er
mouth, and speaking in muffled tones, requested the Banker to accompany
her husband, and a servant to stay with her. She hurried towards the
railroad. Arrived at the station, she was perplexed; and without taking
the handkerchief from her mouth, she told the servant to take tickets
for the Fortress. Then she sat still in a corner of the passenger-room,
with two thicknesses of veil over her face. She rode to the
Fortress-City. No one was to know that she wore a false tooth, no one
was to see her with a gap in her teeth.

Clodwig drove homewards, and often wiped his eyes. Above all, his pride
was wounded; he, Clodwig, was scorned, and by whom? By his wife. And on
whose account? On account of this hollow-hearted adventurer. She has
never loved me one single instant: that was a stab to his very heart,
and this stab never ceased to be felt; for what he suffered bodily was
transmuted into a suffering of the soul. Who is there that can measure
this action and re-action of body and soul?

The rain had ceased; but a mist seemed before Clodwig's eyes, and a
heavy gloom. He reached Wolfsgarten; but all the apartments seemed full
of smoke, full of haze. He seated himself in his chair.

"I am lonely, lonely," he said to himself continually.

The Banker spoke to him in gentle words; but Clodwig shook his head; he
knew that Bella had never loved him, that she hated him. He felt
himself humiliated, scourged. Bella's words had wounded him to the
heart's core, wounded him to the death.

They drew off his coat: he looked for a long time at the coat, and
nodded with a sad smile.

Did he forebode that he would never put it on again?

When Bella returned home early the next morning, he looked at her with
a ghostlike countenance: he perceived the coldness and hardness of her
face.

"Medusa, Medusa!" shrieked Clodwig.

Without knowing he had uttered the words, he fell back on the pillows.

They restored him to consciousness. Hours of the severest pain elapsed
before the Doctor came. Clodwig had also desired Eric to be sent for.

The Doctor came, and declared Clodwig to be dangerously sick; the jury
trial had excited him too violently, and the drive home through the
rain--"and perhaps something else," he added to Bella, who gazed at him
without changing a muscle of her face.

Bella sent for her brother; but no one knew precisely where he was.

"I am lonely," said she, too.

She was terrified when she said this; for she felt