"Yes, dear," he answered. "Let us sit down for a moment."
They sat down on a seat before the inn. Her heart beat slowly and her breast heaved painfully, as though for want of air.
"I am sorry for you, poor brother," she said. "I see that you are longing to be with your own family."
"Don't mention it, sister! Don't let us talk about it. Certainly my heart is sometimes far away, and they need me at the sowing time, but you are my sister, and one cannot disown one's flesh and blood."
"We shall see now," resumed Frau von Bleichroden, "whether this air and this new treatment will help towards his cure. What do you think?"
"Certainly it will," her brother answered, but turned his head aside so that she should not see the doubt in his face.
"What a winter I have passed through in Frankfort! To think that Destiny can invent such tragedies! I think I could have borne his death more easily than this living burial."
"But one must always hope," said her brother in a hopeless tone. And his thoughts travelled far--to his children and his fields. But immediately afterwards he felt ashamed of his selfishness, that he could not sympathise fully with this grief, which was really not his own but which he had to share, and he felt angry with himself.
Suddenly there sounded from the hill above a shrill, prolonged scream, like the whistle of a locomotive, and then another.
"Does the train go so high up the mountain?" asked Frau von Bleichroden.
"Yes, it must be that," said her brother, and listened with wide-open eyes.
The scream was repeated. But now it sounded as if someone were drowning.
"Let us go home again," said Herr Schantz, who had become quite pale; "you cannot climb this hill to-day, and to-morrow we will be wiser and take a carriage."
But his sister insisted on proceeding in spite of all. And so they ascended the long hill to the hospital, though it was like a climb up Calvary. Through the green hawthorn hedges on both sides of the way, darted black thrushes with yellow beaks; grey lizards raced over the ivy-grown walls and disappeared in the crevices. It was full spring, for there had been no winter, and by the edges of the path bloomed primroses and hellebores; but they did not arrest the attention of the pilgrims. When they had got half-way up the hill, the mysterious screaming was repeated. As though overcome by a sudden foreboding, Frau von Bleichroden turned to her brother, looked in his eyes with her own, which were clouding over, only to see her fears confirmed, then she sank down on the path without being able to utter a cry, while a yellow cloud of dust whirled over her. And there she remained lying.