Part 20 (1/2)

Finally they sat down at the table. Eleanore was quite pleased to see the three men whom she liked so much gathered together in this way.

There was a feeling of grat.i.tude in her heart toward each one of them.

But she was also hungry: she ate four sandwiches, one right after the other. When she saw that Daniel was not eating, she stepped up behind his chair, bent over him so far that the loose flowing hair from her temples tickled his face, and said: ”Are you embarra.s.sed? Or don't you like the way the sausages have been prepared? Would you like something else?”

Daniel evaded the questions; he was out of sorts. And yet in the bottom of his heart the contact with the girl made a pleasing impression on him; it was in truth almost a saving impression. For his thoughts continually and obstinately returned to the girl who had fled, and whose presence he missed without exactly wis.h.i.+ng that she were at the table with the others.

Benda spoke of the political changes that might, he feared, take place because of the death of Gambetta. Jordan, who always took a warm interest in the affairs of the Fatherland, made a number of true and humane remarks about the tense feeling then existing between France and Germany, whereupon the door to Gertrude's room opened and Gertrude herself stood on the threshold.

Deep silence filled the room; they all looked at her.

Strangely enough, she was not wearing the dress she had on at the concert. She had put on the Nile green dress, the one in which Daniel saw her for the first time. Jordan and Eleanore hardly noticed the change; they were too much absorbed in the expression on the girl's face. Daniel was also astonished; he could not look away.

Her expression had become softer, freer, brighter. The unrest in which her face had heretofore been clouded had disappeared. Even the outlines of her face seemed to have changed: the arch of her eyebrows was higher, the oval of her cheeks more delicate.

She leaned against the door; she even leaned her head against the door.

Her left hand, hanging at her side, seemed indolent, limp, indifferent.

Her right hand was pressed against her bosom. Standing in this position, she studied the faces of those who were sitting at the table, while a timid and gentle smile played about her lips.

Jordan's first suspicion was that she had lost her mind. He sprang up, and hastened over to her. But she gave him her hand, and offered no resistance at all to being led over to the table.

Suddenly she fixed her silent gaze on Daniel. He got up involuntarily, and seized the back of his chair. His colour changed; he distorted the corners of his mouth; he was nervous. But when Gertrude withdrew her hand from her father's and extended it to him, and when he took it and his eye met hers-he could not help but look at her-his solicitude vanished. For what he read in her eyes was an unreserved and irrevocable capitulation of her whole self, and Daniel was the victor. His face grew gentle, grateful, dreamy, and resplendent.

It was not merely the sensuous charm revealed in the feeling which Gertrude betrayed that moved him: it was the fact that she came as she had come, a penitent and a convert. The sublime conviction that he had been able to transform a soul and awaken it to new life touched him deeply.

This it was that drew him to Gertrude more than her countenance, her expression, and her body combined. And now he saw all three-her countenance, her expression, and her body.

Jordan had a foreboding of something. He felt that he would have to take the girl in his arms and flee with her. Pictures of future misfortune crowded upon his imagination; the hope he had cherished for Gertrude was crushed to the earth.

Benda stared at his plate in silence. Nevertheless, just as if he had other eyes than those with which he saw earthly things, he noticed that Eleanore's hands and lips were trembling, that with each succeeding second she grew paler, that she cast a distrustful glance first at her father, then at her sister, and then at Daniel, and that she finally, as if overcome with a feeling of exhaustion, slipped away from her place by the table lamp, stole into a corner, and sat down on the ha.s.sock.

But after they had all resumed their seats at the table, Gertrude sitting between Benda and her father, Eleanore came up and sat down next to Daniel. She never took her eyes off Gertrude; she looked at her in breathless surprise, Gertrude smiled as she had smiled when leaning against the door, timidly and pa.s.sionately.

From that moment on, the conversation lagged, Benda suggested to his friend that it was time for them to leave. They thanked Jordan for his hospitality and departed. Jordan accompanied them down the stairs and unlocked the front door. When he returned, Eleanore was just going to her room: ”Well, Eleanore, are you not going to say good-night?” he called after her.

She turned around, nodded conventionally, and closed the door.

Gertrude was still sitting at the table. Jordan was walking up and down the room. Suddenly she sprang up, stepped in his way, forced him to stop, threw her arms about his neck, and kissed him on the forehead. She had never done that before.

She too had gone to sleep. Jordan felt terribly alone. He heard the street door open and close; he heard some one enter. It was Benno.

Jordan thought that his son would come in, for he must have seen the light through the crack of the door. But Benno evidently had no desire to see his father. He went to his room at the other end of the hall, and closed the door behind him just as if he were a servant.

”They are all three in bed,” thought Jordan to himself, ”and what do I know about them?”

He shook his head, removed the hanging lamp from its frame, and locked the room, holding the lamp very carefully as he did so.

XIII

Eleanore had not seen Eberhard von Auffenberg for a number of weeks. He wrote her a card, asking for the privilege of meeting her somewhere. The place in fact was always the same-the bridge at the gate to the Zoological Garden. Immediately after sunset she betook herself to that point. It was a warm March evening; there was not a breath of wind; the sky was covered with clouds.