It is very close even here in the large, airy studio. Already Nita believes that Mascha has fallen asleep, when she murmurs: "What do you call it?"
"Ah! martyr--martyr--and--do you not believe that she killed herself? It is wrong to kill one's self."
"And--do you not think--that she killed herself--because"--Mascha murmurs this softly to the folds of Nita's dress--"because she had done something wrong?"
"But, Maschenka, how do you come by such thoughts?" Nita says it quite reproachfully.
Maschenka is silent, and Nita continues to stroke her hair gently, like a tender mother who lulls her sick child to sleep. After a while Maschenka begins anew. "Nita," whispers she, and her voice sounds so weary and choked that Nita only with difficulty understands her, "could you ever love any one if you knew that he had done something wrong?"
"What do you mean?" asks Nita, and feels that the young being leaning against her trembles as with a violent chill.
"Can you understand that one can do something really wrong, something wholly wrong, without being bad himself?"
For an instant Nita hesitates, then she says: "Yes, I believe so. Yes--but what wrong can you have done?"
"I--oh, nothing; naturally, it is no question of me," assures Mascha, hastily. "Only when one lives so alone, and has no one to whom one can speak, all sorts of thoughts come to one. It is foolish----"
"No!" cries out Nita, hastily. "It is not foolish, it is sad. How could one leave you with those uncongenial people this long, long time?"
Mascha only silently shrugs her shoulders.
"But now it is over. You will be happy. You will again be healthy and happy."
"Yes," murmurs Mascha, scarcely audibly--"happy--healthy!"
"If I only knew you far away from this dusty sultriness," says Nita, "somewhere where it is shady, cool, where fresh roses bloom each day, where the air is almost as fresh in the evening as it is in the morning. You long to be away?"
"Yes," murmured Mascha, "I long to be away--away from the houses, from people, from the heat, far away, anywhere where it is cool, very cool!"
After a while Mascha whispers: "Do you remember how, the first time I came here, I was afraid of the skull? You were so dear and good to me. I loved you from that moment."