III
“Don’t you think the musicians play very well, Agnes?” asked Professor Roggenfeldt of his wife.
Agnes Rudolfovna sighed, as if she had been brought back from some sweet vision of the past:
“Yes, they play very well,” said she, “especially if one remembers that they are only simple peasants.”
“The peasants here have culture and so are very different from the Russian peasants,” said her husband.
“Yes, indeed,” said Agnes Rudolfovna.
“But I can’t think why our friend, Doctor Horn, hasn’t come. I feel quite anxious about him. I’m afraid he must have been taken ill suddenly. If he doesn’t come soon, I think we must send and enquire about him.”
Agnes Rudolfovna did not reply. She looked intently at the dancers. Her thin but still beautiful fingers trembled as she smoothed down the folds of her white dress.
It was strange and somewhat painful to look down upon this slow dance and to listen to the melancholy sounds of the waltz, played so precisely by the stiff brown hands of the musicians.
Yes, it was painful but yet sweet to the old lady to recall that far-off time when Edward and Agnes were still young, when he was a fine young man with sparkling eyes, and she a beautiful girl, beautiful as only a beloved and loving woman can be. In sweetness and in pain there revived in her soul memories of that far-off night in the happy month of May and of that old sweet wrongdoing, now long past with her departed youth.
Many years had passed away and she had kept her secret. But today Agnes Rudolfovna felt that the time had come when she must speak out the dreadful words of a delayed confession.
She had wept much during the past night, and early this morning she had risen and written a letter and sent it off to Doctor Horn.
During the morning her old friend had sent her a bouquet of flowers and an answer to her letter—a few words written in the firm even hand of a strong-souled man, and a scrap of crimson ribbon.
And now the old lady sat by the side of her aged husband on the seat overlooking the steep cliff, looking out on to the bright greenness, on the blue of the heavens and the sea, listening to the beating of her fainting heart and preparing herself to speak. But she couldn’t make up her mind to begin.