Suddenly she sprang up with a loud shriek. The door had opened noiselessly; and, instead of the young companion whom she had expected to see enter, the very man stood before her, from whom she had fled to this obscure hiding-place.
The words died on her lips; even the old actress, who was not ordinarily easily disconcerted, sat as if she were petrified; and only her fingers, still convulsively crumbling up the biscuits, seemed to be alive.
"Leave the room; I have something to say to my wife!" Jansen said to her in a low voice and without violence. "Do you hear what I say? Go away this instant! but through this door, by which I entered."
He wanted to prevent her from taking the child with her, for he took it for granted that it had been put to bed in the adjoining room.
The women exchanged a quick look. These few moments sufficed to restore the younger one to self-possession.
"You must not leave me," she said. "In whatever I am to hear--since I am conscious of my innocence--I need shun no witnesses, least of all my own mother."
And as she spoke she sank back again into the chair, and passed her hand across her eyes, as though overcome by painful memories. The old woman on the sofa did not move. They could only hear how she murmured softly to herself: "Good God! Good God! What a scene! What a catastrophe!"
"I repeat my demand!" the sculptor said with emphasis. "Will you wait for me to take your arm and lead you out?"
"Very good; I will go; I will not let matters be brought to the worst," cried the mother, rising with a pathetic gesture. Then she bent down over Lucie and whispered something in her ear. "No, no," hastily answered the latter, "not a word to him. That would only make the matter worse. Go, if it must be so. I am not afraid!"
She spoke the last words aloud and facing toward Jansen, whom she looked straight in the eyes without a trace of terror. Any stranger would have been deceived by this air of conscious innocence.
The old singer slammed the door behind her. They heard her, as she passed down the corridor. But it did not escape Jansen's ears that she crept back and remained standing outside the door to listen.
"Let her stay, for what I care!" he said to himself, "as long as I needn't see her face." Then came again the feverish: "We must make an end--an end--an end!" He took his stand before the stove, in which the remains of a fire still glowed. With folded arms he stood gazing down upon the woman who had been the curse of his life. In the midst of his terrible anguish it flashed across him that not a feature of her face gave evidence of the seven years that had passed since they had been separated. She even appeared younger, more girlish and more unsophisticated than when he had first known her. Nothing could be read on those soft lips or on that clear forehead but a sort of curiosity, an innocent wonder as to what was coming. Her soft, quiet hand had taken up the scissors again, and was playfully opening and shutting them.