?"

"Love has nothing to do with it," he said, as gently as he could in the irritating circumstances. "My mysterious destiny has--"

"You said that before," she interrupted. "What is it? Can't you tell me so that I can understand?"

"You never loved me!" he cried bitterly.

"You know that isn't so," she answered. "Won't you tell me, Carl?"

"A specter has risen from my past--I must leave you--I may never return--"

She gave a low, wailing cry--it seemed like an echo of the music. Then she began to sob--not loudly, but in a subdued, despairing way. She was not conscious of her grief, but only of his words--of the dream vanished, the hopes shattered.

"Never?" she said brokenly.

"Never!" he replied in a hoarse whisper.

Mr. Feuerstein looked down at Hilda's quivering shoulders with satisfaction. "I thought I could make even her feel," he said to himself complacently. Then to her in the hoarse undertone: "And my heart is breaking."