pause, during
which he seemed to be considering whether he should say all he had to
say, and finally decided upon doing so--and that was, that my
unfortunate hereditary disposition did not allow of my thinking of
marriage; it might, he went on with a gesture, as if performing a last,
decisive operation on the candle, even be regarded in the same light as
if a leper married without heeding that he thereby transmitted his
disease to his children. I must not, however--here he rose and laid his
hand consolingly on my shoulder--take these things too much to heart.
The most bitter remedies--and unfortunately the truth was such--are
generally the wholesomest, and for my sick, dreaming nature, he thought,
after earnest, mature consideration, that the unvarnished truth was the
only means of giving health and salvation.

After once more holding up the candle over me, he retired with, a
serious nod; be could easily see that for the moment I was not in a
condition to carry on any conversation, or give him any answer.

It was, in all friendliness, the death-blow to all my dreams and
illusions.

I felt stunned by the blow, although my inward understanding had not yet
taken it in clearly. My life's old foreboding of misfortune was now at
last confirmed. Susanna had therefore, for me, been but borrowed
sunshine now, and my hopes were to be extinguished for ever.

I lay perfectly calm, rather seeing this with my mind's eye than
thinking it, while the music sounded faintly from the ball-room, and
little by little I felt myself with a dull pain die away, as it were,
from everything that was dear to me in the world. My body seemed to
stiffen under the sorrow, and Susanna's face, without a gleam of life in
it, stood before me like something unnatural: my love was a dead
history.

As I still lay in a dull, motionless stupor, through which everything
without appeared to me in a half mist, the door opened, and a lady came
in. She began hastily to repair with pins before the mirror a rent in
her dress, but suddenly stopped, alarmed at seeing some one in the
half-darkness lying on the bed.

I recognised Susanna, and, as it seemed to me, something told her that
it must be I who lay there, for she approached as if to see, and
whispered my name.

She probably thought I was asleep, as no answer came, and that it was
neither right nor the time to wake me. She stood by me for a moment as
if considering, then bent over me till I felt her warm