urn her glance with one equally expressive, as he had
always done before. Then an icy-cold fear had taken possession of her,
and all the confidence she had just acquired disappeared again. The
first of December! There was certainly time enough before the first of
December, but who could say that he would really stay until then? Could
he not go off secretly in the night, disappear out of her life as
suddenly and unexpectedly as he had entered it?

As she dashed across the fields it was as though all the stars were
falling from the sky. She was quite breathless, she was running so.

[Pg 255]

Where did she want to go? To Boehnke, the schoolmaster. He must come, he
must help her. Had he not sworn to do so? Had he not sworn without her
asking it that he was hers for ever and ever, through all eternity? In
her mind's eye she saw his pale face, thin and hollow-cheeked, consumed
with passion, and his feverish eyes, feverish with his longing for her.
If she implored him to help her, he would not, could not, refuse. So
she was hastening to him.

She had run out of the house without being noticed. Alas, how quickly
Martin had at other times followed her steps! He had always heard her
softest footfall, her very breath in the dark passage, every movement
of her hand as it glided over his door. To-day nobody had followed her.
A feeling of bitterness overpowered the lonely woman; without knowing
it hot tears ran down her cold face, that was already wet with dew. Was
there nobody who really loved her? She, the pious woman, could no
longer understand how the Sacrament of Penance could strike terror into
any one. And even if she were never to obtain forgiveness, and were to
be lost for ever, she would never give up her love nor her lover. Away
to Boehnke; he would, he must help her.

The dogs barked in the village as the woman tore past. She rushed along
past the sleeping cottages like the wind's bride, her skirts fluttered,
her hair had come undone owing to her hasty flight, and the cold breath
of autumn beat against her face. Nobody met her; it was already late
for the people in the village, and there was hardly a light to be seen
anywhere. If only he were awake! And if he were not awake? Then she
would thump on his door, or knock at his window so loudly with her fist
that he must awake.

There was the house in which he lived. She had [Pg 256] never been
there, but he had told her that his room was on the left side of the
front