CHAPTER XXVTHE END OF THE STORY
“Shehad come out of the theatre with her victory fresh upon her. The change from the glare of lights and the clamour of voices to the darkness of the streets and her own solitude reminded her how little that triumph meant to her. ‘He has forgotten,’ she said to herself always. The purpose of her work, that she might be worthy of her lover; the purpose of her suffering, that he might not suffer, guided her no longer. She seemed to sink back to a world of misery and of hopeless effort. The silence of the night reminded her that she was without a friend in all the city. She had ever hungered for love; the loveless childhood she had known had fed that hunger. Jézero had been to her a garden of delight because love had built there arbours for her, and she had rested in them. But now these were shut to her. She recalled every word that CountPaul had spoken; his callousness, his raillery, his restraint in avoiding any word of affection for her. She knew instinctively that never more would she hear his voice or touch his hand. She remembered that she must go back to a home which was not a home; she thought of the man Klun, of his brutalities and his persecutions. She asked herself to what end she had succeeded in the theatre, had realised the visions of her childhood. Life could give her nothing, since it did not give her love.
“These thoughts—the children of her melancholy—were hers until the carriage set her down in the Wallner Strasse, and she ran up the stairs to her apartments. She was a little surprised that Zol opened to her knock; but surprise became fear when she saw his face and the blood upon his hands. She had long looked upon the young hussar as a real friend, though she was often ignorant of her own feeling in the matter. But now when he stood before her, pale and bloody and trembling with excitement, a great flood of affection for him rushed upon her, and she seized both his hands.
“‘Zol,’ she cried, ‘tell me—what is it, Zol?You have hurt yourself! Oh, my God! don’t look at me like that! Speak to me!’
“She said this, but her instinct—as the instinct of woman will in moments of peril—told her something of the truth. She endeavoured to pass into the boudoir, but he held her back, the blood from his hands soiling her cloak.
“‘Christine,’ he exclaimed, ‘for God’s sake don’t—you must not go—I will tell you——’
“But she had brushed past him, and a moment later her terrible cry told him that she stood over the body of her husband. Excellency, who may write of a moment like that?
“‘Zol,’ she said—ten minutes had been numbered then, and he had given her the story—‘take me away from Vienna; oh, I can bear it no longer! Zol, take me to Zlarin.’
“She said the words, and then lay almost inanimate in his arms, while his lips were glued to hers and his limbs trembled against her own.
“Excellency, this is the story of Christine of the Hills. You have seen the pavilion whichZol has built for her upon the island she has learnt to love. They say that he has married her, and has no thought but for her happiness. For myself, Christine is very good to me.Eccoli, am I not her father? Did I not give her bread when all the world cried upon her? Surely it is right that she should remember me now when she has money beyond her wishes, and is the mistress of houses and of servants.
“And she has forgotten, you ask—ah, who shall tell us that? Who shall read the whole heart of a woman who has loved one man and has given herself to another? Let us remember only that affection is about her path; that she has come back from her dreaming to the island home where the visions were given to her.
“And from the new dream of content, excellency, it is my prayer that she will never wake.”
THE END.