Julie arose, and opened the door. Immediately she returned to Jansen, who sat there perfectly indifferent, bearing a letter in her hand.
"It is for you," she said. "It is Felix's handwriting. Will you open it? I think you had better first go home with me and rest awhile, and try to eat and sleep. You must have pretty well talked over everything last night, so that it is hardly probable the letter can contain anything new or important."
"Do you think so?" he said, in a peculiar tone. "Because we were friends, I suppose you think that each of us must know all about the other. Well, then, my poor darling, open the letter yourself, and you will get at the tricks by which chance has made the impossible possible. Read it, read it whatever it is, it can't tell me anything more that is worth knowing!"
Breathlessly, she tore open the envelope; and standing at the window, leaning her trembling figure against the sill for support, she read the following lines.
"We parted so strangely, yesterday. Under the first shock of the blow I ran away as if I had been blind and mad. As if one could escape the mockery of hell in one's own breast! When I realized this, I turned back. I should have been glad to have surrendered myself to you--unconditionally--that very night. But you had already ridden away, and the others had chosen to leave the house and hurry off by the night train. Thus I am left here undisturbed, to come to my senses, and to write you a long letter--to which I can expect no answer.
"After all, what could you say to me? For we are parted again--we are separated, after all. And the case is so terribly clear, that it makes all explanation and discussion superfluous. Why, then, should I waste so much paper? and even go out of my way to give an explanation at which one scarcely knows whether he ought to laugh or weep?
"But I owe it to you--no, not to you; for, at bottom, I did not sin against you but against myself; and my confession, about which you will perhaps care little, is merely a relief to that self, which I hope you will grant me for the sake of our old friendship. I will try to be as brief as possible.
"You know how, just before my father died, I was sent to a watering-place; and how I twice passed through the city where you lived--the first time on my journey there, by way of Holland, where I had business to attend to; and then again on my return, when I was spurred on to the wildest haste by the news from home, and wanted to spare us both a mere shake of the hand between the steamer and the railroad, while in such a mood. In the interval between these two visits, you had married and become a father. I looked forward to becoming acquainted with your wife and child, but for that very reason I put off our meeting until a brighter time, and passed through Hamburg without suspecting----