He turned round quickly. The feeling that she was so close to him tore away the last shred of his self-control. "You know that I love you," he said, his voice shaking with pa.s.sion.

Her face in an instant was colourless. She stood quite still, almost touching him, as though she did not dare move. Her eyes were fixed on his with a frightened, fascinated look.

"You know it. You have known it a long time. Now what are you going to say to me?"

She looked at him without speaking or moving.

"Anna, what are you going to say to me?" he cried; and he caught up her hands and kissed them one after the other, hardly knowing what he did, beside himself with love of her.

She watched him helplessly. She felt faint and sick. She had had a miserable day, and was completely overwhelmed by this last misfortune.

Her good friend Axel was gone, gone for ever. The pleasant friendship was done. In place of the friend she so much needed, of the friendship she had found so comforting, there was--this.

"Won't you--won't you let my hands go?" she said faintly. She did not know him again. Was it possible that this agony of love was for her? She knew herself so well, she knew so well what it was for which he was evidently going to break his heart. How wonderful, how pitiful beyond expression, that a good man like Axel should suffer anything because of her. And even in the midst of her fright and misery the thought would not be put from her that if she had happened to look like the baroness or Fraulein Kuhrauber, while inwardly remaining exactly as she was, he would not have broken his heart for her. "Oh, let me go----" she whispered; and turned her head aside, and shut her eyes, unable to look any longer at the love and despair in his.

"But what are you going to say to me?"

"Oh, you know--you know----"

"But you are so sorry always for people who suffer----"

"Oh, stop--oh, stop!"

"No, I won't stop; here have I been condemned to look on at you lavishing love on people who don't want it, don't like it, are wearied by it--who don't know how precious it is, how priceless it is, and how I am hungering and thirsting--oh, starving, starving, for one drop of it----" His voice shook, and he fell once more to covering her hands with kisses that seemed to scorch her soul.

This was very dreadful. Her soul had never been scorched before.

Something must be done to stop him. She could not stand there with her eyes shut and her hands being kissed for ever. "_Please_ let me go," she entreated faintly; and in her helplessness began to cry.

He instantly released her, and she stood before him crying. What a horrible thing it was to lose her friend, to be forced to hurt him. "I never dreamt that you--that you----" she wept.

"What, that I loved you?" he asked incredulously; but more gently, subdued by her deep distress. His face grew very hopeless. She was crying because she was sorry for him.

"I don't know--I think I did dream that--lately--once or twice--but I never dreamt that it was so bad--that you were such a--such a--such a volcano. Oh, Axel, why are you a volcano?" she cried, looking up at him, the tears rolling down her cheeks. "Why have you spoilt everything? It was so nice before. We were such friends. And now--how can I be friends with a volcano?"

"Anna, if you make fun of me----"

"Oh no, no--as though I would--as though I could do anything so unutterable. But don't let us be tragic. Oh, don't let us be tragic. You know my plans--you know my plans inside out, from beginning to end--how can I, how _can_ I marry anybody?"

"Good G.o.d, those women--those women who are not happy, who have spoilt your happiness, they are to spoil mine now--ours, Anna?" He seized her arm as though he would wake her at all costs from a fatal sleep. "Do you mean to say that if it were not for those women you would be my wife?"

"Oh, if only you wouldn't be tragic----"

"Do you mean to say that is the reason?"

"Oh, isn't it sufficient----"

"No. If you cared for me it would be no reason at all."

She cried bitterly. "But I don't," she sobbed. "Not like that--not in that way. It is atrocious of me not to--I know how good you are, how kind, how--how everything. And still I don't. I don't know why I don't, but I don't. Oh, Axel, I am so sorry--don't look so wretched--I can't bear it."

"But what can it matter to you how I look if you don't care about me?"

"Oh, oh," sobbed Anna, wringing her hands.

He caught hold of her wrist. "See here, Anna. Look at me."

But she would not look at him.

"Look at me. I don't believe you know your own mind. I want to see into your eyes. They were always honest--look at me."

But she would not look at him.

