The fool hesitatingly put out his fat, work-hardened hand, and Everett gave it a hearty clasp.
Wilhelm Kellar lay propped up in the four-posted bedstead that stood in his little alcove. His thin face showed the effect of his illness, and the hand that played with the flowered coverlet was thin to the point of translucency. His long, white hair was brushed straight back from his high forehead; his eyes, which had sunk deep into their sockets, wandered restlessly.
“Walda, where art thou?” he said, in a thick, indistinct voice. Walda pushed back the chintz curtains that divided the alcove from the larger room, and, kneeling beside her father, took one of his hands in hers.
“I have been thinking of the _Untersuchung_, daughter,” said the sick man, “and I pray that I may be able to be present when the spirit descends upon thee.”
“Thou wilt be well in another month,” said Walda, soothingly, as she stroked the white hair. “The physician hath said that thou canst soon leave thy bed.”
“But the _Untersuchung_ is only two weeks off,” said Wilhelm Kellar. “It may be that if strength is not vouchsafed me so that I may walk again a litter can be made for me. I would be carried to the place if I cannot go there myself.”
“There is some talk that the _Untersuchung_ may be delayed for a month,” said Walda, “and then thou wilt surely be able to take thy place among the elders.”
“It would be well, indeed, to postpone the _Untersuchung_, for thou hast been much distracted from thy meditations by my illness.”
“Nay, nay, father. Strange thoughts have come to me since I have been sitting here many hours a day in this room. Never hath heaven seemed so near to me.”
“It is well, indeed, that thou hast never been touched by earthly love,” said the old man, scanning the face of his daughter. “It was to keep thee free from it that I brought thee here when thou wast a little child, for it putteth waywardness and frowardness into the heart of a woman. Since I have been near to death it hath been shown to me that I must warn thee again lest thou some time feel its evil influence. Thy mother forgot all duty. She forfeited her soul for love.”
The old man spoke with intense feeling; he trembled as a long-controlled emotion swept over him. It was as if he had unlocked the flood-gates of a passion barred for many years within his heart.