On recovering her consciousness, she burst into endless sobs, clung to his neck, covered him with burning kisses and tears, and exclaimed:
"No, no, you won’t leave me; I cannot, I cannot, I would rather die."
He vainly endeavored to bring her to reason. She would listen to nothing. "For what do you reproach me?" The question could not help embarrassing him; for he had nothing with which to reproach her, except that she had been the object of his love, a reproach which of all men on earth he should be the last to make; and that she was poor, which he was ashamed to utter; and that she was uneducated, which could be no serious obstacle, for she made up for ignorance by natural wit and intelligence, and innate refinement. She wanted reasons, he could offer none except: "Why, dear child, surely you will see that we must part now." That, however, was precisely what she could not perceive, and she continued to weep, saying mournfully: "Rudolf, Rudolf, do not leave me. I love you, and that is always something. I want nothing except to have you keep me with you. No one will ever love you as I do."
These unspeakably painful scenes, to which Rudolf had not the courage to put a heroic end, were repeated many days. When Pauline’s tears became unendurable, he went out and wandered for hours through the streets, restless, out of humour, tortured. It had happened so on that third of December, and--
This was the reason that he had not written to her or returned to his lodgings. The soldier’s bullet seemed to him a merciful interposition of Fate, which released him from his difficulties. When health was restored, he fairly fled from Paris, leaving behind him the few effects of a jolly student. This soothed his conscience a little, and moreover he told himself that he owed Pauline nothing, that she did not need him, that she, who possessed a thoroughly reasonable, nay, superior nature, would henceforward pursue the path of honour. True, a secret voice often cried out to him: "Coward! Coward!" But then he solaced himself by shrugging his shoulders and thinking that everybody else would have done the same, and she would console herself quickly enough.
Of course he could not confess this to her, but it was not necessary. She had divined it all.
With a melancholy smile, she said:
"I understand, my poor Rudolf, I understand you were glad to get rid of troublesome Pauline. The bullet spared you the pain of bidding me farewell." She was about to say more, but she forced it all back into her heart. She had never reproached him, should she do so now, in the spot which, for so many years, she had believed his grave?
Clasping her hand, Rudolf pressed it tenderly, and to give the painful conversation a pleasanter turn, asked:
"What are you doing now, how do you fare, Pauline?"
"I thank you for asking me." There was not a tinge of sarcasm or bitterness in these words, nothing but gratitude. "I am getting on perfectly well. I have worked, have made myself independent, and am now employing eight or ten workwomen, I am well-off, almost rich."
She divined a question in the expression of his eyes, and said quickly:
"Always, Rudolf, I have always remained faithful to you. I did not lack offers, you can understand that—but I would not accept. I was ashamed. And I wanted to have only your memory in my heart. Does that surprise you? I suppose you don’t believe it? Of course. It isn’t to be believed. A girl is courted. What else is there. When one has wearied of her, she is abandoned. But she was so foolish as to love sincerely and can never, never console herself." This time she was growing bitter. Her lips quivered, and she passed her hand across her eyes, once she sobbed softly. Suddenly she drew from her pocket an old leather book, which she gave him. While, with emotion, he recognized it as his own note-book, and found on the first page his half effaced caricature which a comrade in the Ecole Centrale had once sketched, she took from her bosom an enamelled locket, opened it, and held it before his eyes. It was a gift from him, and contained a lock of brown hair—his hair! He could not resist the impulse and clasped her passionately to his breast, in spite of the people who were passing to and fro outside of the circle of flowers.
"Do you believe me now?" she asked releasing herself.
His sole answer was to raise her hand to his lips.
She held his right hand firmly. "And you, Rudolf?"
With an involuntary movement, he tried to draw it from her grasp. This led her to glance quickly at it. The third finger bore a wedding ring.
Pauline uttered a deep sigh, let his hand fall, closed her eyes, and tottered a moment. Then she suddenly sank upon her knees in the same spot where she had knelt before, and her lips began to murmur a prayer.
"Pauline!" he cried imploringly.
She shook her head gently, as though to drive away an inner vision, and turned entirely away from him.
"Pauline! Let me at least have your address! I will not leave you so again!"
She bowed her head upon her clasped hands, and neither moved nor answered.
Rudolf went close to her and laid his hand on her shoulder. A long shudder passed visibly and perceptibly through her whole frame, and she buried her face still more closely in her hands.
He understood her--
The first signal of bell ringing sounded, which announced the closing of the cemetery. Rudolf cast a hasty glance towards the entrance. His wife and his brother-in-law, with whom he had appointed this place of meeting, had just appeared there and were looking in every direction. Rudolf glanced once more at the kneeling supplicant, then with a slow, noiseless, faltering step he left the circle of flowers. He passed down the wide avenue as though walking in a dream. When he had nearly reached the gate he stopped and turned for the last time. The western sky was steeped in the glow of sunset. A light mist was rising from the damp ground, filling the paths of the cemetery and effacing the outlines of the human beings and the monuments. Shrouded by these floating vapours, Pauline’s motionless dark figure stood forth in strong relief against the bright sky, and seemed to be gradually merging into a background of flaming crimson sunset.
Rudolf felt as if he were beholding his own youth fade and melt into white cloudlets of mist.
II. ANOTHER WAY.
"So we have met again, old fellow?" said Wolf Breuning, with heartfelt pleasure, filling his friend Sigmund Friese’s glass with wine.
"May it not be so long before the next meeting," cried Sigmund, as he touched glasses and drank.
Wolf Breuning, a tall, handsome man, with bold blue eyes and a long, parted beard, which seemed as though it was woven of threads of red gold, was the manager of a chemical factory in Paris. Sigmund Friese, shorter in stature, with a gentle, somewhat sensitive face, a short, fair, curly beard, and hair aristocratically thin, which already suggested a diplomatic bald head, was teaching mathematics in an American university. Both were natives of South Germany, friends from childhood, and had once plunged into the flood of life from the same spot on the shore, but were afterward washed far apart.