"Surely you will do that--only that--for me."

"There isn't anything to see," she wept, "there really isn't. It is dreadful of me, but I can't help it."

"Well, but look at me."

"Oh, Axel, what _is_ the use of looking at you?" she cried in despair; and pulled her handkerchief away and did it.

He searched her face for a moment in silence, as though he thought that if only he could read her soul he might understand it better than she did herself. Those dear eyes--they were full of pity, full of distress; but search as he might he could find nothing else.

He turned away without a word.

"Don't, don't be tragic," she begged, anxiously following him a few steps. "If only you are not tragic we shall still be able to be friends----"

But he did not look round.

A servant with a tray was outside coming in to take the coffee away.

"Oh," exclaimed Anna, seeing that it was impossible to hide her tear-stained face from the girl's calm scrutiny, "oh, Johanna, the poor baroness--she is so ill--it is so dreadful----" And she dropped into a chair and hid herself in the cushions, weeping hysterically with an abandonment of woe that betokened a quite extraordinary affection for the baroness.

"_Gott, die arme Baronesse_," sympathised Johanna perfunctorily. To herself she remarked, "This very moment has the Miss refused to marry _gnadiger Herr_."

CHAPTER XXIX

What Anna most longed for in the days that followed was a mother. "If I had a mother," she thought, not once, but again and again, and her eyes had a wistful, starved look when she thought it, "if I only had a mother, a sweet mother all to myself, of my very own, I'd put my head on her dear shoulder and cry myself happy again. First I'd tell her everything, and she wouldn't mind however silly it was, and she wouldn't be tired however long it was, and she'd say 'Little darling child, you are only a baby after all,' and would scold me a little, and kiss me a great deal, and then I'd listen so comfortably, all the time with my face against her nice soft dress, and I would feel so safe and sure and wrapped round while she told me what to do next. It is lonely and cold and difficult without a mother."

The house was in confusion. The baroness had come out of her unconsciousness to delirium, and the doctors, knowing that she was not related to anyone there, talked openly of death. There were two doctors, now, and two nurses; and Anna insisted on nursing too, wearing herself out with all the more pa.s.sion because she felt that it was of so little importance really to anyone whether the baroness lived or died.

They were all strangers, the people watching this frail fighter for life, and they watched with the indifference natural to strangers. Here was a middle-aged person who would probably die; if she died no one lost anything, and if she lived it did not matter either. The doctors and nurses, accustomed to these things, could not be expected to be interested in so profoundly uninteresting a case; Frau von Treumann observed once at least every day that it was _schrecklich_, and went on with her embroidery; Fraulein Kuhrauber cried a little when, on her way to her bedroom, she heard the baroness raving, but she cried easily, and the raving frightened her; the princess felt that death in this case would be a blessing; and Letty and Miss Leech avoided the house, and spent the burning days rambling in woods that teemed with prodigal, joyous life.

As for Anna, to see her in the sick-room was to suppose her the nearest and tenderest relative of the baroness; and yet the pa.s.sion that possessed her was not love, but only an endless, unfathomable pity. "If she gets well, she shall never be unhappy again," vowed Anna in those days when she thought she could hear Death's footsteps on the stairs.

"Here or somewhere else--anywhere she likes--she shall live and be happy. She will see that her poor sister has made no difference, except that there will be no shadow between us now."

But what is the use of vowing? When June was in its second week the baroness slowly and hesitatingly turned the corner of her illness; and immediately the corner was turned and the exhaustion of turning it got over, she became fractious. "You will have a difficult time," Axel had said on the day he spoilt their friendship; and it was true. The difficult time began after that corner was turned, and the farther the baroness drew away from it, the nearer she got to complete convalescence, the more difficult did life for Anna become. For it resumed the old course, and they all resumed their old selves, the same old selves, even to the shadow of an unmentioned Lolli between them, that Axel had said they would by no means get away from; but with this difference, that the peculiarities of both Frau von Treumann and the baroness were more p.r.o.nounced than before, and that not one of the trio would speak to either of the other two.