sank slowly on her lap, and raising her clear eyes, she let her soft,
beaming glance enfold him from head to foot like a slow and pale caress.
He was very hot when he sat down; she, with bowed head, went on with her
sewing; her neck was very white under the light of the lamp; but Falk,
hiding his face in the palms of his hands, shuddered faintly. He drew
them down, even to his beard, and his uncovered eyes astonished me by
their tense and irrational expression--as though he had just swallowed
a heavy gulp of alcohol. It passed away while he was binding us to
secrecy. Not that he cared, but he did not like to be spoken about; and
I looked at the girl's marvellous, at her wonderful, at her regal hair,
plaited tight into that one astonishing and maidenly tress. Whenever she
moved her well-shaped head it would stir stiffly to and fro on her back.
The thin cotton sleeve fitted the irreproachable roundness of her
arm like a skin; and her very dress, stretched on her bust, seemed to
palpitate like a living tissue with the strength of vitality animating
her body. How good her complexion was, the outline of her soft cheek and
the small convoluted conch of her rosy ear! To pull her needle she kept
the little finger apart from the others; it seemed a waste of power
to see her sewing--eternally sewing--with that industrious and precise
movement of her arm, going on eternally upon all the oceans, under all
the skies, in innumerable harbours. And suddenly I heard Falk's voice
declare that he could not marry a woman unless she knew of something
in his life that had happened ten years ago. It was an accident. An
unfortunate accident. It would affect the domestic arrangements of their
home, but, once told, it need not be alluded to again for the rest of
their lives. "I should want my wife to feel for me," he said. "It
has made me unhappy." And how could he keep the knowledge of it to
himself--he asked us--perhaps through years and years of companionship?
What sort of companionship would that be? He had thought it over. A wife
must know. Then why not at once? He counted on Hermann's kindness