Paul walked close behind the two Erdmanns, who in their long black coats looked very solemn and demure. Suddenly the consciousness of his guilt overcame him more forcibly than ever. He bent forward a little, touched them softly on the shoulder, and whispered, with moist eyes,
“Forgive me, I have behaved so badly to you.”
They nudged each other and smiled maliciously. One of them half turned round, and whispered, with a face of pathetic misery and a look of injured innocence,
Paul felt very well that they were mocking him, but his heart was so full of devotion and love that no mocking could affect him.
The children ranged themselves on both sides of the altar.
Paul sent a shy glance into the body of the church, which was crammed with people, but he could not distinguish anybody.
The hour for the sermon was past. He gazed down before him. All seemed like a dream.
A little later he felt his knees resting on a soft cushion and the hand of the vicar on his head. What he said to him he did not hear. He saw Elsbeth on the other side, crying quietly with her handkerchief to her eyes, and thought,
“Ah, cry away, cry away, you will soon laugh again.”
And then he asked himself why people always laughed so much, while on the whole there were so few laughable things in the world.
The organ now intoned the hymn, “Praise ye the Lord, the mighty King of Glory.” The chorus of the congregation sounded jubilant, and his gaze wandered up to the sunbeams which fell in iridescent light through the painted church windows like a rainbow.
And while he was gazing at it he suddenly started. Just opposite the cross which crowned the altar stood a dark woman clad in gray, of supernatural stature, looking down upon him with big, hollow eyes. It was the penitent Magdalene.
He felt a cold shudder run through his frame.
“Dame Care,” he murmured, and bent his head as if he wished to accept with humility what she might grant him for life.
And when he lifted his eyes again the sun shone more magnificently than before.
Fiery red and emerald green sparkled the rays, weaving a radiant halo round the gray dame’s head.
But she stood there sadly in the midst of all the brilliant radiance, and stared down upon him with her big, hollow eyes.