The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - novelonlinefull.com
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FORESTER.
And all the way back I heard her walking behind me.
SOPHY.
On your way back--
FORESTER.
Whenever I walked, I heard her behind me; whenever I stood still, she also stood still, but I did not look around.
SOPHY (_relieved_).
You did not look around?
FORESTER.
Why, I knew it was nothing. I have a feeling as though even now she were still standing behind me.
SOPHY (_wishes to divert him from the subject_).
Did you shoot anything? Is it outside?
FORESTER (_shuddering involuntarily_).
Outside?
SOPHY.
Before the door. What a strange look you give me! What is that on your clothes?
FORESTER (_turns away involuntarily_).
What is it?
SOPHY.
A spot--
FORESTER.
What you see--
SOPHY.
Why will you not let me see it?
FORESTER.
It is nothing.
[_Turns to the table at the right, takes down his gun_.]
Is the soup warm? My tongue is glued to the roof of my mouth.
SOPHY (_takes a plate and spoon from the closet, goes to the stove where she pours out the soup_).
If he should look into the room! What I ask, I ask only in anxiety to have him forget about Mary.
[_She puts the soup before the_ FORESTER _on the table to the right; listens_.]
Isn't there a noise in the room?
[_Walks about the_ FORESTER'S _chair, so as to distract him_.]
Ulrich, don't you think that Robert could still restore the old friendly relations?
[FORESTER _makes a movement_.]
SOPHY.
Why do you start so?
FORESTER.
Don't wake up Mary! Wasn't there some one at the window?
SOPHY.
That is the old rose-bush outside, which is always nodding so anxiously and knocking at the window, as if it had to prevent a catastrophe, and n.o.body paid any attention to it.
[_Pause; aside_.]
It is so still. I must keep on talking, otherwise he can hear me breathing, and will notice my anxiety--and also that he may not hear Mary when she climbs in at the window.
[_Listening repeatedly_.]
The whole evening I have been thinking about it. Only yesterday Robert said to me--
FORESTER.
Always Robert--
SOPHY (_has seated herself by his side_).
We were walking along the willows, where the pine-thicket is, under the rock, in the Dell--
FORESTER (_violently_).
