Page:Karl Gjellerup - Minna, A novel - 1913.djvu/288

 had been here. And of course I will tell her what you have said. But won't you write yourself? It would be better if she heard directly from you how things are; surely she would come at once, immediately."

"I should like it very much if she came; but it is too painful for me to summon her here, as if to say good-bye—I dare not. Perhaps it is superstitious, but one ought not to anticipate misfortune."

"But I? May I not ask her to come?"

All my hope came to life. I saw an infallible way to salvation, if she was safe inside this house before she made her choice. Everything here would plead my cause, dumb but insisting, if she was silent; eloquent and persuasive if she gave her confidence. What was Stephensen here? A sick, perhaps dying, old man's blessing would seal her pact with me. My conscience had forbidden me to make her seek advice from the old folk in her trouble, but it surely permitted me to take advantage of a coincidence, which seemed to me a finger of fate.

"Yes, write, dear friend! But you must try not to exaggerate the danger, for her sake also, the dear child! She will take it to heart! She will judge best herself what to do, therefore do not urge her too much to come—perhaps her cousin needs her still more."

"Oh, I do not think there is anything much the matter with her."

"Then I do not understand how you can let her waste several days of the few weeks you still have left here in Dresden. So you have not yet told her that you have to leave so soon for England?"

"I have … just to-night I was going to write it—after all I could not call her back the next day, but the